Too many books & deadly black mold

So it's just after 11:30 pm now. I have the flu and feel only slightly better than dead at the moment - but I am awake.. and blogging. I just heard the most terrible sound from the living room and can only assume that our adorable and loving dog just coughed up a chunk of sheetrock on the carpet there. What exactly is it about sheetrock that looks so appetizing to our dog anyway?

There's sheetrock loose in the house again... Little bits of it lying around waiting to be consumed by interested dogs. It may be a little crazy to be up past 11:30 pm blogging instead of resting while I'm suffering from the flu and doomed to wake up at the crack of dawn with the toddler and infant no matter how late I get to bed.... But then.. what of Dave who is up at this very hour ripping out sheetrock with a utility knife and a rusty hammer?

We have finally made a connection between disturbing what I have come to lovingly call the 'mold nests' (i.e. those quiet corners where mold has been growing unchecked for the past 10 months) and our entire family contracting some vicious flu-like illness. The fact is when we leave it alone to grow in peace.. we all feel fine. Er.. as fine as we can.. So that would be fine, except for the exhaustion and looming mental health crisis. But as soon as we start moving it around and it's free to waft around the house a bit.. it doesn't take long for the fevers and coughs to come.

I think that's why Dave is back there with the utility knife and hammer at this hour: Might as well rip as much out as we can while we already feel terrible. Either that, or the Thera-Flu has made him loopy.

We have finally started cleaning out the completed neglected second story of the house. As you can see from the picture to the left -- the deadly black mold was living the life of riley up there for the past few months while we worried about the downstairs.

Ah - but no more! Slowly but surely we are destroying our house to our satisfaction.

It could be the Thera-Flu again, but Dave was even motivated to do something really extreme... He finally.. finally... after all this time... decided that he would need to part with his steel-toed work boots! The same boots that he walked through the nasty flood water in the day of the storm... The boots that were soaking wet with ... uh... unidentified bad stuff.. for days on end... Those boots. For some reason, it finally struck him that they could not possibly be a good thing to wear around every day.

Er.. but you can't throw anything out around here without dissecting it first...

I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am to see those things go.

Well.. The picture of the boot alone makes me really want to go take a shower... So I shall take my diseased and miserable self off to that end.

Time spent on Hurricane Katrina recovery so far: 6792 hours