Why we Won't be in Dayton for Halloween: In which I curse... and get naked with a bunch of strangers
So last week we were completely without gas.
Good for you! you might think, Finally getting your diet sorted out! But you'd be wrong. No I mean the kind of gas that's piped into your home and burned in (for instance) your water heater, stove/oven, and furnace.
Why?! you might ask, and then shake your finger and tsk at me. Didn't pay your bill? No, that's not it. Did you have a leak! Good heavens! Well, we'll get to that in a minute. No - they shut off the gas because they couldn't read the meter.
Yes, you read that right. They shut off the gas because they couldn't read the meter. See, our gas meter is (edit: was) inside the house. They called to tell us they needed to get in. Gail told them 'I'll be home every morning until 10AM.' They said 'Oh that'll be fine! We'll have someone out one morning this week.' Monday goes by. Tuesday goes by. Wednesday and Thursday comes and they call at 3:15 to say someone would be out in 15 minutes. Of course, they didn't REACH ANYONE because we HAVE JOBS so we can (oh, I don't know) PAY THE FUCKING GAS COMPANY. So the guy shows up. Unsurprisingly CAN'T get IN our EMPTY HOUSE. And turns off the gas.
Motherfuckers.
We found out the next morning when the stove wouldn't light. Gail calls and finds out what happened and arranges (with no small degree of exasperation) to have the service turned back ON - but THEY can't come until Saturday. AND, the EMINENTLY HELPFUL woman on the other end of the line tells her, they'll kindly charge us a 50 dollar turn-on fee.
FUCK!
Okay. This is fucked up, but we need to have the gas turned on, my sister is coming to visit for the weekend. We call her and tell her we won't have hot water until they turn the gas back on sometime Saturday. She's fine with that and drives out anyway.
Saturday.
Of COURSE these fuckers can't be bothered to tell us WHEN they'll be coming out. No, no. We just have to sit around and wait for them to find a convenient time to stop by. They do so somewhere around 4PM. I'm at a birthday party with Marenna (Toy Lending Library of Pittsburgh == AWESOME venue for 4-yr-old birthday parties). The guy walks in and tells Gail 'You know, if there's a leak I won't be able to turn it back on...'
You'd think the man was psychic. Or the Devil.
So I get home and find NO ONE THERE. I'm a little crazed by this, especially when I get there and find no gas coming out of the stove when I try and turn it on. Has my wife gone NUTS? Did she leave before the gas guy got here? WHAT the FUCK?
She, Ricky and my sister arrive home. Bad news. Joe ESP found a leak. 'What does that mean?' I ask. '$700-$1100 to get a plumber to dig it up and fix it.'
Cue the drawer-shitting.
Once I regained control of my bowels and the power of speech I had her repeat that. I managed to hold my biscuits the second time around.
So yeah - no gas for a fucking week. Lucky for us, it was fairly warm.
I took ONE shrivel-your-balls-up-like-raisins-in-the-sun-COLD-as-HELL shower, then satisfied myself with washing my hair in the frigid flow from the tap and sponging off the rest. I tried it a second time, but I have this thing about keeping my heart beating... Then, Monday night, it occurred to me that, as a University Employee, I have access to the campus rec center. Tuesday I get up early, leave late, and drop the kids at school and hustle my ass over to the gym like a junkie crossing the street to meet his dealer.
This is the naked bit.
I just thought you'd like to know.
I note now that I was never much of an athlete in high school. Or anywhere else, to be perfectly honest. I mention this because I am, as a result, unaccustomed to naked men. Before last week, the number of times I'd been naked in front of anyone who was not a: a parent (of mine, sicko), b: a doctor, or c: a woman who wanted my bits in hers was no more than 3. I find it... disconcerting. You can imagine (you can, but I'd rather you didn't - but if you do, make sure you know EXACTLY how long 12 inches really is - I'm just sayin') how like unto Jerry Lewis I must've seemed as I walked back and forth between the shower room looking (at first) for where I could hang my towel (of course I'd removed my glasses to shower - and without my glasses I see about as well as your average mole-rat), naked, being observed by a bunch of naked, hairy (imagine how hairy you've got to be for me, in my mole-rat nearsightedness, to SEE) veterans of the communal shower. After a handful of abortive attempts I found the towel hooks (insidiously small and concealed by towels cunningly designed to be almost the EXACT SHADE of institutional off-white as the tile lining the ENTIRE SHOWER) and took my place in the ranks of the un-, mid-, and freshly-washed.
