And I've identified the source of The Mysterious Smell.

About a year ago, I got a call at work saying there'd been a flood in the building and that maintenance was going to be in our apartment checking it out.

When we got home that evening, we found the carpet stripped from the entryway and giant, industrial fans blowing into the kitchen.

We also found the trashcan sitting in the sink, full of water. (I almost gave myself a hernia getting it out of the sink and down to the dumpster.)

Apparently, maintenance came in, gouged out a hole in the wall under the kitchen sink (between our apartment and the next one) and presumably fixed whatever the issue was. A day or two later, they also replaced the entryway piece of carpet, which was all to the good. (They never did come back and fix the hole they gouged in the wall, though. I was going to call and bitch about that this week. Our new neighbors frequently cook fish.)

None of that is particularly relevant, except as backstory. I just made you read it because I'm mean.

However.

For the last month, we've been smelling this unidentifiable but unpleasant sort of musky/musty/decaying smell. While I don't clean house as conscientiously as I did ten years ago, we don't normally have a smell, especially in the kitchen. Baby dustbunnies is generally as bad as it gets.

So, today I was poking around , looking for the Source Of the Stink and I noticed that the piece of fibreboard under the kitchen sink is warped and apparently rotting. Probably because it got soaked in the Great Flood of '04 and didn't properly dry out or something.

So, to make a long story a little longer, I poked at it, and tried to pry it up, an easy task since it's warping out of the grooves designed to hold it. The second I lifted the front edge, I identified the source of the Enormous Pong as something disintegrating beneath the board. Whether it's garbage that washed down there During the Deluge or something else, I know not.

Thing is, what it needs is to be vacuumed out and then wiped clean, but we don't own any kind of dust-buster or even a canister vacuum cleaner. So my only option is to get down there with a whisk brush and wet cloths and do it by hand.

And I'm afraid to. Who knows what's actually down there, creating The Stench? It could be anything!

I do own rubber gloves, but I wouldn't want to get under there in anything less than full protective gear designed to prevent transmission of biological infestation.

So, I'm blogging about it to put off the moment when I'll have to just grit my teeth, get down there, and do it.

Just in case anyone thinks that it would be nice to be unemployed and laze around all day.

There are worse things than going to work.

There are smells.