It is also hard to write a blog post when all of your spare moments are spent trying to bring some semblance of order back to your upturned house.

Let me explain. Everything needs attention in order to thrive—even the backs of closets and the bottoms of mattresses—and MOLD has become the character that sneaks into my life and seems to punish me for my inattention to such details.

It began in our first apartment, which we moved into last summer. I don’t remember when exactly we found and fought the first outbreaks of mold in that apartment, but afterward we tried to keep the air circulating and dry—especially in the bathroom. But it only got worse, culminating, in January, with the discovery of copious mold on the wall behind our bed, covering the boards of our bed frame, and on the bottom of our mattress. This explained why Gil, with his allergies, was starting to wheeze—and it was the reason we beat a hasty retreat from that apartment, carefully discarding or cleaning any of our moldy items, and landed instead in our adorable “cottage in the woods.”

Imagine our dismay, when, a few weeks into living here, we found that my Birkenstocks had molded in the closet. Had molded in the closet—or were moldy when we brought them with us? Either is possible, though the second is more likely. In any case, I had to throw them away and pray they hadn’t spread to anything else.

Long story short, we found mold on a few other items before we finally checked under our mattress and found that the mold had re-grown right where we killed it. So we did what we should have done before: we hauled our memory-foam mattress (a wedding gift from my parents) to the dump. And now we’re sleeping on an old mattress of my parents’ that they happened to have around—currently on our living room floor, while we finish cleaning and airing out the bedroom.

Now, I realize that on the scale of possible life catastrophes, this whole thing really only registers on the side of “slight nuisance.” But the fact is that while we’re here in the thick of it, it’s making me want to tear my hair out, scream, and hide under my covers until it all goes away. (Because I am still five years old.) Every time I come home from work and look at the contents of closets and shelves that have been shaken out across the floor, I feel stress rise inside me like a tsunami. Everyday chores (which I have a hard enough time with, as you know) still need to be taken care of, but I can hardly walk two steps without tripping over a laundry basket or pile of books: my nightmare situation. Couple that with the niggling fear that even after we sort this all out and put everything away we will somehow have missed some mold or that it will come back, and this is all just a recipe for headaches.

But.

Enough complaining—even in the midst of this frustrating mess, I can see (if I look very carefully) that it is in many ways a blessing. I thought about this as I was vinegar-and-tea-tree-oil-mopping  the bedroom floor the other night. Let’s start with little things: I have been wanting to finish cleaning and organizing our house for ages, and now it’s being forced to the forefront of my attention. Also, now I don’t have to worry about the mattress all the time anymore.

But there are bigger things, too: this is all a reminder, as Dad pointed out to me, of why it is good that our treasures are not on this earth. On this earth, thieves, or rust, or moths, or mold can and will take even our most precious possessions away. Dealing with all this can’t help but loosen my hold on all of our stuff; especially when I have to get rid of things I never would have imagined throwing away. And that perspective, I think, is a real blessing.

Also, I just have to say that my husband has been incredibly helpful with this whole process. In addition to helping with all the tasks that need to be done, he has been ever the anchor keeping me from running around squawking and flapping my arms. It is a blessing to have such a partner, and it is a blessing to be reminded what a blessing that is.

———

P.S. Any advice you have for dealing with mold would be greatly appreciated. What I have gleaned so far, from articles like this one: a) don’t use bleach, because it makes mold come back quicker, b) mold needs moisture to grow, so focus on keeping things DRY and well-ventilated, and c) mold spores are everywhere in the air, so don’t even think about trying to totally remove them from your space. Just focus on making it so there’s nowhere for them to grow.

Does anyone have anything to add to this? Specifically, do you have any advice for how to keep difficult areas, like the bathtub and shower curtain liner, dry? Thank you in advance.

But today I’m breaking both these rules, because:

The f***ing deer ate all my potted plants last night.

(Some of my plant babies, gifted to me by a dear friend, seen here in better days.)

Well, not strictly all, but they tried at least a bit of everything in the salad bar—even my columbine, which had a promising “no deer” symbol on its tag. (I took this to mean “deer don’t like it” but am now wondering if it meant “don’t mix with deer.” NOW they tell me.)

And some things they did a bit more than try. Like my strawberries. Oh, friends, my strawberries. My strawberries that were just finally turning red, of which I had not yet had a single taste, were bitten down to little green nubs. No leaves, flowers, or berries left—completely decimated.

