It’s a little after midnight.
I’m typing on a laptop that I can’t plug in, with a phone next to me that I can’t charge, in a room I can’t heat up, and lights that I can’t turn off.
I’m following instructions from my utility company. Why? Oh, just this thing called a gas leak in my freaking garage. And I’m stuck waiting for a technician.
This is when I miss being married. This is when I miss my ex-husband.
. . .
I’ve bitched about Joseph plenty the past few years, throughout our separation and divorce. He didn’t get home until late from work and when he was home, he was a man child.
There were a few things he handled that I’m not stoked about taking over. Unclogging the hair from drains. Taking out the trash. Handling any gardening-slash-yard issues.
Joseph also handled nighttime dangers.
Living in California, we get our heat from natural gas. It’s a boatload cheaper than electricity to keep houses warm. With that comes the occasional smell of gas in the home, like when turning on the stove.
Sometimes the smell lingers and it’s time to take action. By “action” I mean wandering around the house and outdoors trying to find the source of the smell.
I’m not paranoid about things that can wait until morning. When the smell of gas permeated through the house, I tended to nonchalantly wave my hand and say it would be handled in the morning.
Joseph is a hypochondriac. He also panics about select things, like sharks. And natural gas disasters. I guess that’s a normal fear for anyone raised in California.
Handling explosion and fire-related concerns were Joseph’s domain, not mine.
The downside to divorce is that despite slashing your household income by half, you’re gaining all your ex-spouse’s work. I continue to discover that it’s all the things that I really didn’t want to do that Joseph could handle without claiming incompetence.
Through a boring tale involving my garage and reconnecting my gas dryer, a plumber warned me the connector to it wasn’t up to code. I knew it was wonky when I moved in but I didn’t know it was dangerous. I told him I wasn’t going to fuck around with it and would like to have it replaced along with a better lever to shut off water to the house.
This house is the gift that keeps on giving with all the crappy things that need repair. I loathe the previous homeowners.
The plumber couldn’t stick around but he said he could come by this weekend without charging me for the call. The gas valve replacement would be $30.
This evening I placed my Alexa Ring motion detector in the garage because it’s slightly open to vent for reasons related to the boring tale mentioned earlier. I don’t need some creepster prying open the garage door and grabbing my stuff. The doors to the house have an alarm so I wasn’t concerned about someone coming in.
I opened the door from the kitchen to my garage and the smell of gas punched me in the face. This isn’t good considering the garage door is ajar, allowing it to escape as well and yet it was still a strong odor.
I’m not incompetent. Handling home crises is my jam. I feel like my whole life has been one series of emergencies and crises after another. As usual, I put on my Household CEO hat and get to business.
I turn off the thermostat. That sucks because this house is cold as balls and I need the heat cranked up. I brush my teeth with cold water to make sure the water heater doesn’t do anything that can add to the already running flame inside of it.
Sitting on the bed, I text the plumber asking him to contact me asap in the morning.
And yet…I can’t relax. Sigh. This is when I wish I still had my ex-husband. This is the point where he would use his paranoia to ensure our family’s safety.
I need to call the gas company. It’s almost 1 am.
I contacted the utility company. They’re sending a technician. They told me not to turn on or off any electrical devices. Thankfully, my bedroom lights were already on. I’m not sitting here in the dark for an hour waiting for a technician; that’s some prime horror movie content just waiting to happen.
Getting that squared away, I sit on the bed. In my marriage, I would have gone to sleep and let Joseph stay up to handle the rest. But it’s just me. And suddenly, I feel scared.
While I ran the show, I still had someone worry about security and safety beyond my concern levels. Now I have to amp my paranoia levels up to compensate.
Earlier, the plumber was explaining something to me and said, “so you need to tell this to your husband later”. The plumber was over 70 years old so I cut him slack for that. I tell him that it’s just me, no husband. I don’t like advertising that to contractors and technicians; conventional wisdom says it’s not good to let them know that I’m a lone female with no one to beat their ass if they cross the line.
“Oh, it’s just you, all by your lonesome self,” the plumber replies. The sweet old man isn’t trying to be mean. But hearing it out loud during a stressful week of home improvement drama hits me deep. It stays with me all day, into the evening.
I don’t like feeling unsafe. When I moved in, it didn’t take long before I installed alarms on the doors and windows so I could sleep at night without panicking. Now I’m back to feeling unsafe and while it’s temporary, it’s unsettling. Not just because my garage might explode, but also because I’m not stoked about opening my door to a stranger at 1 am.
. . .
The gas situation didn’t get resolved until 2:30 am. Turns out, the sweet old man plumber barely screwed in the gas line to my dryer. The gas utility technician was shocked. He also fixed part of the venting leaving the dryer, so bonus points for that.
. . .
Most of the time, I feel capable in this new post-divorce life. Other than the loss of seeing my kids every day (still hurts like a motherfucker), everything else is relatively the same. I handled everything before…and I handle everything now.
But I have to give credit where credit is due. And being able to offload the crap jobs that I didn’t want to handle was the nice part of my former marriage. I’m realizing I took it for granted.
If only we could have made it work. Sigh.
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.
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