It's Going to Be a Long Day
Sometimes I feel like a canary. Desperately trying to sound the alarm that the house is on fire while everyone else calmly sips their tea. The truth actually lies somewhere in the middle. A lot of times I’m overreacting to a non problem, and occasionally other people are a bit slow to see a problem that is clear to me.
So on a recent Saturday when I was panicking that the house was about to blow up, Tom wasn’t sure how to react. I was smelling gas in the basement, and desperately trying to convince myself that something had just died down there instead. But I didn’t, I smelled gas.
I wasn’t completely panicking, by the way. I know that my nose smells things other people don’t. Which is frustrating for Tom, because he was mostly taking my word for it. I also know that I wasn’t smelling a lot of gas. I’ve been in situations where there was more gas - I know that you need more gas than what I was smelling to make an explosion. I was getting an odd whiff once in a while. Madding to track down, yet it was there.
I felt like there was a problem, I just couldn’t name it. Super helpful.
We bought multiple gas monitors, we cleaned (just in case), we checked our propane tanks behind our house, we did all the things. And nothing was pointing towards emergency. Everything seemed fine. But my anxiety was real, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Still, we did the normal things: we built towers with blocks, we fed the tiny humans, and when they went to bed, Tom went out for snacks.
The next day it was happening again. My senses were tingling. On the outside I was on my hands and knees, playing with my kids, but inside my heart was pounding and my senses were on overdrive. I was listening to the heat which was on, and felt like it had been on for a while. I was feeling the vents with my hands, and noticing the air wasn’t coming out as warm as I would have expected it to. And I was sticking my nose everywhere, smelling for bits of gas. I seriously thought I was going crazy. I’m pretty sure Tom thought I was going crazy.
I had Tom check our heater. It was functioning, all the lights were lit up where they were supposed to be, the filter had been changed, everything was good. He checked our tanks again, and told me they were at 80%. I turned on the stove, and it was working fine. Still, I was trying to convince him that the heat wasn’t working, and it was an emergency. I’ve lived through frozen pipe before. I know what can happen when you lose heat in the winter.
Still, it was 50 degrees outside, it was 70 degrees inside, logic said there was no emergency. I turned the heat off, I turned it back on. Cold air. I turned the stove on, it lit, I turned it off. Tom and I went back to the basement and checked the heater system again, and Tom looked up some companies that could come do some maintenance on it. I tried to convinced myself aloud that we would be fine. It’s warm out. Someone will come tomorrow to check things. Tom told me that we had hot water - we could leave it on, and the pipes wouldn’t freeze. If it gets too cold, we can turn the fireplace on. The fireplace is fine.
Is the fireplace fine?
Neither Tom or I had checked it that day. We both ran up the stairs towards the fireplace and saw the pilot light was out. Alarm bells were ringing in my head as Tom shut off the gas. I sent him back outside to check the tanks. The meter was at 80%. When was our last fill up? We don’t pay that close attention since we’re on auto fill. I remembered seeing a driver with a Santa’s hat on the last time I’d witnessed a fill up. Had it really been almost two months?
It had.
Tom called the propane company and asked them to come out and check our tanks. While he was on the phone, he realized that we had lost hot water. It was seeming more and more likely that we were out of propane. As annoying at that was, I was doing a happy dance. It was one of the BEST days to have an empty propane tank. It was a Sunday, we were all at home with nothing more pressing to be doing, and it was warm outside. And I wasn’t a crazy person!
I took E outside to celebrate. We carried moss around the yard and waited for the propane company to show up. When they did, they found two empty tanks, a broken meter, and a small leak. Tom and I were both exhausted and happy. We realized while it was maybe not the best case scenario, but it was a good one. We had discovered a problem, and fixed it. Yay homeownership!
I’m so tired.