Our landlady, bless her heart, warned me about this weeks ago, and in lieu of setting up nets I took the anemic measure of putting hair from my hairbrush around the plants. (Gil had suggested either that or urine, and I opted for the less repulsive option.) But for weeks, every time we have pulled up the long driveway to our cottage, I have said, “I’m sure they ate my strawberries today,” as a way of girding myself for the possible shock—but then have secretly congratulated myself for apparently having deer-proof plants every time they stood, untouched, waving their little arms in the porch light.

Ah, yes, the porch light… that was my first clue that something was awry. As we pulled into the driveway last night, I realized that in my rush out the door earlier I had forgotten to leave the porch light on. And in the split second that our headlights hit the porch before Gil turned them off, I knew something was wrong.

“They ate my strawberries,” I said, not actually sure if this was true.

“Did they?” Gil turned the lights back on. “Oh. They sure did.”

I would like to say that I remained stoic about it, that I reminded myself that they’re Just Plants, Life Goes On, etc. But the truth is that I bawled my eyes out for about twenty minutes, and Gil basically had to pry me out of the car before I was willing to walk past those sad little pots and into the house. (Where I continued bawling my eyes out.)

I know it sounds pathetic—it is pathetic. I feel pathetic even thinking about how pathetic it was. But have you ever had days, or weeks, where you feel like very little you are applying yourself to is going very well, or that you are applying yourself to very few of the things that you wish you were applying yourself to? And then overgrown rodents come along and eat one of the things you actually are applying yourself to that actually is going fairly well? Well, then you know exactly how I felt last night.

But today, I’m better. To say I’m “over it” would be a slight exaggeration—I mean, come on, my strawberries—but it’s miraculous what a long cry and a good night’s sleep can do for you. And, after all, they are Just Plants, Life Goes On, etc. But I’m left, in the wake of Deerpocalypse 2011, with some nagging questions:

1. Could I have done anything to prevent this? Was it the porch light? Not enough hair in the pots? Should I have used urine? Are nets the only answer?
2. What should I do with the… bits… of my plants that are left? The strawberries are clearly finito (:-() but some of the other plants could quite possibly be resurrected. I’m just not sure how to go about doing that while simultaneously protecting them from further grazing.
3. Last but not least, how will our landlady react when I shoot one of the deer with a crossbow and string its carcass up in front of our house as a warning to the others?

Just kidding on that last one. (Maybe.) But no, really, any advice you have on the other two would be greatly appreciated. Here’s what I’m working with, if it helps (all pictured above except the strawberries):

• Strawberries and Columbine: all leaves and flowers gone. Only stalks remaining. (:-()
• Sedum and “Hen and Chicks”: severely nibbled on but still at least half there. The “Hen and Chicks” was actually uprooted out of its pot, but we put it back in. No idea how that will do.
• Hebe: A bit nibbled on but still mostly there. Maybe they don’t like it?
• Herbs and “Golden Baby Tears” groundcover: untouched. Who knew deer didn’t like cilantro?

That’s all. I’m really not sure there’s much that can be done. I will just have to chalk it up to experience, I guess, and join the ranks of gardeners who have been woefully plagued by pests.

Rest In Peace, baby plants. I hope those f***ing deer got stomachaches.

Here’s how it went down:

Erin: “Okay, let’s go cut your hair!”

Gil: “Yay!”

Elapsed time: 10 minutes

Gil: “Are you done yet?”

Erin: “Shh.”

Even. Must make it even.

Elapsed time: 20 minutes

Gil (with growing frustration): “Unngghh!”

Erin: “Hold still! I’m almost done!”

Even. EVEN. EVEN!!

Elapsed time: 40 minutes

Gil: *Weeps silently.*

Erin: *Keeps snip-snip-snipping. Her eye twitches. She is blind to everything except the giant, sneering, uneven haircut in front of her.*

_____

Furthermore, this neurosis has gone ahead and extended itself to everything I see today, as evidenced by the fact that I am sitting here on my parents’ front porch trying to write my thesis and all I can think about is how much I’d like to take some giant scissors to the uneven patches of grass on their lawn.

I’d snip those bits there… and those there…

And those ones over there…

Okay, here it is:

Obviously, I am joking. This picture cannot possibly be the best picture that I took at that wedding, because it is a picture of a slug. Granted, it might be a nice picture of a slug, but it is still a slug. If this was the best picture I took at a wedding, I would not let the bride and groom pay me. (Unless they really loved slugs or something.)