Did I mention the whole 'Junky on his way to get a fix' thing? Because I LOVE HOT WATER!! And I loved it then, too. I don't want to alarm anyone, but me and my new friends (FRIENDS!! Do you love the water and the hot too?!) almost got a whole lot closer than anyone ever intended. Except maybe the Village People. Anyways - SHOWER! Good god - SHOWER SHOWER SHOWER! I had been given a reprieve from my sojourn in hell. But only a short one. In time, I and my beloved hot water parted ways. It was a tearful parting even though we both knew I would be back again in just 24 short hours. I had work to do.
A brief note to my fellow locker-room inhabitants - there need to be some GOD DAMN RULES about the stink in that place. Jesus HOLY Christ. No - it wasn't ass. And no - it wasn't smelly-pit stank. It was someone's vile, reek-infested SHOES. And it FILLED THE ROOM! My GOD. They sell sprays and cushioned charcoal inserts and NEW SHOES for that kind of thing. You! You with the Killer Keds. You MUST KNOW how badly they stink. GET THAT SHIT OUT OF HERE!
Thursday a plumber came to the house. I stayed home with the kids to meet him. He brought three guys and a pneumatic mole. I'm not kidding. Pneumatic mole. Go look it up. In under five hours they'd dug two holes in the yard - one by the street where the supply line splits off the main and another up by the house where it was due to go through the foundation - and run the pneumatic mole up forty feet or so through the hill between the two, dragging the new gas line behind it. They put the mole in the bottom hole and turned it on around 9. By noon it had emerged smack-dab in the top hole. In 16 years, the guy said, he'd never once made a mole shot that good. Yep - mole shot. Plumbers fucking rock. They left at 1.
Of course, that's not the end of it, because the plumbers can't actually turn the gas ON. The gas company has to do that and we have the WORLD's WORST EXAMPLE of FUCK-UPS running a gas company. The owner of the plumbing company (guy named Tom - if you need gas work done I'll be happy to recommend him) called me to say he was faxing the paperwork to the gas company right then and that they should be out within 24 hours to hook up the meter and turn the service back on. Clearly he did not reckon on the limitless amount of SUCK Dominion-People's Gas brings to bear on the situation. Nor did I, honestly. Friday morning Gail calls to make sure we're on the schedule for a turn-on. The OTHER exTREMELY HELPFUL WOMAN at Dominion People's tells her 'Oh, it usually takes two or three DAYS for us to find those faxes...'
Cue more shitting of drawers - this time with rage.
Okay, I don't really know that. But I like to be dramatic. They were Gail's drawers anyways.
There's some back and forth between the GAS WOMAN and my wife, but we get on the schedule. By the time I get home, we've got heat and hot water again. HALLELUJAH!
So that's why we're not going to the Halloween Party of Doom. Well, part of it. Sorta. We had to borrow the money to fix the gas line from a VERY generous friend - to whom we are enormously grateful. But that might shed some light on the fact that our fiscal situation isn't as fluid as we'd like. So we're staying home. We're sad to miss an ALWAYS fabulous party, but there's always next year.
CODA: I don't remember when, exactly, I called, but I called the gas company and reamed YET ANOTHER miraculously unhelpful woman over this entire matter. She waived the $50 turn-on fee. Mostly just to get me off the phone, I'm fairly certain, but I don't care WHY she did. Just that she did. So there.
Now I'm going to go home and steam the flesh off of my bones. Alone. With nothing but my own delicious man-musk to stink of the air. Ahhhh - the wonders of modern living.
