* * *
Hee! This is SO something that would happen to me. I can totally see the Bean clinging frantically to the top of the Jeep while I cluelessly drive around.
* * *
The weather has turned a bit cold lately (if, in fact, you can consider the mid-50s cold…), which was a nasty shock after the lovely, warm days of last week. Mid-afternoon yesterday I decided to go sit in the living room and watch Tuesday’s
Ellen. I flipped the switch that turns the fire on and stepped away to pet the Bean. I sat down on the couch and pulled a blanket over me and started watching TV, when I realized that the fire had gone out. I went over and looked at the fireplace and saw that the pilot light wasn’t on. I flipped the switch down and back up a couple of times, to no avail. I shrugged and finally flipped the switch down and went back to the couch.
Which is when the paranoid worrywart in the back of my mind went to work.
What if the pilot light blew out and gas is pumping into the room? I feel kind of foggy-headed. What if the spud gets home and finds me slumped over, dead, and she just thinks I’m sleeping and she sits down to do her homework, and then the gas gets HER too, and the kitties as well, and then Fred gets home to find his family (and kitties!) laying around dead? I’m sure he would be very very sad… Wouldn’t he?
So I got up and sniffed around the fireplace, thinking
but gas is odorless, isn’t it? But then how come I can always smell it when it’s first turned on? Is this making any sense? Am I about to collapse in a heap on the floor and die? I wonder if the whole journal community would take down their sites for the day in mourning. (Ha!) They’d probably just think Fred was Kaycee Nicole-ing on their asses.
It actually occurred to me to try to LIGHT THE CANDLE SITTING ATOP THE MANTLE, my reasoning being that if I clicked the lighter and wasn’t engulfed in a ball of flames I could pretty much be assured that gas wasn’t filling the room. I didn’t light the candle, though – give me SOME credit – and Fred just so happened to call while I was worrying about it, and talked me through turning the gas off.
He also mentioned that he thought they’d come around recently to turn the gas off, which they (unbeknownst to me) do every year once the weather starts to warm up. Bastards.
And so I live another day.
* * *
Speaking of gas and explosions – no, I’m not about to tell a fart story – I just remembered the time when Debbie and I lived together in Lisbon Falls (about 10 years ago, I think it was). My father bought a new gas grill and handed his old one down to us. It worked, but to get it going, you had to open the gas, let it run for a minute, and then reach underneath the grill with a lighter or match to start the flame, then you could use the knobs to control how high the flame was.
If that’s not a recipe for disaster, I don’t know what is.
So one evening Debbie and I were going to grill hamburgers for dinner, and Liz was coming over to eat with us, or she was hanging out with us, or whatever – the point is, she was there. I went out back to start the grill and Debbie was inside making the hamburger patties. I turned the gas on and, talking to Liz, bent down and leaned underneath with a lit match.
There was this loud
WHOOMP! sound, and I felt a brief flash of heat. My head buzzing, I stood up and turned around to look at Liz, who was staring at me, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. It appears that a fireball had quickly engulfed my head and then disappeared.
My bangs were not only singed, but melted together, my eyebrows were partially burned off, and the hair on my right (but not left) arm was burned off. No burned skin, amazingly, and the clothes I was wearing were unscathed. I’d say I was pretty damn lucky, considering.
As you can imagine, I refused to ever step foot near that damn grill again.
* * *
I was awakened at 1:30 this morning by the Bean – or at least I assumed it was the Bean – chasing a toy around under the sweater-drying-rack/ cat hammock, which resides under the table on the wall opposite my bed. The rack/ hammock kept hitting the wall, and I finally yelled “Knock it off, jackass!”, and the noise magically stopped. I realized I had to pee, so I got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. The hammock/ rack was pulled out from under the table, and I pushed it back against the wall with my foot so that Fred wouldn’t trip over it on his way through the room to get ready to work out.
Back in bed, I was almost asleep again when the noise of the hammock/ rack hitting the wall started again.
“I said KNOCK IT OFF, JACKASS!” I bellowed, and the noise stopped long enough for me to get back to sleep.
This morning, what does Fred tell me? That Spot (we assume it was Spot – the Bean doesn’t usually go outside at night, Spanky’s too much of a wimp and Miz Poo can’t move fast enough) apparently brought a bird inside, did some serious damage to it right outside my bedroom door (there were thousands of feathers spread all over hell and creation), and it ended up… guess where? That’s right, under the hammock/ rack. The poor thing was probably fighting for it’s life while I was yelling “Knock it OFF!”, and stumbling across the room to pee, and I had no clue.
