Adventures of the gas lady

Sunday morning I wake up, go to the shower, turn it on, clense myself of all mortal sin, and then turn the knob. It turns all the way around without turning the water off. Except the water gets very, very hot. So I leap out of the shower, swear a few times because that always helps, and mess with the thing until it locks into a position where it turns off, but not the right way. I made a mental note to ask my dad about it when the 'rents return from their cruise on Oct. 15.

This morning, though, nothing worked. The water kept going and going, and it was hot water too, which is especially expensive and wasteful, and it got to be 7am when I had a meeting and I'm still standing there with wet hair and swearing and it never shuts off. So I shut off the main water pipe.

But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that before I tried to turn the water main off this morning, I accidently shut off the main gas valve to the house. I thought "main" meant the water, but it's obviously the gas (according to the BIG RED TAG that says DON'T TOUCH THIS) so I shut that off instead, which shut off the pilot light for my fireplace. Well, I figured out my mistake right away and but then wondered for like two hours why I thought I could smell gas from my chair and then I figured it out so I called Nick the nice (and cute sounding, even if he's a bit too much into natural gas) man from the emergency line and he's sending someone out so I sat out in the garage because Nick told me to and some other nice gas man is going to come and help me out.

Nice gas man comes out, listens while I explain my idiocy and just sort of looks at me. I babble, because that's what I do when people stare at me expectantly, but I think he was waiting for me to shut up and point out the problem. I did, he fixed it, then said "does your water heater pilot light need to be relit?" I looked at him and before I could answer he said "Just show me what you turned off."

I led him, tail between my legs, to the little room with all the crap in it that I don't like to touch (because of situations like this!!!) and he relit my pilot and shook his head at me and went on his way. Let me just give a shout out to CenterPoint Energy, though, cause Nick and Mr. Gas Man were way too nice to me. And Mr. Gas Man arrived super fast and he didn't yell at me for being stupid or anything. Someone needs to. Probably my father, when he returns to dry land.