I'll take an order of salmonella after 1 a.m., please!

When you smell something funny when you get off the elevator and the smell turns to a stench that greets you at your "luxury" apartment door like a loving significant other - it's not a good sign!

Here's the sad part: I could NOT find the stench and wondered where it could be coming from when I surveyed all 650 sq. ft. of my humble abode... but I naively attempted to remedy the odor by spraying some room deodorizer and went about my unwinding-from-many-hours-of-driving routine.

I went on a much needed vacation to Ohio. Ohio, I know, who knew... but the stories about that are for another time. I need to blog about salmonella after 1 a.m.

After the olfactory assault upon entering my miniscule (but swank) domicile, I decided to take a break from thinking by turning on the T.V. and getting a little opposable thumb exercise via channel surfing... but then I started to feel sick to my stomach and headachey... so I got up and got myself some extra-strength pain reliever. The bottle of said pain aid was in a cupboard above my dishwasher, which I thought was harboring the stinky/stench felon. Then I took a swig of water from a bottled water bottle I had bought a few days earlier... BUT the bottle of water stank (so I thought) so I dumped it out... and since I don't like to drink un-Brita-cized Chicago tap water I thought I would just grab a bottle of my favorite iced tea... so I did what any normal person would and I opened the door to the refrigerator: holder of many things thirst quenching and hunger reducing - NOT exactly the place you expect to be greeted by the warm, fetid air of four days worth of unplugged refrigerated food - which had morphed into the smell of a decaying corpse! And that was just the  refrigerator section...

Upon fearfully peeling the freezer door open, I was immediately accosted and MORE sickened from the kick in the gut/face/nostrils I received by the rude, overly boisterous, attention hungry smell of rotten chicken and fish, AKA: salmonella! I have never felt more nauseous from an odor, except once when changing a baby's diaper at too young an age with overly excitable gag-reflexes... I know what you're thinking, "why was the chicken and fish rotten if it was in the freezer??" Now, come on, would I leave you hanging like that? I might IF I thought it would teach you a lesson... I digress...

If you missed the sentence with the words, "UNPLUGGED REFRIGERATED FOOD," here it is again in all it's glory... that being retyped means if the refrigerator was unplugged, the freezer atop the refrigerator section was TOO! This is where I housed my organic boneless, skinless, chicken breast and fish from well-known organic and specialty food retailer. The frozen vegetables, breakfast food and frozen confections shared this cold abode with the salmonella drippers' also... EVERY THING WAS DEFROSTED, MELTED AND PACKAGING BLOATED  from sitting neglected by the circuit breaker that went on vacation shortly after I did. It was quite a sad crime scene.

So, at around 1:30 IN THE MORNING I was up to my yellow-latex-gloved-eaten-by-previous-cleaning- supplies elbows with paper towels and disinfecting wipes in hand to sop up all that was sacrificed to the electrical system's absence. I gagged. I winced. I did what I had to do: clean it up and throw it all away. Hundreds of dollars worth of food... it made me furious and sad at the same time!! Poor innocent food. Poor innocent budget of mine.

This all came to pass because I had lodged an order for repairs to an area of the plaster ceiling that was hanging down from water damage due to water leaking in the apartment above mine. This damage was found in the living room and bathroom. There were also some electrical problems with the light switches in the bathroom. SOOOOOO while they (the apartment maintenance people) were doing their job, they thoughtlessly forgot to complete the assignment. Whilst "fixing" the light switch in the bathroom they used the circuit breaker box and turned off most of the electricity to my apartment. I didn't discover this until an hour after I had returned to my little home... I found my alarm clock flashing how many hours it had been off, silently shrieking to me to reset it and give it a semblance of its former time kept routine. I did what it quietly requested... and I continued with my headache... and then I approached the kitchen and that's when the rest of this entry unfolded!!!

This morning upon sluggishly evacuating the premises of my ravaged by destructive smells of salmonella apartment I ran into one of the people who work in the leasing department. We are "friends." I told her of the events of my return to my apartment and the loss I have experienced and asked her what I should do and if I would be reimbursed for all my lost groceries and she offered her condolences, shrugged her shoulders and said, "Do you have renter's insurance? If not, a whole lotta nothing is probably going to happen in your favor."

Why thank you for those pleasantries. I look forward to more harrowing experiences in the windy city... the city of big shoulders that get shrugged at me frequently!