No, no, I have very many much more lovely pictures from Zeb and Sarah’s wedding—photos that they have not yet been able to see, even though I promised to deliver them last Monday.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Erin, isn’t that highly irresponsible and unprofessional of you to be late with a couple’s wedding photos?” And the answer is, “Yes, it is.”

However, this brings me to a fun little story called, “Backing up your data will make your bones stronger and your eyes more vibrant and your teeth whiter—also, it will save your life and prevent you from looking unprofessional in front of the entire world.”

Now, before anybody freaks out, I should mention the fact that I have fastidiously backed up the originals of every single wedding I have shot. Never, at any point in this story, were the originals from Zeb and Sarah’s wedding in danger. So that’s one teeny-weeny sigh of relief.

Unfortunately, there are other things you can lose in the event of a disaster, such as, oh… three+ days of work on processing photos. You see, Adobe Lightroom, as wonderful of a program as it is, has this little thing—it doesn’t like its catalog to be messed with. It is very particular about how it reads the data held in its catalog (meaning all the alterations I have made to any photos within Lightroom), and if it gets bumped into or jostled, well… it gets… moody.

And that is exactly what happened on Monday afternoon when my computer, just as I had finished my work in Lightroom and was moving into Photoshop, rebooted itself for no apparent reason. This is just the sort of jostling that makes Lightroom grumpy—so naturally, when my computer came back on it stomped off into a corner and refused to speak to its catalog anymore.

This is the point in the story at which I had to lie on my bed for half an hour with a hot pack on my forehead in order not to hyperventilate. But after I got done doing that, Dad and I poked around online to see if there was any way we could talk Lightroom back into showing me the edits I had made to my photos.

What we found was a savior—a man who works at Adobe and who had offered to take in people’s injured Lightroom catalogs and show them how to reconcile themselves with the program. By the end of the evening, he had emailed me back my catalog, right as rain. Unfortunately, though, I had lost the whole rest of my day to this adventure; and seeing as today and yesterday and the day before were all already filled with plans, this rebooting incident has set me back considerably on Zeb and Sarah’s photos.

So, kids, as you can probably already guess, the moral of the story is: BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK UP. I know you don’t want to; DO IT ANYWAY. And after you’ve finished backing up? BACK UP AGAIN. Because you never know when one of your programs is going to throw in the towel.

The end.

One more thing… here’s a little story that I hope will make you giggle as much as it made me:

I just recently ordered some test prints from this company, because I am planning on using them to fulfill print orders for my clients.

The UPS tracking information said that they were supposed to arrive yesterday afternoon. The UPS truck often does not reach our house until late, though, so I knew I probably had a wait ahead of me.

At one point in the afternoon, I wandered listlessly by my Dad’s doorway and, looking for all the world like I was horribly distraught, sighed, “Dad… I really wish my prints would come.”

…

Then, as I heard the words replayed in my head, I laughed and groaned, “Not like that!”

Dad just looked amused and said, “Someday, someday.”

(P.S. All kidding aside, the prints are awesome. I’m really excited to offer these to my clients.)

I should have known I was in trouble as soon as I left the house. I needed to be somewhere only twenty minutes away at 4:15, and I was leaving at 3:45—giving me a good ten minutes to spare. This never happens.

“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “I’m not sure if I like the idea of being early and just sitting around waiting. Maybe I should take a longer route there.” And I almost did, before reminding myself, “Hey, I’m never early to anything. Why not savor this moment. I’ll just make sure to drive exactly the speed limit the whole way there—that should use up a little more time.”

So I did. I got on the freeway and I concentrated on fastidiously following the speed limit; I made it a little game with myself. (I daresay cars around me did not appreciate this little game.)

Pretty soon I started thinking about where I was headed: to get a haircut. Now, getting my hair cut requires me to summon up a bit of courage; not only because it involves interaction with other human beings (and we know that doesn’t always go so well.), but because I have only been to a hairdresser one other time in my entire life. On top of that, this was going to be the first time I would have my hair cut by a guy. Would that be weird?

These are the kinds of thoughts that were going through my head, combined with my obsessive watch over the speedometer… as I drove past my exit.

At first, I refused to believe what had just happened. No, that wasn’t my exit… couldn’t have been… there’s no way that I just drove by it… Oh, bother, it was my exit. Well, I’ll just turn around and go back.

