Gasoline is Bad

My house smells like gasoline and unhappiness right now. Mostly gasoline.

Basically, here I am, sitting in my leather chair in the living room, minding my own business, when I go "sniff! sniff sniff! sniff sniff sniff!"

I smelled gas.

So I went into the next room, the kitchen, and looked at the stove. All burners were off. I twisted them a little more over to "off," just in case. There was no effect.

I ran to get Mama.

I told her about the gas, so she came with me into the kitchen. She, too, checked the burners. We have an electric oven, and an electric drier. So those two were out.

We went into the dining room, which is between the entrance to the garage and the kitchen. The smell was stronger there, which was weird, because there really isn't anything in there that could possibly create that kind of smell. So Mama opened the garage door, and--

WHAM!

Lots of gas smell. In the tiny little garage.

She opened the outside garage door and turned on the light. We checked under the car-- no leak. In the water-softening area (we get our water from a well, since we're technically not in city limits)-- no leak. We looked all around the garage-- no leaks.

So we got the dogs and sat in the driveway while Mama called the fire department.

The firefighters came in like five minutes, since we live so close to them. They were all decked out in full fire-fighting regalia, but the trucks were too long to fit up our steep, steep driveway. So the trucks sat in the street. Copper and Barclay (my dogs) kept barking at them-- which did not help. I was in tears for most of this part.

They checked out the house, mostly the garage, and had to call in their buddies, who had UV lights or something. The UV lights (or whatever they were) would show where the gasoline was.

It was underneath our emergency generator.

We have an emergency generator because the power goes out fairly often, maybe once every month or two. That wouldn't be much of a problem, except that since we're on a well, and not the city water system, we have to use electricity to get water. So when the power goes out, the entire house goes out. So no showers, no cooking, no toilets. For a house that will often have 6 people living in it, that is a major problem. So we have an emergency generator that powers the water, my stepdad's and Mama's computers (since both of them work from home, via the internet), and the fridge and freezer.

Anyway.

So apparently there was a puddle of gasoline underneath the generator. And it was no ordinary, dinky, 1-foot-wide puddle. Nooo, it was a six-foot-wide puddle of stink and explosives.

The fire fighters poured a kitty-litter-like sand on it, to soak up all the gasoline and make it relatively harmless. Then they scooped it all into a tin trashcan, which we're supposed to let dry out and then throw away (I assume). Then they gave us the thumbs-up, and left.

So now I'm emotionally drained, Copper and Barclay are wide awake, and Mama's had a really crappy day.

Bluuuuuurrrrrrrghh.