It's Always Something

I feel like I never have a boring day. There is literally always something going on that keeps me from having a relaxing day; either something breaks, or one of my dogs poops in the kennel, or my allergies are acting crazy, or one of my students is being obnoxious, etc. There is always something exciting happening to keep me on my toes.

So here is the story of how I almost blew myself up yesterday...yes, as in explosion.

Jared and I left our house at 8am yesterday morning to ride with my parents over to Ocala. We spent the day helping my brother and his wife move out of their apartment, pack up everything in the Uhaul and move it all back to Jacksonville. This was an all day affair and we did not get back to my parents' house until yesterday evening. Jared stayed for a few more hours to help my brother get some stuff from my parents' garage into the Uhaul, and I took his truck and came home.

I got home around 7pm with Jared's truck and I still needed to get gas in my car and go to Publix. So I quickly feed the dogs, grab my Publix bags and take my car to run my errands. I go get gas and groceries and come home. While I am unloading my groceries in the garage, I notice a slight smell of gas. However, I just filled up my car with gas and I always manage to get it on me every time I fill up and the smell seems to linger forever. So I think nothing of this, go inside and start cooking.

Jared eventually comes home and we do some stuff around the house and get ready to go to bed. I get in bed and he goes to put the garbage can by the curb because Monday is trash day. He is gone for about 20 minutes so I start to wonder what he is doing. It is about 10:30 at this point and when I go out into the garage he is draped in paper towels. The first words out of his mouth are, "I can't believe you didn't explode when you started your car earlier." I am of course confused and concerned by this statement and then I notice that one entire side of our garage floor is covered in oil.

Apparently, a canister of oil was leaking or spilled all under our boat. All that oil and my car had been sitting and baking in our garage all day while we were in Ocala. Luckily, it was oil and not gasoline. Oil is still flammable, but not as flammable as gasoline. If it would have been gasoline, our entire garage probably would have exploded when I started my car.

I was also lucky that Jared remembered to take the trash out or else that oil would have been sitting in our garage all night, probably making the fumes worse and the possibility for fire even greater. Sometimes Jared forgets to take the trash out on Sunday night, so I take it out on Monday morning. I would probably have never noticed the oil and who knows what would have happened when I started my car.

Fortunately, Jared discovered it, but he then had to stay up until 1:30am pulling everything out of that side of our garage and cleaning up the oil. He left our garage door open a little and turned on a fan to push all the fumes outside during the night. However, I still managed to stay up tossing and turning all night thinking about what was going to happen when I had to turn on my car to leave for work in the morning.

When I got up this morning, the first thing I did was go and open the garage door all the way; I wanted maximum air circulation in there. Then I got myself ready for work and was still paranoid about the garage. Even though it was probably all in my head, I swear that I could still smell the oil fumes. I put all my work stuff in the car and went and woke Jared up. I told him that I didn't want to turn my car on, but he reassured me that everything was fine and he had cleaned the garage very well. So I went and sat in my car.

I sat in my car for about 2 whole minutes with my keys in hand, just sitting there. I seriously contemplated putting the car in neutral and pushing it out into the driveway before starting it. I finally put the key in the ignition, closed my eyes and cranked the car. I waited to see if something was going to happen...I don't know what I was waiting for, an explosion I guess...then I put it in reverse and got the hell out of that garage.

This is not exactly how I wanted to start my week, but thankfully someone was watching over me. I'm so glad that Jared remembered to take the trash out last night and that he is much more observant than I am. As I write this my garage door is still open, airing out the garage, as I am not convinced that all the fumes are out yet.

Moral of the Story: Stop rushing around all the time. Slow down and notice what is going on around you, or you might overlook something potentially dangerous.