New Year’s Day, 2014, bitter cold.
Eddie and I decide we are going to sand, stain and poly the wood frame around Eddie’s beautiful custom made countertops. This project is one of the many annoyingly small finishing touches we have for our kitchen. Now that Eddie was done selling his soul to a job, ‘He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’, for the month we decided no time like the present to get back into our money sucking home.
Due to the inclemently unkind conditions outside we had put our gas stove on downstairs to aid our fat, walrus of a furnace.
About two hours into sanding and staining Eddie disappears downstairs. I in the meantime insert headphones and attention deficit out sanding a nearby table. For some ungodly reason sanding the table gave me the shivers, in turn that lead to the headphones of music blasting in my ears, noted because suddenly I jump to a blaring broadcast:
* Danger, Danger Will Robinson, Danger, carbon monoxide detected, warning, danger, get out, leave your home, death *. (Shame on any one of you attempting to read this scattered reenactment and not knowing my Lost in Space reference. Shame on you.)
Of course, I panic, I rip my headphones out and rush downstairs only to greet myself to Eddie standing in the middle of the basement staring at the ceiling. Low and behold: false alarm. It was only my darling husband scaring the ever living shit out of me by testing the carbon monoxide detector. Eddie explained, in case I lost my sense of smell, that there was a gas aroma right where we were standing.
This would mark Eddie’s first Hillary moment of the New Year. You see, as I pointed out to him, carbon monoxide doesn’t smell.
Therefore that shouldn’t have been your first thought.
As we stand there contemplating why it smells like a gas station in our basement the smell continues to get worse so Eddie turns the gas fireplace off and opens a window to air out the cellar. We stand staring at the unit for a while, visibly nothing is the matter; maybe it’s our furnace. We ping pong the heat up and down. Nothing seems to be wrong with the furnace, let’s stare some more at the piece. Fuck it, much too cold out to keep this gadget off and the windows open. We turn it back on and go back to kitchen labors.
Less than an hour into continued staining a gas like odor travels up the stairs wretchedly bad enough to halt all headway. Eddie abruptly leaves the room to go investigate. I look at our dog; his stomach moved up and down, up and down, he didn’t seem alarmed. I assumed we were good.
Hillary Fun Fact. This is my new bargain, I decide at what degree my panic should be fixed at by the dog’s mannerisms. If he’s calm, cool and collective then I needn’t freak-out but if he is going balls deep crazy, which is much of the time since he takes after me; clearly I need to be alarmed.
Eddie’s gone a while so I venture below, not seeing him, but it’s cold…the windows are open again.
Eddie pops out of nowhere, not to be confused with one of Janet Jackson’s nipples, “Hillary, where is the manual to this thing?”
Good question, “I don’t know.” and immediately I go on the defensive to his accusatory tone, “How should I know where you put it?”
The conversation goes in this sort of way; just a lot more blaming, swearing, loud noises…:
E: I didn’t put it anywhere.
Me: Did you check your workshop?
E: Yes, but I didn’t touch it—
Me: The old pantry, you had appliance manuals up there.
(Eddie goes upstairs to check while I stand around with no apparent urgency to the current situation. You see now the stove was off and the smell was gone, really what was the rush?)
E: It’s not up here. Where the fuck did you put it?
Me: I didn’t put it anywhere.
E: This always happens, you touch everything then you forget. Either it’s lost, thrown out; why do you have to touch all my shit?
Me: Oh, god forbid I put things in the places in which they should go so I don’t dramatically trip over shit.
E: Well. It’s not helping now.
Me: Because I didn’t touch it.
Eddie continues to tear up the house, swearing at me under his breath like a wild monkey and sulks downstairs to do another go around.
I think hmm…let me go check a few spots. What will it hurt to prove him wrong?
Laugh out loud. I find it in my filing cabinet in a folder labeled ‘Manuals’.
I did touch it. Damn-it.
I go downstairs to gravely admit to my wrong but and at first glance I don’t see him. “Eddie…I did have it.”
From a far, dark corner of the basement, “I fucking knew it.”
I find Eddie on the ground, sitting Indian style, looking all crazy eyed, rocking back and forth.
In which later he claims to me he was in the only corner of the room he felt had air.
And I quote: “I had to find air I thought I was going to die from gas poisons. The smell was entering my brain, I was going crazy. I thought that was it.”
I, of course, find this even more epically hilarious considering… I, for once, was without panic, partly due to dog reading. And in part due to the fact if something bad were to happen to me today I surely don’t have to go back to work tomorrow.
Eddie’s Hillary Moment number two, onset of complete panic.
Reading the manual we do everything stated to us, clean the device, air out the room, look for a broken pilot, finger the device, touch ourselves, take a shit, make a sandwich and so on and so forth.
By this point we have spent three hours cleaning, rubbing, and sucking. We turn on the element we smell very little to nothing.
YAY! Pat on back, we are awesome, fist pump!
We head upstairs looking around feeling a little less than accomplished, we start the oven for dinner and finally Eddie continues staining. About a half hour later we smell, taste,…listen, oxygen is now replaced with gas at an alarmingly intrusive rate.
I may possibly say fuck the dog, his breathing patterns; I start wondering if we have a leak and voice my concerns to Eddie.
His face gets all contorted and the color slightly drains as he leaves the room to “go inspect”.
I stand pondering what the issue could be and wondering if there is a WebMd site for this type of shit and go to work through these thoughts with Eddie; only to discover him standing in the mud room with his head out the back door. I find out later this was to get air.
Again I quote: “Hillary I thought I was going to pass out and die. I needed air.”
Reminiscing abruptly ends on this:
Me: I thought you were checking outside for leakage. (This is a typical Hillary moment, you know since you can see gas about as much as you can smell carbon monoxide.)
E: No, I was freaking out.
Eddie’s Hillary moment number three. Complete, utter uncontrollable panic in which pupil believes their immediate and immanent death is upon them.
Now our anxieties have both elevated to defcon five. I am in forums reading how our house is going to explode and we need to get out immediately, take the soap! And Eddie is texting firefighter brother in laws while trying to get a hold of the emergency gas lines at no avail.
After about six hours in sheer panic Eddie and I find a piece of information on a website just as he gets a text about how using stains, oil based paints, etc. while having a gas appliance in use can create an alarmingly high aroma of gas making one believe there is a leak but the smell will fade as the items dry.
I feel we are in for a gassy 2014 folks...
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