Good for you! you might think, Finally getting your diet sorted out! But you'd be wrong. No I mean the kind of gas that's piped into your home and burned in (for instance) your water heater, stove/oven, and furnace.
Why?! you might ask, and then shake your finger and tsk at me. Didn't pay your bill? No, that's not it. Did you have a leak! Good heavens! Well, we'll get to that in a minute. No - they shut off the gas because they couldn't read the meter.
Yes, you read that right. They shut off the gas because they couldn't read the meter. See, our gas meter is (edit: was) inside the house. They called to tell us they needed to get in. Gail told them 'I'll be home every morning until 10AM.' They said 'Oh that'll be fine! We'll have someone out one morning this week.' Monday goes by. Tuesday goes by. Wednesday and Thursday comes and they call at 3:15 to say someone would be out in 15 minutes. Of course, they didn't REACH ANYONE because we HAVE JOBS so we can (oh, I don't know) PAY THE FUCKING GAS COMPANY. So the guy shows up. Unsurprisingly CAN'T get IN our EMPTY HOUSE. And turns off the gas.
Motherfuckers.
We found out the next morning when the stove wouldn't light. Gail calls and finds out what happened and arranges (with no small degree of exasperation) to have the service turned back ON - but THEY can't come until Saturday. AND, the EMINENTLY HELPFUL woman on the other end of the line tells her, they'll kindly charge us a 50 dollar turn-on fee.
FUCK!
Okay. This is fucked up, but we need to have the gas turned on, my sister is coming to visit for the weekend. We call her and tell her we won't have hot water until they turn the gas back on sometime Saturday. She's fine with that and drives out anyway.
Saturday.
Of COURSE these fuckers can't be bothered to tell us WHEN they'll be coming out. No, no. We just have to sit around and wait for them to find a convenient time to stop by. They do so somewhere around 4PM. I'm at a birthday party with Marenna (Toy Lending Library of Pittsburgh == AWESOME venue for 4-yr-old birthday parties). The guy walks in and tells Gail 'You know, if there's a leak I won't be able to turn it back on...'
You'd think the man was psychic. Or the Devil.
So I get home and find NO ONE THERE. I'm a little crazed by this, especially when I get there and find no gas coming out of the stove when I try and turn it on. Has my wife gone NUTS? Did she leave before the gas guy got here? WHAT the FUCK?
She, Ricky and my sister arrive home. Bad news. Joe ESP found a leak. 'What does that mean?' I ask. '$700-$1100 to get a plumber to dig it up and fix it.'
Cue the drawer-shitting.
Once I regained control of my bowels and the power of speech I had her repeat that. I managed to hold my biscuits the second time around.
So yeah - no gas for a fucking week. Lucky for us, it was fairly warm.
I took ONE shrivel-your-balls-up-like-raisins-in-the-sun-COLD-as-HELL shower, then satisfied myself with washing my hair in the frigid flow from the tap and sponging off the rest. I tried it a second time, but I have this thing about keeping my heart beating... Then, Monday night, it occurred to me that, as a University Employee, I have access to the campus rec center. Tuesday I get up early, leave late, and drop the kids at school and hustle my ass over to the gym like a junkie crossing the street to meet his dealer.
This is the naked bit.
I just thought you'd like to know.
I note now that I was never much of an athlete in high school. Or anywhere else, to be perfectly honest. I mention this because I am, as a result, unaccustomed to naked men. Before last week, the number of times I'd been naked in front of anyone who was not a: a parent (of mine, sicko), b: a doctor, or c: a woman who wanted my bits in hers was no more than 3. I find it... disconcerting. You can imagine (you can, but I'd rather you didn't - but if you do, make sure you know EXACTLY how long 12 inches really is - I'm just sayin') how like unto Jerry Lewis I must've seemed as I walked back and forth between the shower room looking (at first) for where I could hang my towel (of course I'd removed my glasses to shower - and without my glasses I see about as well as your average mole-rat), naked, being observed by a bunch of naked, hairy (imagine how hairy you've got to be for me, in my mole-rat nearsightedness, to SEE) veterans of the communal shower. After a handful of abortive attempts I found the towel hooks (insidiously small and concealed by towels cunningly designed to be almost the EXACT SHADE of institutional off-white as the tile lining the ENTIRE SHOWER) and took my place in the ranks of the un-, mid-, and freshly-washed.
