Inside MCS

Click on this picture...unless you're scared...I'm more afraid of new asphalt and heavy traffic.  This is the view out the front window of our current home.   We've been working at getting out of here about a year and a half now.   Safe housing is a major issue for canaries and attaining it almost always means better health, greater tolerance. 

For us it has meant a huge but welcome change. Super-downsizing,  building and preparing to move into a tiny house on wheels, especially while adapting our lives to living with MCS has been a lot of work.  Avoiding toxic chemicals and keeping them out of our living space is quite a challenge, and staying patient and positive for ourselves and each other, of daily importance.

 There's lots of foot traffic on our street, which gives the lively feel of community.  

But someone with MCS must see the dangers that lurk.  Our minds are trained to be observant this way, to live more healthfully; to survive.  

So we automatically see toxic invisible blends of perfume trails as people walk by, like floating lab experiments.

  

We realize each house has a dryer vent operated by a misinformed public who thinks you have to poison yourself with a mystery liquid or fibrous synthetic waxy "dryer sheets" to smell "mountain fresh" and be acceptable to the rest of society. 

Most have constant cozy fires inside and a dirty chimney chugging thick lingering smoke that creeps in the cracks of our old damp duplex.  

As the landlords slop through the mud, they laugh outside our windows that don't really close, about "grandfathered in" conditions, like drainage too close to the dwelling and old windows.  We struggle to keep this place liveable.  

Cars spew exhaust continuously and sit still in peak hours. 

Neighbors light barbecues and cigarettes out back.

Cars bearing yellow "magic trees" of vanilla-rama with the cellophane still half on (save some magic for later), idle, come, and go.  

Febreze, Glade and Scentsy are the new "clean".

Clothes attain high-heat infused "rainforest " fragrance and all the apartments smell like Safeway because no one washes the contaminants off of their their groceries.

 This is unthinkable for us now.   Some will never consider this in their lifetime.

All of our groceries are put into glass jars or aluminum foil.  The trip to the store is done weekly,  right when they open so the store had all night to air out and there are few others there to contend with.  I'm able to go myself this way, instead of sending DK, like I do for most things.   Exposures are no picnic for him either, and I get to keep a little independence with all my new limitations.  

Ludwig comes along and Henry stays home with DK. 

The store I frequent keeps produce and laundry/cleaning products  opposite sides of the store, a much appreciated move.  Laundry stuff is the worst, but some stores send fragrance to your system through their "ventilation" units, to intoxicate you.  They don't announce, "Attention shoppers, you will be stumbling around in a stupor, buying more, not noticing the scent because Americans are used to it",  they say it with hydrocarbons and fragrance chemicals whose untested ingredients are "trade secrets".

We use salt with boiling water, vinegar with baking soda, african black soap and our secret weapon: powdered milk (Thanks, Harry!) to remove scents that we pick up on our clothing or to take fragrance and chemical out of new clothes.  Otherwise soap nuts or black soap with a little Bob's aluminum free baking soda clean clothes just fine.

There are 2 women who seem to be the ones covering the cashiering when I go to grocery shop.  They both know me, ' the masked lady with MCS and her sidekick, the weinerdog' (who gets a walk by the Sound before he waits in the car while I shop).
The  cashiers both wear gloves to check my groceries, to guard from hand sanitizer and other personal products they may have used.  They have a kindness and understanding for my situation that I am grateful for.
Going into public with a mask requires courage.  I am stared and scoffed at.   I've been called a terrorist, a pirate, a bandit, an Arab (in a derogatory tone), Zoro, a cowboy, a robber, an anarchist,  'so ugly I have to cover my face', a hypochondriac, oh, and crazy.
People turn away, look away, and run away.  They almost never smile or say hi.  I'm not trying to whine, but it can be very dehumanizing.  It is a conscious, exhausting effort to try to rise above it.
Just yesterday, at our small neighborhood store, a very large man tried to intimidate me by staring me down and standing inches from my back as I waited in line with some ibuprofin, wearing a mask covering my nose and mouth and headscarf to cover my hair and neck.  I guess he thought I had a bomb strapped to me under my pink tie-dye tee-shirt and that I was taking him and all these convenient snacks down with me in my reign of terror.

I could smell his Brut deoderant. 

This little guy requires a lot of excersise.
This enormous graveyard is just a few houses away from our place.  It has been a sanctuary in the neighborhood,  for all 4 of us.   

Ludwig loves to look for elusive squirrels and other animals' poo (annoying.)    

Hank is more of a bird watcher and the cemetary sightings include pileated woodpeckers, flickers and hawks.

I always wear a mask when I go out, but sometimes, it hangs around my neck when we walk here and I can catch a breath of, well,  something like fresh air.

C