Please fix the problem and get out of my house

If you know anything about me, you know odd things tend to happen to me, and nothing is ever simple. I haven't blogged about such things in a while because I have been too busy to do so.

Anyway, last Tuesday night, I was sitting in my living room working on one of the many things I'm always working on (you know the craft business that is actually a hobby because I'm not turning a profit because of all the inventory I currently have working all hours of the night because soon, with all these shows...). Around 10 PM, this overwhelming smell of skunk fills the room. I notice it is worse as the air conditioner comes on. It was so bizarre that I did call my dad and say, "you know my weird stories? Well, here's one..."

The next morning (Wednesday), he and mom came over to bring something I needed to work on and they smell it. Dad is convinced it must be natural gas. Mom and I disagree about it smelling like gas. It's most definitely skunk. However, with a house in a nearby town blowing up due to natural gas, I Google the smell. You can see where this is going. It's sort of like Googling symptoms for a migraine and being convinced you have a brain tumor. There's like one carbon atom that separates whatever they put in natural gas to make it smell and the scent of a skunk. If gas mixes with sewer, it can smell like skunk.

The other possibility was that there's some kind of marijuana that smells like skunk.

So, now fearing my house blowing up, I call the gas company. They send someone out, and the guy walks into my house and almost passes out from the scent of skunk. Ok, so passing out may be an exaggeration, but he most definitely is caught off guard by the scent. He spends an hour with all of his gadgets trying to figure out if there is a leak anywhere. He determines that there is a leak somewhere, though it's not in the sewer, so he turns off my gas and says I have to have a plumber out to figure out the problem.

Oh, and the skunk smell probably has nothing to do with anything.

I call my landlord, and he calls for the plumbers. Does anyone remember my luck with plumbers? (There was that time that one plumber flooded a bathroom by leaving the water on once they cleared a sewer issue. Then it took another pair of plumbers weeks to get the pipe in my wall fixed after they decided it was just a leak in the toilet seal. Then the fix ended up causing a leak under the sink. I had to have them out three times that time.)

The plumbers couldn't come until noon on Thursday which necessitated showers at my parents' house. So they come on Thursday, the plumber that caused the leak under the sink as he's evidently moved up the ladder, and his assistant, the village idiot. They look at the hot water heater and decide whether there's a leak or not, it has to pass code inspection in order to get my gas back on. Same thing with piping in the AC/heater closet.

At this point, so that I can get work done, I call Dad to come over and babysit the plumbers so I can work upstairs. They end up changing out the hot water heater, but not before draining water across my carpet because the water heater wouldn't drain. After spending about 6 hours over here, fixing a couple of small leaks with air tests, and lots of yelling (at the village idiot) for numerous things including trying to fit a bigger water heater into a small closet, the plumber goes outside and realizes the gas meter itself had a leak and now the whole neighborhood was sure to smell gas.

The next morning (Friday), we had to call the gas company back out so they could detect their own leak (meaning if they found it that all the work in my house could have been unnecessary). Dad comes back over to show them what's going on. Oh, but before that, the plumbers were back at 8 AM, and I get a "good morning, darlin'" from the married one with shirt with sleeves cut out like Miley Cyrus. Ewwww.

When the gas guy comes back, never seen this leak in a meter ever happen before. He has to call out another guy, and the plumbers show back up. At one point, all five of them are standing around in my kitchen chatting about fire and explosions while I'm trying to work. Oh, and let me tell you the plumber was a talker. As Dad says, the more someone like that talks, the less they usually know.

(This whole time, my house alternates between smelling like skunk and natural gas. I wake up to strong gas on Friday and had to start opening doors and windows.)

Somewhere in here, an author calls me to chew me out for what amounts to one bad review. At least that was during a break when everyone had left. 

So, they all leave until the city inspector can come out. Turns out, he doesn't even come in the house. I don't even know he's been here until the plumbers decide to drop back by and see that I've been "green tagged." They hook up all they can until I get the gas turned back on.

I call the gas company. Again. I need them out in two hours because I have to leave town. Gas guy B came back out to turn on the gas again and light the water heater or I was going to have to have the yappy plumber back out on Sunday since I wouldn't be around on Saturday.

By the time I got home Saturday, I had never been so glad to take a hot shower in my ugly pink tiled shower. I'm so thankful that my house didn't stink when I got home either.

For three days, my house was Grand Central Station. I can't tell you how many times I went up and down stairs.

I am so glad everything is fixed and I'm back to the quiet serenity of being by myself to do my work. Well, that doesn't include the virtual interruptions.

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