When I was living in a tent this summer I often experienced something that might be described as perspiration on the floor (though I always called it condensation). I’d never imagined any such thing could happen in a wooden house, though, much less underneath a heavy futon mattress.

I thought we’d rented a far less eccentric house than our shack in Ridgecrest. (Where is Larry when we need him?) This house has wood floors, a level ceiling, mostly square corners, and generally looks like you’d expect a house to look. We moved in, had a leaky faucet fixed, and thought we were good to go.

This week we got our first bed. When we lifted our futon and featherbed off the floor, it was all moist and moldy underneath. Our landlord insists that there are no pipes under this floor. At first he suggested the water was coming from the ceiling. When we pushed for a better explanation, he suggested that it was ‘perspiration’. This is a new one on me! Google finds no instances of floorboard perspiration. Should we be conducting a scientific investigation of this phenomenon?

Our fridge also gave out this week. A repairman came, fixed it, then 7 hours later the lights dimmed, a grinding sound emanated from the bowels of the fridge, and everything began defrosting again. There’s also a leak that makes a pool on the floor when we run the washer. The guy who came to fix our stove when it shorted out called our house’s wiring ‘scary’. And I won’t speculate on the reason all the speakers in the house blurt out static now and then.

Maybe my cold, wet nights in the tent weren’t as bad as I sometimes made them out to be. I guess this must be what people who live indoors are used to. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, just like I did the tent!