Mildew!

     The smell was sour, musty, vaguely familiar.  It made itself apparent late in the afternoon of the power outage.  That was day before yesterday when I was mid-shower.  Everything went pitchy black and very, very quiet – no electrical hummings or whirring fans in the background.  I think of it as the ‘sound of no electricity.’
     But, as I walked into our bedroom later that afternoon the ambient electrical noises were back.  The power was on, thank the heavens, and our library thermostat said that our emergency heat had us up to 59° already!  Life was looking up but, suddenly… smelling bad.
     Nyel and I sniffed our way through a cursory tour of bedroom, bathroom, and closet where the nasty odor seemed to linger.  Then we gave up and hurried back to the fireside.  It wasn’t until I awoke with one of those aha! moments in the middle of the night that I realized what it was.  Mildew!  Somewhere (and nearby!) there was mildew!  I was certain of it.  Nyel said, “Go back to sleep.  We’ll deal with it in the morning.”
     I found it, dark and nasty, lurking in the corner of our clothes closet, hidden behind Nyel’s shirts.  Black, creeping crud!  I’m not even a big fan of the exotic and edible mushrooms that many of my friends revel in every fall.  Fungus in all its forms seems alien and malicious to me.  And now it was on my walls!
     It was easy to understand what had happened.  Our closet – a small, one-butt walk-in –  is adjacent to our bathroom.  Two heat registers and the bathroom fan keep the humidity and temperature levels adequate to hold the mildew at bay (so to speak.)  When the power went out mid-steamy shower, the fungi people pounced.  Yuck!
     White vinegar and a little elbow grease solved the problem.  Everything feels, smells, is back to normal.  I think.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell in Oysterville!