Sleeping in a basement

It turns out that I am REALLY not built for it…

It turns out that I am not built to sleep in a basement.

This morning I woke up with a scratchy throat and a stuffy nose. I thought, perhaps, the house’s cat, Morag, had peed somewhere in the room. Then I thought about how I have doors to the outside and the room is a bit musty. Mold?

I research symptoms of both, and I’ve decided with no further proof than my symptoms and a quick Google search that it’s mold.

I go about my morning, making my lemon water and taking my triphala. I run my stepmom’s human design chart, sitting on my bed in the basement, and continue to feel gross. Her chart makes sense to me even though I used a pendulum to get her birth time – just 45 minutes to an 1 hour and 12 minutes difference from what her siblings recollect.

Finally, I can’t take it anymore and I move to the second level of the townhouse we’re staying in.

Morag meows as I get to the landing, standing in front of the door to the back garden, begging to be let out. She’s kind of like a dog, albeit one that sits on the dining room table as we gather to talk or have tea. This morning I shoo her off of the table, snapping my fingers, and set myself up to read and write.

I start feeling better as I make oatmeal, cut up some of the most beautiful strawberries I’ve ever seen, and brew English breakfast tea.

My mind is still and a thought surfaces: I didn’t take a charcoal binder yesterday.

Context: My body has a lowered ability to process acetaminophen and alcohol, so I take this supplement before and after the single glass of wine or cocktail I permit myself each day while on this vacation with my family. I think back to the other three mornings I’ve woken up in the basement bedroom, and this is the first time I’ve felt unwell.

Mold it is.

I eat my breakfast and drink my tea at the dining room table. What I really want is to move to the plush couch in the sitting room on the third level, but my sister is asleep there. I’m craving elevation, to get a higher vantage point and to move as far away as I can from what I now perceive as my moldy bedroom.

This isn’t exactly a fair assessment. My room has a door that leads out to the front patio, which is below street level and covered with green…something. I want to call it moss, but that is most assuredly not what it is. I’m sure it’s lovely in the summertime, but its wreaking havoc on my body in this rainy spring weather.

I digress.

In my craving of elevation, I begin searching for the elevation of all of the towns I’ve lived in and in the places I love to visit. It doesn’t surprise me to learn that the town I live in now is hundreds of feet higher than the towns I grew up in and lived in during my twenties.

I really started to heal – physically, mentally, and emotionally – when I moved to this town. It surprises me even less to learn that the town we stay in with the mountain view and the vast of acres of woods is something like 500 feet higher than that.