Ma'am, do you have gas?
Every time I come home from vacation, I'm torn between two feelings. There is a certain sadness to return to the real world, but I also always feel a certain zest to be under my own roof snuggling in my own linens and using my bathroom again.
This homecoming, however, was quite different.
I took motion sickness medicine prior to boarding the plane home, and the effects last four to six hours. My flight was about ninety minutes, therefore a lot of the drug was still in my system on the drive home. Alex drove my car from the airport to his parents' house to pick up his car. I was still a little loopy, but I managed to make it home without incident. I called my sister since she was in the apartment with my set of house keys, and she met me at the back door to help me carry a sabbatical's worth of baggage up the stairs. I smelled the cupcake shop downstairs, but as soon as I walked into my apartment, I felt the odor of sulfur hit me in the face.
"Do you smell gas?" I asked.
"Yeah...the pilot light on the oven was on, so I blew it out," Anne announced.
Do you want to know the face I made?
Wait for it...wait for it...
O_____O
"YOU DID WHAT?"
At this point, I told her we needed to get out immediately. I called Alex's parents and then phoned 911. Anne got in her car and drove off, leaving me alone in the parking lot. As the fire department cruised out to my humble abode, I ran into the cupcake shop not to purchase sugary goodies, but to tell them that there was a gas leak and they needed to GTFO.
So, as the firefighters went in my house to air everything out and shut off the gas line, I sat outside on the sidewalk with six baker ladies covered in icing and flour. It was midday, we were downtown and in the south, so all the passersby were asking us if we were okay or if there was an impending cupcake explosion. Fortunately, no gas leaked into the retail space, so they were safe to go back to work while I just had to wait outside. The firefighters let me grab the kittycat out, and we sat outside in the car while the natural gas company relit the pilot light and gave the final go-ahead to return to life as normal. According to Anne, Mom had told her on Monday night to blow out the pilot light (WTF), so I called Mom who told me she had been very clear and told Anne NOT to blow it out. She then proceeded to go on for fifteen minutes about how Anne had been acting really weird the entire time I was gone, that Dad had kicked Anne out of his house, and the things Mom had been doing since I left. (I got about thirty seconds in when she remembered why she hadn't talked to me and asked how vacation was, and then she cut me off again.)
After the adrenaline rush of thinking my block was going to disappear in a fiery blast and the emotional assault that always comes when I call Mom, I called Alex and cried. I had made so much progress with my anxiety while I was away. The day that we flew down, I came so close to having panic attacks on the flight, and that feeling stretched into the next day when I was so far from home in a completely different world with post-flight vertigo. By the time we were back in the Costa Rican airport, I wasn't thrilled to be headed home, but I knew once I was settled back in, I could continue in this calmer mindset. All that was forgotten for a few minutes while I cursed my family for being unable to accept any responsibility for their own actions and inadvertently putting my home in danger of literally imploding. It is one thing to be mildly annoyed by your boyfriend's father waking you up ten minutes prior to your alarm every day that something was scheduled early on vacation. It is another entirely to feel like the people who raised you (hah) can't be adults with responsibilities.
But, on the plus side, up until I actually walked into my house, the trip was a great success!
This homecoming, however, was quite different.
I took motion sickness medicine prior to boarding the plane home, and the effects last four to six hours. My flight was about ninety minutes, therefore a lot of the drug was still in my system on the drive home. Alex drove my car from the airport to his parents' house to pick up his car. I was still a little loopy, but I managed to make it home without incident. I called my sister since she was in the apartment with my set of house keys, and she met me at the back door to help me carry a sabbatical's worth of baggage up the stairs. I smelled the cupcake shop downstairs, but as soon as I walked into my apartment, I felt the odor of sulfur hit me in the face.
"Do you smell gas?" I asked.
"Yeah...the pilot light on the oven was on, so I blew it out," Anne announced.
Do you want to know the face I made?
Wait for it...wait for it...
O_____O
"YOU DID WHAT?"
At this point, I told her we needed to get out immediately. I called Alex's parents and then phoned 911. Anne got in her car and drove off, leaving me alone in the parking lot. As the fire department cruised out to my humble abode, I ran into the cupcake shop not to purchase sugary goodies, but to tell them that there was a gas leak and they needed to GTFO.
So, as the firefighters went in my house to air everything out and shut off the gas line, I sat outside on the sidewalk with six baker ladies covered in icing and flour. It was midday, we were downtown and in the south, so all the passersby were asking us if we were okay or if there was an impending cupcake explosion. Fortunately, no gas leaked into the retail space, so they were safe to go back to work while I just had to wait outside. The firefighters let me grab the kittycat out, and we sat outside in the car while the natural gas company relit the pilot light and gave the final go-ahead to return to life as normal. According to Anne, Mom had told her on Monday night to blow out the pilot light (WTF), so I called Mom who told me she had been very clear and told Anne NOT to blow it out. She then proceeded to go on for fifteen minutes about how Anne had been acting really weird the entire time I was gone, that Dad had kicked Anne out of his house, and the things Mom had been doing since I left. (I got about thirty seconds in when she remembered why she hadn't talked to me and asked how vacation was, and then she cut me off again.)
After the adrenaline rush of thinking my block was going to disappear in a fiery blast and the emotional assault that always comes when I call Mom, I called Alex and cried. I had made so much progress with my anxiety while I was away. The day that we flew down, I came so close to having panic attacks on the flight, and that feeling stretched into the next day when I was so far from home in a completely different world with post-flight vertigo. By the time we were back in the Costa Rican airport, I wasn't thrilled to be headed home, but I knew once I was settled back in, I could continue in this calmer mindset. All that was forgotten for a few minutes while I cursed my family for being unable to accept any responsibility for their own actions and inadvertently putting my home in danger of literally imploding. It is one thing to be mildly annoyed by your boyfriend's father waking you up ten minutes prior to your alarm every day that something was scheduled early on vacation. It is another entirely to feel like the people who raised you (hah) can't be adults with responsibilities.
But, on the plus side, up until I actually walked into my house, the trip was a great success!