Page 538 - Demo

Fools%u2019 Journey532walking around the drizzling damp woods, this time without an umbrella. As the installers%u2019 truck drove away, I spotted her walking back toward the house. After we thoroughly aired out the house again to get rid of the cologne, we assumed it would take several days of additional airing to deal with the odor from the new plastic cases of the indoor airconditioning units. However, we were very pleasantly surprised to find they were almost completely odor-free. The next day, we gave the company, and the installers, a great on-line review. While the intense fragrance had certainly been a problem for us, we knew it wouldn%u2019t be for most people, so we didn%u2019t mention it in our evaluation. After all, it wasn%u2019t the first time visitors had stunk up our house, and it wouldn%u2019t be the last. Through experience, we had known exactly what to do, and were able to air the place out quickly with both our whole-house ventilator and our four window fans. Which was precisely why we had those four portable fans. We generally opened all the windows and used two fans blowing fresh air in, with the other two blowing stinky air out to clear out the house most efficiently.%u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022We%u2019d lived with Lynn%u2019s chemical sensitivities for decades by now, so we knew just what to do in almost any situation. For us, coping with highly perfumed people inside our home, Lynn being chemically overwhelmed at the eye clinic, or my reading aloud, were everyday experiences we simply took in stride. After every shopping trip, we would come home and place our clothes in a hot dryer and run it until they were odor free. We also each took a shower to rid our skin and hair of any odors we%u2019d picked up at the store. If we bought something like a new toaster, we knew to run it repeatedly outdoors, again and again, until any smells from its new heating element had burned off. When Lynn bought an older ethnic doll, I%u2019d give it a sniff to determine if it had any perfume or mold odors. If it did, I placed a small portable electric heater on a metal patio bench and positioned the doll in front of it %u2014 sometimes all day, sometimes longer %u2014 to burn off the smells. If I noticed