We almost died yesterday. We got better.

We almost died yesterday.

We were working in the house for nine hours straight yesterday. The windows were closed and we were all sealed up. We were working hard. But what neither of us could get out of our minds was this thought that something had crawled under the house over the winter and had died. It was like 63 degrees yesterday and we figured, "Oh, something died and it's finally a little warmer." If you have ever fished out a dead cat from under your house then you know what it smelled like.

Well, after nine hours we were beat and I had to go to work in the morning. So, we wrapped it all up, locked the door, and drove back to Durham, satisfied in the four days of demo we had accomplished.

Today, Evelyn drove back up to the house to meet with the contractor and the window salesman. They were all out there already to it when she got there. They all talked about the smell and the window guy said, "That's propane. I used to work for a propane company and they sent that stuff with the smell of rotting flesh to "warn" customers of a leak." Or something to that effect.

A leak? What leak? We've owned this house for like, four days and NOW there's a leak in the propane system.

Anyway, it seems that our old friend, the appliance lifting former owner of this place, had struck again. When we got our keys we did see that he had taken the small, wall mounted propane heater in the "dining room" in the "addition" (more on that later), but failed to cap the gas line. WHAT? So what we were smelling last night was propane? And our rosy cheeks, that we thought were signs of our "virtue" as we labored to achieve the "Good Life." (blah, blah, whatever). Those rosy cheeks were actually the signal that we were being poisoned by carbon monoxide?

We got better.