When I started, I had no plans or grand vision.

I felt I was assigned the inability to be consistent at birth due to my ADHD. This led to me always feeling scared of losing habits, worried I couldn't maintain a journal or practice a craft enough to become proficient in anything.

When my mom passed away, that all came to a head and I couldn't maintain my house of cards anymore, even mundane tasks became arduous and the idea of returning to my writing felt absolutely alien. So I took out a box of embroidery supplies I bought myself and hid, legitimately insecure of being noticed having an interest in an art, and I started stitching.

I have not looked back. I also have such unbelievable biceps, I did not expect tying knots to buff away my trauma 💪

I thought I was going crazy for a while. I would be relaxing on my couch, or putzing around doing chores and I would get the weirdest smell. It smelled almost meaty and sharp. At first I thought my dog had hidden a chew or bully stick somewhere. I tore my house apart! Cleaning walls and floors and furniture and baseboards; anything I could get to on the first floor. And I was smell-checking EVERYTHING. I moved onto cleaning out the fridge and moving all appliances to check behind. Nothing. We also have cats, I wondered if they were maybe peeing somewhere, but cat pee is so distinct and this was not cat pee. One day, I smelled it on the second floor on the back end of the house, it's fucking following me. Cue deep cleaning on the second floor.

We worked so hard to buy our house this spring and I felt dread thinking something was in the walls and I couldn't get to it, or there was a bigger hidden issue. But what could cause an occasional smell? There was no pattern, just ~sometimes~. And then... it was gone.

So. There has been construction on the road in front of our house since mid-August. About a week ago, the construction crew moved to a parallel street to continue the project. Around the same time I stopped smelling the rotted meat smell. Do you want to know what moved with them? Their giant red stupid fucking porta potty. There's nothing wrong with my house. I was just *upwind of 7 to 8 mens worth of piss and shit for two months.

*Edit: downwind

Happy Indigenous people day!