It’s definitely Spring – the daffodils have bloomed, the stanky Bradford Pear trees have stopped stankin’, and we’ve had our first dead bird in the house.
The funny thing is that we always assumed it was Fancypants who was bringing the birds into the house. Maybe it was Spot all along…
* * *
The Bean’s Fangs o’ Doom.
The Bean stops to groom Spot (and Spot lets him!).
The Bean can touch his nose with his tongue. And he does it often…
The Bean is off in search of greener pastures.
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Ditto on the cat on the roof. Poor kitty.
Robyn, I have a couple of burning questions about your Dyson vacuum cleaner. I’ve had a bagless vacuum in the past and just hated emptying it. The dust and crap would fly when I’d empty it. My questions (1) how is the vacuum to empty and (2) how often do you have to empty (every time or just when it gets full)?
Thanks.
Val – it’s extremely easy to empty – the canister is removable, so you detach it from the vacuum, hold it over the trashcan, and press a lever. When you press the lever, the bottom of the canister comes open, and you just shake the stuff out the bottom, and when you’re done you close the bottom. It’s pretty mess-free. I imagine you could wait ’til it’s full to empty it, but I empty it every time, because I like to see all the stuff come out. 🙂
Dyson, dyson, dyson. Give me a break you bragging bitches! Some of us are poor and stuck with Eureka’s.
I just wanted to tell you that my gas firelogs are lit and I’m feeling toasty warm right now. Ha!
Robyn, I was at work reading your entry about the fireball engulfing your head and started laughing so hard tears were streaming down my face. My boss thought I was crying!! I love the way you tell stories. I’m so glad you weren’t burned – I’d never touch one of those things again either!
Hee,When the day comes that I lay dying,I hope no one shouts,”KNOCK IT OFF JACKASS!”
Great stories today girl!
That fireball story was freaky! Natural gas seriously creeps me out. It does have an odor though; it’s naturally odorless but the gas company adds in the odor. You can get a really nasty scratch-and-sniff from your gas company if you ask them. I think it’s carbon monoxide that’s odorless?
Robyn, Spot looks as though he’s pissed at himself for letting the Bean groom him. Hee. Thanks for sharing your cats with us!
Do you need a place to buy in the Keys?
I would say get them off the net or home because Key West is a long drive from Miami which will have the cheap stores. I live in West Palm and can tell you the Saw Grass Mills Mall in Sunrise is the best place for shopping.
Yonks ago I delivered newspapers and on the weekends I had to leave the house way before dawn and barely awake. My cat Ginger typically would greet me whenever I pulled into the driveway by jumping up on the van and meowing at me thru the windshield so I wasn’t expecting, nor did I notice, she jumped up before I pulled out one morning. She had hopped up on top and with the dew being so heavy, she didn’t have a chance. I backed out and drove down a couple driveways when I suddenly heard this skittering sound heading towards the back of the van and when I applied the brakes, the skittering headed towards the front and I watched Ginger catapult past me, fruitlessly try to dig her claws into the hood, and disappear from sight. I couldn’t believe my eyes. lol She was just fine but just imagine if I had been driving faster than 5 mph.
Also, I grew up with an older gas oven that we had to use a match to light the pilot and every so often the flame would stick up out of the hole. This meant all you could do was turn off the gas, close the oven door and open it up for an enevitable BANG! This freaked my sister out more than it did me and I took a perverse pleasure in warning her it was gonna happen again and watch her run screaming out of the house, down the steps and down the street. hehehe
” Liz, who was staring at me, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open.”
I wheezed! You made me WHEEZE!
Re: MOTW
lick lick lick lick lick the expression never changes lick lick lick lick
Hey! On your cast link it says I live in Washington. I’ve been in MD for damn near a year! Keep up! And DC doesn’t count as Washington!
I put HTML code in my last note and it skimmed off…something about being an obnoxious older brother…
Tracy – on my bio page, it probably still says I’m 33. I never remember to change any of that stuff, dontchaknow! 🙂
Robyn, I had the same thing happen to me with a gas grill. I was at a party (and a little uh..under the influence) and I had really long hair at the time. After it happened, I went into the bathroom and wet my hair and huge clumps started falling out- it was awful.