An Uninvited Guest

It's been an eventful few days since my last update. In the course of that single weekend, I've had to evacuate my home, give away my kitties (temporarily, but my heart hurts just the same), and go back to living in a tiny room in my parents' house - only, instead of having the small space to myself, I have to share it with another full-grown human being (my husband, of course).

The reason? Mold. There is black mold growing in the basement bathroom, and our appointment to have it sampled and tested is not until Saturday. Since we have no way of knowing until then whether it is mold of the toxic variety, we are playing it safe, which means that my house will lie empty and cold for Christmas.

There are three things that upset me most about this situation. In no particular order, they are:

• Money. Mold remediation is not at all inexpensive.
• My cats. They are staying with a friend and I miss them terribly. A couple times I've mistaken the sound of the children in my mom's daycare downstairs to be the sound of Rocky chirping or meowing, before remembering that they aren't there. I've also got a rather immature fear that Rocky and Charlie are going to end up loving their caretakers more than they love me.
• My little passenger. I have no way of knowing how, if at all, the spores in my house could have affected her development. There just isn't any hard data out there on this sort of thing. I've found all sorts of terrifying anecdotes, but that's it.

The best I can hope for, as far as peace of mind goes, is that the mold is confirmed as something more harmless, rather than the nasty stuff. We'll see how it goes.