We've Got Gas

Mr. Me and I have been enjoying a baby-free week due to daycare being closed and oh-so-generous grandparents taking the Little Man for the week. The Week! It's been glorious.

We went out on our first night to ourselves to dinner and a movie - predictable date, but such a treat these days. We got home at 11:00 and my plans included falling into bed literally the minute I got home. But. When we got upstairs for pajamas/bed, we noticed this horrible smell coming from the air conditioning vents. It smelled like farts. Like our house was farting out the vents. It had started to smell the night previous, but I wrote it down to the cat pooping in an inappropriate place that I would locate later. It had gotten stronger overnight, though, to almost uncomfortable levels. I thought to myself that I REALLY needed to make an effort to find that pile of poo, but first thing tomorrow because Dear God I'm exhausted.

Mr. Me, however, had more energy and went down to the basement in search of the source. He came bounding up the stairs "Honey, we have a gas leak. Let's call the fire department!"

Now, I know what gas smells like and this smelled like a whole different type of gas, but I also know that if I didn't put this gas-smell thing to bed he would be bugging me half the night and I would get no sleep. And calling the fire department? Pshaw. So I trekked down to the little room in the basement where the heater & hot water heater live and I smelled something too. It smelled odd, kind of like gas, but if it was gas it wasn't a lot.

Mr. Me took this as confirmation that the house was completely full of gas and started throwing open the windows of my nice, cool house to the muggy 95 degree night air. And he called my dad - our local handyman - who said that if we had a gas leak we needed to get out of the house and call someone.

"Honey, we need to get out of the house NOW and call 911". Apparently talking with my father had shot him right into "our house is going to blow up any second" orbit. Sigh. Our house is full of running electronics - if it had a blowing-up amount of gas in it, it would have blown up already. And, you'd be smelling natural gas throughout the whole house, which I wasn't necessarily convinced we had any gas even in the utility room. I tried arguing, but to no avail. I at least talked him into calling the gas company instead of 911, but he nagged me to hurry and leave the entire time I was going to the bathroom and changing fom my pajamas.

Sitting on the stairs in front of the house was not good enough for my protector, so I ended up sitting on the curb in the dead of a swamp-hot night with pebbles digging into my ass getting madder by the minute. All the while my worry-wart husband paced back and forth, back and forth across the drive, insisting that he's made the right decision.

Finally, FINALLY, the gas guy arrives. And informs us that we have sewer gas coming up through the drain in the basement. And that it can be fixed with a few gallons of bleach water.

This will provide me with YEARS of material for snark-laden commentary. YEARS, I tell you.