MamaVitt is Crazy!
Okay, so I promise I'm NOT crazy. But I also promise that the entire Brecksville Fire Department thinks that I am tonight....oh my, read on...
Today started off pretty well. I had some time to myself this morning while both of the big girls were out of the house and Bristol was sleeping, so I was able to begin moving around some boxes in our basement where I'm going to be starting an organizational overhaul in the coming weeks. I should've been folding laundry or packing up Christmas stuff that is still covering our dining room table, but you know how it is--I guess I was avoiding those tasks.
I picked up Sienna and we made our way through some errands. We grabbed lunch while we were out where she asked if she could color and watch Max & Ruby when we got home. No problem-o! Bristol laid down for her nap and Sienna started coloring and watching TV.
Sienna was due for a good nap so after her show was over I read her a story and she laid down. She asked me to lie with her for awhile and I ended up falling asleep for a short catnap myself. Once I awoke I snuck out of her room to finish folding the mountain of laundry that has collected since Christmas (oops).
I folded laundry for awhile and started boiling water for the pasta I'd planned for dinner. As I opened a box of pasta I noticed a funny smell. I dumped the pasta into the boiling water and tried smelling different spots around the stove, in the pasta box, etc. to see if I could figure out what it was. I couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from, but it definitely was a weird odor.
A few minutes later I went to change the laundry from the washer into the dryer. Again, I noticed the weird smell. I started smelling my own arms to see if it was the sweatshirt I was wearing--it wasn't.
I thought to myself that I'd just ask Jaden when she got home if she smelled anything funny and then go from there. I wasn't entirely confident that Jaden would smell anything because she doesn't remark about smells often (Sienna's the complete opposite--that kid smells things that even I can't smell!). But the moment Jaden walked through the door she asked what the bad smell was.
At that point I started to get nervous so I called Scott and told him to rush home. It was about time for him to leave work anyway, but I wanted him to know that I needed him to get home quickly and see what was going on. I opened up the doors on the main floor of our house and started to let it air out. Since the dryer had been running all afternoon I made sure that the lint trap outside wasn't blocked and thus causing a smell.
Once Scott got home everything was pretty well aired out so he didn't immediately smell anything suspicious. I told him to try going upstairs though since I hadn't opened any windows up there, and once he got to the top of the stair tower he smelled the funny scent. He opened the windows up there and then woke Bristol up for dinner.
We let things air out for awhile and then during dinner Scott closed everything back up. He started smelling the odor again so I mentioned calling the fire department. He turned down my idea and we both got on our cell phones to call our parents. As his dad ran through some possible causes with him, my mom told me I should call the fire department. Since that's what I wanted to do in the first place I told Scott I thought I should.
So a little over two hours after I first smelled the odor, two firemen arrived. Of course they couldn't have driven the little pick-up truck; they had to bring the big boy:
And of course they had to come on a day when 16 loads of folded laundry were in our family room, and our dining room looked like this:
AND...of course once they arrived, the smell had COMPLETELY DISSIPATED! It was so odd how it left just as quickly as it had come. At first I was suspicious that we were just getting used to the smell, but the two men confirmed that they smelled nothing. They walked around the entire house, asked us some questions about lights in our home and other electrical things, and then made sure we had working carbon monoxide detectors in the house. The whole time I felt like a fool because neither they, nor we could smell a thing at that point. And if I'd picked a day to give the fire department a grand tour of my house, it would NOT have been the day when it looked like this!!
I cannot even begin to imagine what the men thought (I mean come on people, it's January SEVENTEENTH and our dining room table looks like a Christmas clearance sale), not to mention what they went back and told the other firefighters on duty. I'm sure there were remarks about that crazy Mrs. Vitt who either needs a new sniffer or was desperate to have some strangers tour her disaster she calls a home (okay so maybe it wasn't a disaster, but it was definitely not clean and clutter-free!!).
And I can't imagine what the neighbors all thought seeing a huge fire truck in front of our house with no sign of a fire or other problem going on here. I'm sure Scott can hardly wait for the questions he'll get when he's out walking our dog tomorrow!
I'm still feeling unsettled about the whole smell and so forth. How did it come on so quickly and then go away just as fast?? And more importantly, what the heck was it? I would describe the smell as a burnt plastic type of odor, or something that just seemed toxic. Scott said it reminded him of the smell when something electrical shorts out, although we checked everything around the house electricity wise and all seemed totally normal. I swear MamaVitt isn't crazy, and I'd sure feel better if we figured out the cause of the mysterious smell here!!
