Fumes and Empathy

My wife and I recently realized that it had been nearly 20 years since I helped her buy the house we ultimately ended up calling our home. 

This was followed with the realization that, while we have enjoyed updating and personalizing it through the years, the house had not been treated for termites in all the time we have lived there, so I called my go-to pest control operator Bob at O2 Termite who agreed it was probably a good idea to do some preventative maintenance, so we scheduled a fumigation. 

Since there is also a guest cottage, we scheduled the tenting over the Christmas holiday while our resident there would be away visiting family, and for good measure we decided as well to tent our treehouse and the decaying remains of the grand Silver Maple it is perched on, which has become a nesting habitat for wood destroying organisms of all types. 

To spare our Christmas tree from being fumigated in place we decided to postpone the fumigation by a week so we could celebrate the season without disruption, which turned the latter part of our holiday celebrations into a full cleansing event—but what better time do a full reset than on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day?

In keeping with this theme, we decided to err on the side of caution and instead of bagging our food, cupboards and refrigerator of all items that could be affected by the gas, along with our valuables, plants and perishables, putting some of our things into bins in the back yard while storing items that needed to be refrigerated at the office or with friends. 

The PG&E guy came and shut off the gas first thing that morning, and the fumigation guys who were scheduled within a 2-hour window showed up an hour late, which ended up being a bit of a relief as we crossed off the long lists of preparation items we had set up for the event. After opening up all the drawers and windows and handing the keys to the fumigators, we watched remotely as the tent started to take shape, using the security cameras we had set up to keep an eye on our home and its remaining belongings while everything remained under wraps.

For accommodations, we had decided to dust off our trusty vintage Airstream trailer which we hadn’t used since our great COVID trip of 2020 when we spent four months traversing the country. Mari managed to book us a site on short notice at New Brighton State Beach and as we dusted off the cobwebs, it became readily apparent we were a little out of practice at camping as we scrambled to replace batteries and get the trailer back up and running. 

After a string of long days getting everything packed, and a first night of camping without all systems fully operational, things are looking up for rest of our impromptu staycation. And I have a fresh level of empathy for the decades of clients who have lived through their own version of this experience.