And this is where my important life lesson for today comes in: it turns out that there’s this funny thing about freeways… you can’t turn around on them.

As this fact began to sink in, I admit that I started becoming a tiny bit irrational. “What?? I can’t just… turn around? This is the 21st Century, people! We can speak to our toasters and tell them to do things for us! I should be able to TURN AROUND ON THE FREAKING FREEWAY!!!”

Then I saw a sign on which the first town listed was at least an hour away—and that’s when I almost burst into tears. Suddenly my “going to be a bit early for my haircut” had turned into “going to be horrifically late for my haircut.”

In actuality, the next exit off of the freeway was ‘only’ 10 miles from the exit I meant to get off at… which, when you count the time it took me to drive back after I had turned around, gave me plenty of time to consider the sheer stupidity of what I had done.

The blog-worthiness of the whole situation did not escape me, of course, even at the time—nor did the irony of the fact that the one time… the ONE TIME I was going to be EARLY for something… I ended up still being five minutes late.

The moral of the story is: Don’t try to be early to anything. You will just end up bungling it.

Right?

… to start designing my photography website is the night I have a 20Below column due.

… to redecorate my wall with pictures and paintings is the night before my synopses are due.

… to have lots of deep thoughts that must be written in my journal is the night before my Greek and Euclid finals.

But don’t imagine that I’ll do any of those things when I actually have time for them.

Heavens, no! That would be far too sensible.

I still remember the first time I drove some of my new classmates in my car at the beginning of orientation week. I was all flustered and worried about impressing them with my impeccable taste in music (silly me ), so I plugged my iPod into the tape deck and put it on shuffle. The first song that came on was a Beatles hit—great, everybody liked that. This was going well!

One of the back speakers suddenly stopped working—”Oh well,” I thought, and I turned the volume up to compensate. That, of course, is when the speaker suddenly came back on and blew out the ear drums of the poor impressionable freshmen sitting in the back seat of my car. Then one of the side speakers went out. Then both the side speaker and the back speaker came on and went off and came on and went off until we reached our destination, and until my car’s audio system had been firmly established as a running joke.

So much for impressing them.

Since then, I have observed a few things about the behavior of my car’s stereo:

1. The speakers come on and off when jarred by something like a bump in the road. Or, like the door opening or closing. Or like me breathing. You know, reasonable stuff like that.
2. There is a sweet little spot on the dashboard directly above the temperature control panel that seems particularly receptive to such jarring impacts. If, for example, my speakers were to stop working and I were to level a blow with my hand, or my water bottle, or a nearby book at that exact spot, my speakers might magically begin working again! (Not that I would know from experience.)

I actually only discovered “the sweet spot” in the last couple of days. But now that you have that picture in mind, let me describe what this afternoon’s drive home from my friend’s house was like.

“Can’t buy me loooooo…”

bump.

WHACK.

“…oooooove! Everybody tells me so…”

bump.

WHACK.

“… Can’t buy me looooove! No no no, Nooooo…”

bump.

WHACK.

“…ooooooooooo!”

This was, quite literally, happening multiple times every minute. And as I ‘bump-WHACK’ed my way home, my hand was growing tired and the song was growing less enjoyable and I was growing irritable. And it was right about then, when I had reached the “pretty darn fed up with my speakers” stage, that I stopped at a stoplight—and my speakers went out. Again. I wound up, ready to slug that dashboard for all it was worth, when I happened to glance over to the car next to me.

Now, the nicely-dressed man sitting in the sports car next to me was not actually looking at me when I looked at him, but I swear I saw him glance away right when I turned my head.

And suddenly I realized what it must have been like to be driving next to this car for several miles, and to notice this crazy redheaded female inside striking her dashboard with her fist—Repeatedly. Over and over. (And possibly swearing at it as well.) That is probably about the time that you would think to yourself, “They should not have given that women permission to operate a moving vehicle.”

That thought was enough to make me slink a bit lower in my seat with blushing cheeks and not “adjust” my stereo anymore on the rest of the way home.

But the point remains, whether I am embarrassed about it or not, I need a more long-term solution for my speakers.

I’m thinking about purchasing a mallet.

Dear “Lost,”

I want to like you, I really do. Your first season was so promising. Sure, it scared me senseless, but it was intriguing. Your second season, although not as tight, still (mostly) held my interest. But your third season… well, let’s just say my reaction to finding out that you are going on hiatus until February was, “Good! Now I don’t have to watch this stupid show every week.”

