My House Stinks...

Happy Monday. ugh.

I really do despise Mondays, nothing good can ever come from a Monday.

We had a nice and mellow weekend with our friend Angelo. He is visiting from Denver and is staying with us until tomorrow. We had a nice Easter dinner at Gaby's house where we ate mussels, roast chicken, artichokes, shrimp, and delicious mac-n-cheese! It was a nice evening and a nice break from our stinky home.

Our home smells absolutely awful. I returned on Thursday and realized that the house smelled awful. I asked Mando what happened since he had been home all week and because he didn't seem phased by the smell. He told me he smelled something too but could't figure out what it was. He thought it might be a pan in the sink, but I washed the pan and noticed the smell was still there. I cleaned the drain in the kitchen, just in case it was in there, but nope. No matter where I cleaned the, the smell was still there. For a second, I thought it could possibly be a dead person, so I went up to my neighbors door and sniffed underneath their door, and then again to the neighbors door below us and sniffed their door. All I could smell upstairs was dirt, and downstairs it smelled like delicious curry.

As we were walking out of the home, we noticed that the smell was only in one corner of the house. But there was nothing that could possibly cause that oder in that part of the house without us seeing it. We left and when we came back a few hours later, the smell was worse!

I started sniffing all over the house, picked up rugs, pots, speakers... but to no avail. I finally decided to smell the brick wall in our living room and I noticed the smell was stronger at the wall. I was so embarassed because Angelo was going to be arriving any second, and I didn't want him to be grossed out by this smell. As I was about to give up, I noticed a small hole, high up in the wall. I reached over and sniffed it, and GUAC!!! The most disgusting smell in the world! I knew immediately what it was. It was a DEAD animal! Yup, I know that smell from growing up in Parral, on my grandmothers farm.

I realized that we probably had a dead rat or mouse behind the wall and it was decomposing right then and there! It was already late, so we placed our ionizing air cleaner by the smell and hoped for the best in the morning.

By morning, the smell was stronger! I didn't know how our friend was able to sleep through with that awful stench. I started gagging and called the building manager to please come up and take a look. He arrived in a flash, mostly because I think he thought it was a gas leak, but he immediately realized that was not the case. I told him what happened and he thought the same thing. He said, "Yup, you have a dead mouse somewhere!" He looked behind our stove and found nothing, the bathroom... nothing. Finally I told him (again) where the smell was coming from. Once he sniffed the hole in the wall, he made the same contorted face I made when I smelled it and stepped back. Then he informed us that there was nothing he could do, we'd have to just wait it out. He said the exterminators had been in on Thursday spraying the apartment below us. The mouse must have eaten some poison, then took off upstairs where it found its gloomy death behind our walls. Disgusting.

I was mad that there was nothing they could do about it, but Gaby said it happens all the time. Either way, I left our management company a voicemail today asking them to discount our rent for this next month because of the energy being used by the air purifier to clean out the smell. I am going to fight for a discount because it stinks horribly and no one should have to put up with that in their homes.

Yuck.