I LIVED!!!

Hi my sweet angel babies. 

It's been a while since I posted anything, and there's a reason for that. 

I'm about to sound like an AO3 author when I tell you this, so hold my hand while I walk you through this, alright?? 

Recently, in the middle of the night, my house filled with gas. We're already off to a great start, right? I know. Luckily my mom and I were both awake so we were able to call the gas company before anything happened. But know that when I say my house filled with gas, I MEAN FILLED. We probably inhaled a really dangerous amount of gas. But that's neither here nor there, I guess.

Around 4am, the gas company dispatched someone and he found not one, not two, but THREE GAS LEAKS. And then shut us off, obviously, because that's extremely dangerous. He was really nice and I'm glad he made the trek out to where I live at such an inconvenient time because if he hadn't we'd be dead.

After the guy from the gas company left and all there was left to do was ventilate the house until the smell was gone and then try to sleep (not easy in this situation!!), my mom reached out to our regular plumber to see if he could come out at a more reasonable time of the morning to get it fixed.

Because where I live, it's cold. And having the windows open and no hot water, no furnace, no stove makes it even colder. 

The next morning, we hear back from the plumber. He can't come, he's in Columbus until tomorrow morning. Sure. Alright.

We call another plumber that we know. Oh, fuck. He's literally on his way to the airport to go on vacation right now. He can't come. GREAT!

We ask for recommendations for other plumbers. We're given a few.

My mom calls EIGHT PLUMBERS.

NOBODY CAN HELP US.

The day ends with no resolution.

And there continues to be no semblance of a resolution my mom finds out we have "gas line insurance" that she's been paying all along which means the fixes shouldn't cost a dime!!! Yay!!! We're poor!!! We need that!!!

Day 2: She calls the people and there's a big long run-around. We can't help you, oh fuck wait no we can't. Ah. Sure I guess we can help you. 

They send out a dude from a well-established plumbing company in my area. We're ignoring the fact that this company has tried to scam us out of a lot of money before. We don't care. We just want this fixed so we can bathe and be warm and maybe also eat.

This walks around and finds not one, not two, not three, but EIGHT gas leaks. 

...Would we????? not be like???? REALLY dead????

Anyways, he's like "I can't do anything else without the okay from my company. I have to wait for the invoice and stuff to make sure I get paid since it's through this insurance thing." And so both he and my mom are on the phone to different people for like 2 hours. The man is here for 4 total hours and does nothing but test the line and tell us that there's 8 leaks.

He leaves and we're back at square one.

Day 3: Still, nobody can help us. My mom stays on the phone with people and hears back from 0 private plumbers. 0 help from the gas company. 0 help from the insurance company. It's not until much later that we call the guy who was going on vacation to ask him if he can give us the number of literally ANY plumbing company that will come out this way and attempt to fix this. He gives us a number, we're like "thanks!!!!" and then we call them. We end up with an appointment for 9am Monday morning.

Day 4: It's Saturday, and there's no one we can call until Monday. We've been washing up using water that we boiled on an electric hot plate that we found in our cupboard, and heating one room in our house using two electrical heaters where both of us and our two dogs sleep, and eating pretty much exclusively peanut butter sandwiches, and my brother's lovely amazing beautiful girlfriend Emily is like "I'm picking you up and bringing you to my house so you can bathe."

And she DID. And it was fantastic. It was nice to have clean hair. Thanks Emily ur the realest one.

Day 5: We have no clothes!!!! Because we don't have hot water to wash them in or gas with which to heat the dryer!!! Off to the laundromat at 9am we go!!! Tbh I love the laundromat. My papa used to take me all the time whenever he would babysit me, so I think that's probably the one place in the world that I feel like an actual adult in, so I was able to do pretty much everything else while my mom (disabled and honestly just really beat from this entire ordeal) sat off to the side and was anxious.

But we got four loads of laundry done so that was nice. Clean clothes are an underrated luxury.

Day 6: The company we had an appointment with comes and it's two very very tall but very nice young men. They test the lines. How many leaks do they find? 3 leaks. And we believe them!! Because 8 leaks sounded suspicious from the beginning. Why would the GAS COMPANY that came out at 4am THE NIGHT OF THE LEAK lie about how many leaks there are. They stand to lose/gain nothing from that, except for like maybe being sued for negligence if they're wrong and we died.

So anyway the guys figure out what needs to be fixed and then leave to get supplies. They come back and immediately get to work, which was so nice. They spent about 2 hours cutting out pipe segments and fixing stuff and making everything better. 

When they finish, we're told that there's probably been one leak on the main line since it was installed.

Do you know when it was installed?

When the fucking house was built.

In 1948.

How long have we lived here? 

Since 2005.

So basically I've been exposed to a gas leak for 20 of my 21 years of life. FUN!!!!! RIGHT????

The one guy said that he thinks it's been leaking the entire time because he cut the pipe and then went to unscrew it and it just. Pulled away. Like it wasn't attached at any point ever.

Anyway, those guys get their payment after 3.5 hours and head out. My mom calls the gas company to get us turned back on so we can. IDK. LIVE???

They're like "Someone will call you back in 15+ minutes, if you don't have an emergency you aren't a priority because we're experiencing a high call volume."

We realize after the plumbers leave that they unknowingly moved the gas line that goes to our dryer. My mom calls them back and they agree to come back and fix it for free.

But before they can make it back to us, the gas company comes, runs a test on the lines to make sure everything is fixed in a way that is up to code, and then turns us on.

At 4:00 pm on the 6th day of this shit.

He leaves and the plumbers come back and put the dryer line back where it's supposed to be and since they did it for free my mom paid them in white claws and beers because they were awesome and deserved it. 

I hope they enjoy those drinks.

That was insane. I still haven't come down from it. There's a million things that happened in between like my brother ordering us sympathy pizza on day 2 and it being like actually rancid??? We got two and the first pizza was fine, but when I went to have a slice of the second pizza a little later it tasted like nail polish and I had to actually spit it out. My mom went to heat a piece of said second pizza up in the microwave on day 3 and it smelled STRONGLY like a cherry pop-tart?????? Like, permeating the ENTIRE house kind of thing which was terrifying because WHY DID IT DO THAT??? Genuinely concerning. What happened to that pizza </3

Anyway yeah things are alright now!!!! Our house has heat, we can use our stove, and we're going to take long, hot showers tonight. And I'm going to sleep in my own bed instead of on the living room couch with my dogs trampling me in my sleep.

Huzzah.

If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read all of this insane rambling!!! I don't know why I needed to write a blog entry about this but I figure what else is a personal blog for??? Yay for the internet!!

Kisses!! 

- G