Do you want to know how bad it really is? Well, so help me, Lost, but I was not even sad when Mr. Eko died last week. Mr. Eko! And he was, like, my favorite character last year! Do you see how senseless this third season has made me? I just don’t care anymore.

I’m sorry. But I can only take so much beating up of main characters and mysterious “others” talk before I have to say, enough is enough! There have been so many times when it seemed that nobody—not even you!—could take yourself seriously anymore. When Locke entered his “smoke hut” contraption and started hallucinating about Boone my ’shark jumping‘ sense was tingling.

But I’m not saying goodbye for good… yet. Three months is a long time; by February I will probably be ready to give it another try.

But please, Lost, I am begging you: when you come back, leave your melodrama, your gratuitous sex and violence, and your gory operating scenes at the door. If you don’t… well, if you don’t, I might be saying “sianara” to your island and its messed-up little inhabitants for good.

And we don’t want that, do we? :-p

Sincerely,

Erin

Once there was a girl. She was going to be starting college soon, and she needed a laptop! So her parents decided, as a graduation/birthday present, to help her buy a Macbook Pro. She was such a lucky girl! So lucky, in fact, that her Macbook Pro arrived almost a week before she thought it would… on a hypothetical date that could have been September 7th, 2006.

And this girl immediately fell in love with her new Macbook Pro. She loved its camera and its clean lines and its lovely operating system. She lost no time in moving her files to this wondrous new machine and settling in to her new computing home. She spent the whole weekend geeking out on her new computer, loading songs onto her new iPod Nano and working on websites and getting things done and video chatting with Glynnis and realizing, “Why yes, Macs are the shiznit.”

But this poor, naive girl was much deceived. Her new Macbook Pro was not the happy, well-adjusted companion which she assumed it to be; no, it was very depressed. It knew that it was only a matter of time before it was Jobs’ed… any day now his Steveness would release some brand spanking new laptop that would permanently demote it on the Apple totem pole. No longer able to handle the stress of such a fragile existence, it committed suicide one grim Sunday evening, mere days after the girl in question welcomed it into her home.

Never did this girl suspect that her new friend would resort to such desperate measures; imagine her shock and dismay when its lovely, bright, colorful display suddenly went black! She tried everything: she hit control-command-power button, she reset the PRAM, she reset the Power Manager, she gave it mouth to mouth, she sacrificed chickens, she promised it her firstborn child, but the little Macbook Pro would not turn on.

So she went to bed that night disheartened and distressed, unwilling to believe that the plucky little machine had actually given up the ghost. When she awoke the next morning, she tried again to revive her friend. She whispered sweet words into its metallic ears; she assured it that she would love it just as much if Apple released a newer, faster Macbook Pro. It would always be the spiffiest Macbook Pro in her eyes. Crossing her fingers, she touched the power button once more… and, lo and behold, tones chimed and the hard disk spun and the screen lit up! It turned on!

After giving it a celebratory pat on the keyboard, the girl pranced off to eat some breakfast. But when she returned, she realized her mistake; without her there to offer encouragement, her Macbook Pro had once again tried to take its own life. And this time, no honeyed words could coax it back to this world.

She knew what she had to do now. So she carried her poor, stricken Macbook Pro down to the neighborhood Mac Store. And there she spoke to a young man who seemed confident in the ways of Apple computers, and who wasted no time in showing her how his expertise would solve this problem. So he tried to turn it on. And he tried again. And he tried all of the tricks that our girl had tried the night before (minus the firstborn child bit). And after trying all of his tricks he looked resignedly at the screen and uttered these words of immeasurable wisdom and value: “Wow, it really won’t turn on, will it?”

The girl resisted the urge to roll her eyes, instead filling out the necessary forms to check her little Macbook Pro into the Mac hospital. The young man assured her that their personal Tech Man would look at it as soon as he could—which, he said, was probably a week from when she dropped it off. She sighed and tried to act grateful and walked out of the store with a sadly empty baby-blue laptop sleeve hanging limply from her arm.

And now this lucky, college-bound girl has been without her Macbook Pro for as many days as she had it—so long, in fact, that she hardly remembers what it was like in the first place. But when she does remember it, she hopes and prays that it will receive the therapy necessary to bring it home safe and sound, and COMPLETELY UN-SUICIDAL.

The end.