Monday, June 14, 2010

When Your Pysanky Explodes...


Don't call the gas company.

Yup- you read that right. A good rule of thumb in this situation is to not freak out, think your house might explode from a gas leak and call the gas company to come check it out.


It all started when I came home in the middle of the day to drop off the car and change-

Normally I walk to work but had an off-site meeting this morning. By late afternoon I was headed back to the office, it's always challenging to find parking downtown and I wanted to avoid the inevitable parking ticket (I often forget to go back out and fill the meter because I usually walk). So I took a quick detour to put on less dressy clothes and park the car in the driveway.


Hubby was home but had been downstairs in his office most of the day. I went upstairs to change and was immediately greeted to a horribly "off" odor. It smelled kind of sulfury maybe chemically and was very strong! So strong in fact that I can only think of one thing- there is a natural gas leak somewhere in the house.

I call Hubby upstairs and he agrees it's a general bad smell... then we open the bedroom door and it's downright noxious. At this point hubby agrees with me- it's almost choking the smell is so bad and we're going to have to call the gas company.

Let me just say that there are gas pipes on all floors of my house- it heats our hot water, we cook with it, dry our clothes with it. And the other apartments in the house all use gas too. So it could be coming from anywhere!

We go the basement- nothing.

Kitchen- nothing

Attic- nothing

It seems to be localized to the bedroom/bathroom area in our house but the smell is so bad we can't even really go in there. As a precaution Hubby shut off some valves that supply the gas to a few key appliances. Now he also wants to check and be sure the apartment that shares our walls on one side isn't the source of the leak. Our tenant isn't home so after several knocks and calls we open the front door with our key to take a quick smell- and everything seems ok.


Coming back into our part of the house though is a different story. The smell seems to have gotten worse. The entire house smells now and Hubby is concerned there could be a leak coming from a pipe in the wall!

At this point I have to go back to work- leaving hubby to deal with this issue. With all the windows open and unable to locate the source of the horrific smell hubby and the animals wait outside until our wonderful (and speedy) gas company show up.


They start searching our house using meters to locate "the smell" (apparently they take this sort of thing seriously when you call). They determine that it's not a gas leak and after having the windows open the whole house doesn't smell so bad anymore- really it's just our bedroom. Hubby and the nice man from the gas company focus their search on this one area. The gas man assures hubby it's not a leak, hubby is perplexed by what could be causing the awful smell... it's not like we have anything in the bedroom that could be causing it.


That's when hubby and the gas man notice the two pysanky eggs I decorated sitting in their egg cups. The eggs that were full of their insides when we decorated them in the pysanky workshop and are supposed to dry out over a few years time. The first one I did (2 years ago) is still fine but the one I decorated in this past years workshop spontaneously exploded! And boy did it smell bad!!!

Hubby's still not over what he's deemed "a great story the gas man gets to go back and tell the other gas men". And that he actually "called the gas company about a rotten egg" I'm just glad I wasn't home when they made the discovery! I generally like to be away from the scene when crafts I've made wreak this kind of havoc.

I can only imagine hubby explaining to the gas man why his crazy crafty wife had rotten eggs laying around.


I'm happy that it turned out to be nothing and a little sad my egg broke- but more than anything I'm pretty sure I'm not going to live down the "egg incident" for some time to come!



7 comments:

  1. Oh Meg - that's a great story! And thank goodness nothing was really wrong!

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  2. Thanks Joanne and Alissa- I'm glad nothing was really wrong too. I can't even believe how bad the smell was- even from outside last night the egg remnants were stinking up the place!

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  3. Oh that is fantastic... well, not fantastic that your egg exploded, but you know what I mean. :D Definitely a story that made its way around the gas company in a flash!

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  4. It was supposed to dry out? Never heard of that. Next time, empty the egg first.
    But I bet it looked beautiful while it lasted...
    And yes I think you will be hearing this story for years to come. But hè it IS a funny story.

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  5. Ann you're right... I'm sure it's made it's way around the gas company. My husband is convinced there will be some sort of note on our account about it- LOL.

    Marianne- yes the egg is supposed to dry out. It sounded strange to me at first too- but the woman teaching the pysanky workshop has lots of eggs that she's had for more than 20 years. All have dried just fine. It's supposed to be the more traditional way of doing pysanky- but yes most eggs are now blown out (i suspect for this very reason). The one I have from last year is still just fine- and after this experience... I hope it stays that way!

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  6. Hi Meg!

    I enjoyed your post! I'm sorry about the egg thing. I do pysanky too and I had read that this could happen. Especially if you varnish the egg. Apparently it needs to breathe while it is drying.

    Because I am incredibly prone to things such as this, I actually blow my eggs out before the dyeing process. I plug the hole with bees wax and then weight the hollow eggs down in the dyes.

    Glad it wasn't a gas issue. Let's hope that the smell clears out soon.

    suzy

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