paint fumes

Something I haven't mentioned in our last few conversations; They are painting our condo. "They" being painters, and not random people off the street.

The painters surprised me yesterday by painting the oil based primer onto the house. They've been prepping, slowly, to get my guard down, and then yesterday in a fit of random efficiency, they managed to perform a tactical strike with the primer.

The thing is, this primer is thinned with mineral spirits, and it stinks to cloud nine.

I spent last night trying home remedies found on the web for dissipating or absorbing paint fumes. We sealed rooms with tape and plastic and put out charcoal for today, but that didn't help for last night.

We found that chopping onions and putting them in a bowl of water helps. It makes a little dome of sweet air around the onion bowl, while the rest of the house remains noxious. The onions need "refreshing" every hour or two. The cat noticed the improvement right away and went and sat by the onions. However, this morning, the entire kitchen stank of onions, because I'd chopped up something like ten of them. Now, at work, some five hours later, I still stink strongly of onions, or at least, I think I do, because that's all I can smell.

So in this life I have found, you can have paint fumes, or you can have onion fumes.

It's all in what you want, isn't it? Makes me want to write a song:

You may look like Elvis, or like Brittany
You may live in a pineapple at the bottom of the sea
You may may have a million bucks, you may have none
You may be a little bitty baby that's just been born

But you’re gonna have to stink, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to stink like somethin.
Well, it may be paint fumes or it may be onions,
But you’re gonna have to stink like somethin.
apologies to Bob Dylan

Perhaps the paint fumes are getting to me...