I don't believe in luck or karma, but the last few weeks have made me consider the possibility. Is it that I screwed up someone else's life and just never noticed? (I don't know if this is technically how karma is supposed to work, anyway, but for the time being I'll just go with the pop culture variety) If you want the latest skinny on my root canal, you can read Marilyn's blog. This post is about something else gone wrong here.

Remember when I worried that there might be an odor in the apartment because of the flooding incident? Well, there was one - as soon as my sinuses cleared up enough that I could smell things, I was welcomed with the odor of mildew.

Then, just as I was getting absolutely sick of smelling mildew... You know how it is when you smell some awful odor so long that it gets up into your nose and you can't help but smell it everywhere you go? I had that going.

Anyway, just as I was really getting sick of smelling it, we got a new odor. Over the past three days, we started smelling something like rotting rodent carcass in the kitchen. We looked under the refrigerator, I looked through the unpacked boxes we have stacked next to the bookshelves - nothing. But every day it got worse.

Now it's positively overwhelming; Marilyn and I are currently sitting in the living room, not wanting to open the bathroom or bedroom doors or even move for fear that it will stir the air and make the stink waft over us anew. We picked up a lot of deodorants at Lowe's, every one of which promised, "This eliminates odors instead of just covering them up!" Now the apartment smells like dead rat stuffed with potpourri.

Our landlord, Mark, stepped in this afternoon and smelled it himself; he theorized that it's not a dead animal - he doesn't think it's possible for them to get into the walls - but rather that it's because of our upstairs neighbors. They have a dog, see, and so when the pipe burst on the third floor and the water leaked down through our wall and ceiling, it must have carried...well, dog things. Now, I'm no expert in such things, but based on my memories, rotting rodent corpse and dog crap do have a similar bouquet, so I'm not saying I doubt his opinion. Yet, if Mark's right, I can only guess from the stench that their floor must have been inches deep in dog crap.

Because it really, really stinks in here. And any minute now, the guy who lives on the floor above us will step out onto his balcony and begin smoking whatever the hell it is he smokes that utterly corrupts the air outside our screen door, as he does about three or four times a day.

And gas is too expensive to drive up to the mountains for the week until Mark flushes the wall out with cleaning solutions and deodorants, as he suggested he'd do. Marilyn needs to go to work, anyway.

Now, you might think that this would make the odor of our neighbors' apartment more bearable in comparison. It doesn't. What it means is that we experience a panoply of different yet equally awful stinks from the moment we enter the complex to the moment we sit down on the couch. But where else are we going to go?

Oh, and the air conditioner needs to be replaced. Again.

This kind of sums up how we're both feeling right now. Stuck. Even though we don't want to stay here, we can't afford to go anywhere else. Marilyn can't make the kind of money she's making now outside of L.A. She'd still like to take some classes in the near future (and I'd like her to), so it would be advantageous for us to be near UCLA, but my crushing student loan debts and my persistent unemployment make that a difficult prospect at the moment. I'm fresh out of ideas.