Today started off pretty well. I had some time to myself this morning while both of the big girls were out of the house and Bristol was sleeping, so I was able to begin moving around some boxes in our basement where I'm going to be starting an organizational overhaul in the coming weeks. I should've been folding laundry or packing up Christmas stuff that is still covering our dining room table, but you know how it is--I guess I was avoiding those tasks.
I picked up Sienna and we made our way through some errands. We grabbed lunch while we were out where she asked if she could color and watch Max & Ruby when we got home. No problem-o! Bristol laid down for her nap and Sienna started coloring and watching TV.
Sienna was due for a good nap so after her show was over I read her a story and she laid down. She asked me to lie with her for awhile and I ended up falling asleep for a short catnap myself. Once I awoke I snuck out of her room to finish folding the mountain of laundry that has collected since Christmas (oops).
I folded laundry for awhile and started boiling water for the pasta I'd planned for dinner. As I opened a box of pasta I noticed a funny smell. I dumped the pasta into the boiling water and tried smelling different spots around the stove, in the pasta box, etc. to see if I could figure out what it was. I couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from, but it definitely was a weird odor.
A few minutes later I went to change the laundry from the washer into the dryer. Again, I noticed the weird smell. I started smelling my own arms to see if it was the sweatshirt I was wearing--it wasn't.
I thought to myself that I'd just ask Jaden when she got home if she smelled anything funny and then go from there. I wasn't entirely confident that Jaden would smell anything because she doesn't remark about smells often (Sienna's the complete opposite--that kid smells things that even I can't smell!). But the moment Jaden walked through the door she asked what the bad smell was.
At that point I started to get nervous so I called Scott and told him to rush home. It was about time for him to leave work anyway, but I wanted him to know that I needed him to get home quickly and see what was going on. I opened up the doors on the main floor of our house and started to let it air out. Since the dryer had been running all afternoon I made sure that the lint trap outside wasn't blocked and thus causing a smell.
Once Scott got home everything was pretty well aired out so he didn't immediately smell anything suspicious. I told him to try going upstairs though since I hadn't opened any windows up there, and once he got to the top of the stair tower he smelled the funny scent. He opened the windows up there and then woke Bristol up for dinner.
We let things air out for awhile and then during dinner Scott closed everything back up. He started smelling the odor again so I mentioned calling the fire department. He turned down my idea and we both got on our cell phones to call our parents. As his dad ran through some possible causes with him, my mom told me I should call the fire department. Since that's what I wanted to do in the first place I told Scott I thought I should.
So a little over two hours after I first smelled the odor, two firemen arrived. Of course they couldn't have driven the little pick-up truck; they had to bring the big boy:
And of course they had to come on a day when 16 loads of folded laundry were in our family room, and our dining room looked like this:
AND...of course once they arrived, the smell had COMPLETELY DISSIPATED! It was so odd how it left just as quickly as it had come. At first I was suspicious that we were just getting used to the smell, but the two men confirmed that they smelled nothing. They walked around the entire house, asked us some questions about lights in our home and other electrical things, and then made sure we had working carbon monoxide detectors in the house. The whole time I felt like a fool because neither they, nor we could smell a thing at that point. And if I'd picked a day to give the fire department a grand tour of my house, it would NOT have been the day when it looked like this!!
I cannot even begin to imagine what the men thought (I mean come on people, it's January SEVENTEENTH and our dining room table looks like a Christmas clearance sale), not to mention what they went back and told the other firefighters on duty. I'm sure there were remarks about that crazy Mrs. Vitt who either needs a new sniffer or was desperate to have some strangers tour her disaster she calls a home (okay so maybe it wasn't a disaster, but it was definitely not clean and clutter-free!!).
And I can't imagine what the neighbors all thought seeing a huge fire truck in front of our house with no sign of a fire or other problem going on here. I'm sure Scott can hardly wait for the questions he'll get when he's out walking our dog tomorrow!
I'm still feeling unsettled about the whole smell and so forth. How did it come on so quickly and then go away just as fast?? And more importantly, what the heck was it? I would describe the smell as a burnt plastic type of odor, or something that just seemed toxic. Scott said it reminded him of the smell when something electrical shorts out, although we checked everything around the house electricity wise and all seemed totally normal. I swear MamaVitt isn't crazy, and I'd sure feel better if we figured out the cause of the mysterious smell here!!
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