I need a cold shower...

The Yuma house has had quite the exciting week. After a long weekend, all of us girls slept in Sunday morning and woke up late. Excited for the unsuspecting boys of the 37th ward and our weekly serenade of "Easy Like Sunday Morning," we were a little disturbed by a funny smell in our basement. Convinced it was Natural Gas, Tricia called up a friend who may or may not have worked with heating who told her to turn off our gas.

At this point, we were not so concerned. We figured it was something that we could deal with after church but decided to call our friendly Questar office.

The first implication that something was wrong was when I joked with the Questar man "we may or may not smell Natural Gas in our house. Is that a bad thing??" To which he replied "You need to evacuate your house now."

Um... What? We have church soon. And we are all in various stages of showering and getting ready for church. And now we have to leave? But stay close enough for when the technician comes? Wow.

Tricia and I headed to my Grandma's and continued to get ready there. Questar man called right as we were finishing up and we headed home. Little did we know we were about to get the most inconvenient news of our entire lives....

(that was a bit dramatic. maybe just the most inconvenient news of the past few months or so)

Questar Man was Creepy McCreepster. He had weird eyes, a huge beer gut, and was about 60. Once he got down there and got started he started saying all sorts of Creepy things. He asked about 3 times if there were 4 girls who lived there. He walked into my bedroom where I had some extra props from Halloween and said "Is this your bedroom? What is that bone for, to beat your boyfriends?" So at this point Tricia was getting ready for church and I ran into her room and told her she would be punished if she left me to go to church. Then he tells us his daughter went to T-ville High so Tricia and I thought we'd have some non-creepy middle ground. Oh no. He says he's "heard about Taylorsville girls" and brings up the stat that T-ville was allegedly had the highest rate of teen pregnancy and asked if we were "one of those girls".

Then it just got funny. He couldn't find anything wrong with the heater so decided to check the water heater. He had to get a machine from his car and I think he took a shot of heroin or something in the truck because when he got back, it was over. He said the machine also doubled as a breathalizer test and made T breathe on it. Then he shoved about half the thing down his throat and started wheezing all over it but nothing was registering on the machine and he was getting genuinly ticked off. When he finally (about an hour later. We had way missed the first of church by now) got around to testing our water heater, he informed us that it had been leaking carbon monoxide into our house for who knows how long! Then he red tags our water heater and essentially tells us we'll die if we turn it back on. Fantastic. After I signed all of the "I will not sue if I die from turning it back on" papers, he finally packed up his breathalizer tester and moved on.

So we were in a bind. Our landlords live in the United Arab Emirates now so I emailed her knowing I'd get a response in about 12 hours about what to do. So the first email went out on Sunday afternoon. When I hadn't heard anything by Monday, I called a plumber who was a family friend who gave me an idea of what it would cost and when he could do it. Still no word Monday from the landlords. Email #2 went out Monday night. Still no word. Tuesday I finally call their son (who we were threatened with close to death if we called for a reason less than death) who told me to go ahead? But? He didn't really know??

Yea, encouraging. So I scheduled the plumber for Wednesday without having any idea if it was okay with them or how this would get paid for or what. Tuesday night I get a call from the son who's emailing the mom who hasn't read our emails because she forgot our names and didn't think they were important. So they decided that her husband was going to call me at 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning to give me the specifics of the heater he wanted.

If you're counting, we're now on day 4 of no heater. And I have a plumber coming at 1:30, which means I made sub plans and took half of a precious personal day for this. And they want to call me with specifics at 7?? Nice. So he calls me at 7 and just wants me to ask some questions and asks if I've looked for a better deal. I call the plumber with the questions and just decided to go for it. Whatever. Screw what everyone thinks, I want a hot shower.

So I left school and the plumber came and not only do we now have steamy hot water, we have better water pressure.

Wow. That was not an important story that I was able to drag out into a huge blog! I have a gift.