Did I mention the whole 'Junky on his way to get a fix' thing? Because I LOVE HOT WATER!! And I loved it then, too. I don't want to alarm anyone, but me and my new friends (FRIENDS!! Do you love the water and the hot too?!) almost got a whole lot closer than anyone ever intended. Except maybe the Village People. Anyways - SHOWER! Good god - SHOWER SHOWER SHOWER! I had been given a reprieve from my sojourn in hell. But only a short one. In time, I and my beloved hot water parted ways. It was a tearful parting even though we both knew I would be back again in just 24 short hours. I had work to do.
A brief note to my fellow locker-room inhabitants - there need to be some GOD DAMN RULES about the stink in that place. Jesus HOLY Christ. No - it wasn't ass. And no - it wasn't smelly-pit stank. It was someone's vile, reek-infested SHOES. And it FILLED THE ROOM! My GOD. They sell sprays and cushioned charcoal inserts and NEW SHOES for that kind of thing. You! You with the Killer Keds. You MUST KNOW how badly they stink. GET THAT SHIT OUT OF HERE!
Thursday a plumber came to the house. I stayed home with the kids to meet him. He brought three guys and a pneumatic mole. I'm not kidding. Pneumatic mole. Go look it up. In under five hours they'd dug two holes in the yard - one by the street where the supply line splits off the main and another up by the house where it was due to go through the foundation - and run the pneumatic mole up forty feet or so through the hill between the two, dragging the new gas line behind it. They put the mole in the bottom hole and turned it on around 9. By noon it had emerged smack-dab in the top hole. In 16 years, the guy said, he'd never once made a mole shot that good. Yep - mole shot. Plumbers fucking rock. They left at 1.
Of course, that's not the end of it, because the plumbers can't actually turn the gas ON. The gas company has to do that and we have the WORLD's WORST EXAMPLE of FUCK-UPS running a gas company. The owner of the plumbing company (guy named Tom - if you need gas work done I'll be happy to recommend him) called me to say he was faxing the paperwork to the gas company right then and that they should be out within 24 hours to hook up the meter and turn the service back on. Clearly he did not reckon on the limitless amount of SUCK Dominion-People's Gas brings to bear on the situation. Nor did I, honestly. Friday morning Gail calls to make sure we're on the schedule for a turn-on. The OTHER exTREMELY HELPFUL WOMAN at Dominion People's tells her 'Oh, it usually takes two or three DAYS for us to find those faxes...'
Cue more shitting of drawers - this time with rage.
Okay, I don't really know that. But I like to be dramatic. They were Gail's drawers anyways.
There's some back and forth between the GAS WOMAN and my wife, but we get on the schedule. By the time I get home, we've got heat and hot water again. HALLELUJAH!
So that's why we're not going to the Halloween Party of Doom. Well, part of it. Sorta. We had to borrow the money to fix the gas line from a VERY generous friend - to whom we are enormously grateful. But that might shed some light on the fact that our fiscal situation isn't as fluid as we'd like. So we're staying home. We're sad to miss an ALWAYS fabulous party, but there's always next year.
CODA: I don't remember when, exactly, I called, but I called the gas company and reamed YET ANOTHER miraculously unhelpful woman over this entire matter. She waived the $50 turn-on fee. Mostly just to get me off the phone, I'm fairly certain, but I don't care WHY she did. Just that she did. So there.
Now I'm going to go home and steam the flesh off of my bones. Alone. With nothing but my own delicious man-musk to stink of the air. Ahhhh - the wonders of modern living.