Our brush with death
Nov 29, 2003 Family
OK, so it was a small brush, a toothbrush-sized brush but it was a real life true story and I must tell it.
Brett has been working on the bathroom every spare moment so he was very happy to have a long weekend to get in there and make some serious progress.
(Some of you may recall that he pulled out the tub to replace and in the process also ripped up all the drywall, had some guys over to put glassblock where the window used to be, and basically made a big mess of our one bathroom for what he thought would be a minor job. I hear this is how these things usually go. In any case, we hope we get to shower by spring. Meanwhile the bathtub is available although lined with plastic so we don’t splash the exposed drywall. It floats around and is awfully uncomfortable. This is how things have been for over a month.)
Anyway, he was putting backboard up last night because he’s going to start tiling this weekend. He used glue on parts of it and so he turned on the attic fan to try to clear out some of the fumes. Meanwhile, Noah and I were decorating the tree and then admiring said tree and listening to the Chipmunks, who make Noah laugh everytime.
Later in the evening we all sat down and had some grilled cheese sandwiches while Noah set up a board game and then commenced to play Sorry over mugs of hot chocoalte and decaf cut with soy nog, (which tastes better than it sounds). I began to get royally grouchy. My sinuses were hurting and my neck was aching and I figured I was heading for a cold. Brett kept missing his turn then going, “What? Huh? Whose turn is it?” That was annoying me to no end and I thought about just going to bed early and avoiding him entirely. Noah begged to watch a movie so we all trundled downstairs to snuggle up with a video. The opening credits were rolling when I heard this high-pitched, prolonged beep upstairs.
“What is that?” I whined. “It’s so annoying! Brett, go make it stop!”
Well, it was the carbon monoxide detector. The reason I was achey and bitchy and the reason Brett was too spaced to remember whose turn it was during Sorry was that we were all slowly being poisoned. Interestingly, both Noah and the dog were hyper and in good spirits. Go figure. Anyway, it turns out that the attic fan is just a few feet from the heater’s intake vent and was sucking all that nice fresh clean oxygen right out.
We aired out the house, turned down the heater for the night and tucked into bed next to a cracked window. Fortunately, we all awoke this morning and the carbon monoxide alarm is reading normal in all of the rooms.
Every day is an adventure, eh?
November 29th, 2003 at 6:48 pm
Whoa, that would freak me out!
November 29th, 2003 at 10:00 pm
Holy cow! We have one of those detectors, but I don’t remember it ever showing a reading, much less beeping. So glad you guys are safe! (and that’s a bigger-than-a-toothbrush brush; that’s at least a brush-that-comes-with-a-dustpan brush!)
November 29th, 2003 at 11:52 pm
jeez dawn, that could have been so serious. absolutely not a small brush — i agree with sue: dustpan brush. it’s a fitting PSA for carbon monoxide detectors! thank god you had one!
December 1st, 2003 at 9:12 am
Egad, I’m glad you’re all okay!