Gas leak
Wednesdays are always busy here because Gracie has violin at 7:30 am at one of the local schools (not her home school) so that means an earlier morning than usual. My in-laws come by in the morning to watch Iz and take Iain to school. The school allows Gracie to be late because she’s doing something school-related but they won’t give Iain a pass because he’s not taking lessons. It’s a pain in the ass but my father-in-law agreed to give Iain a ride to school and my mother-in-law offered to watch Iz so I didn’t have to take her along.
Iz isn’t night trained yet. It’s not a big deal but last night she was more, ahem, productive than usual so I was met with a not-so-pleasant aroma wafting from her bed. I opened her window since it was decent outside to get some fresh air in the place and went about getting the kids ready for the day.
My MIL didn’t end up coming which thrilled Iz because, for some reason, she’s terrified of my MIL. I think she gets into Iz’s personal space and is a little loud so it freaks Iz out. I used to think she didn’t like my in-laws period until my FIL started coming by himself (MIL broke her hip) and she would plant herself on his lap and hope that he was still there when we were finished with lessons and dropping Gracie off at school. So, anyhow, I changed Iz into some warmer clothes and went to her room to find her jacket. That’s when I started wondering if the smell was really a gas leak. I opened the window even further and hit the ceiling fan and told my FIL that I was going to check outside to see if that’s where it was coming from. Surely if the odor had been lingering from the night before it would’ve been gone after having the window open for 45 minutes.
It wasn’t coming from outside and Jeff was going to be home soon so I went ahead and took the girls to violin. When we got back I checked the room again and the smell was still there and seemed even stronger. The woman from the medical equipment company was due at 10:00 am so I decided to see if maybe we were dealing with an errant sippy cup hidden somewhere in the rubble of toys. I cleaned up and found nothing.
The woman arrived and I asked her to take a whiff. Lucky for me she was a self-described master whiffer (well, she didn’t use those exact words but if I were in charge of the world that’s what I would have titled her). She went in the room and said she did smell something but she wasn’t sure if it was gas because she wasn’t getting the instant headache she normally gets when she comes across a leak. Okay. She went down into the pit basement with me and we smelled nothing. Nothing by the furnace or where Iz’s room is or anything like that. There aren’t even gas lines on that side of the house.
We went back in Iz’s room and the woman smelled around the bed some more and said that she could slightly smell it in Iz’s pillow. I had already removed one of the blankets and the rest, along with the sheets, were on the floor and the mattress was up on its side. I took the pillow out and wondered WTF this was. We shut the door and went on with things because she had to show me how the CPAP worked and I had a Mother’s Day lunch with Iain at school to get to.
The woman left and a bit later I went to the lunch. The door was closed on Iz’s room and the window wide open and when I got back it still smelled. It had to be gas. I cleaned the room, opened the window, vacuumed and whatnot and nothing seemed to help. I called the gas company and waited for them to arrive.
He went through everything and.found.nothing. We had no idea whatsoever where that stupid smell was coming from. He was very polite and said that if we couldn’t find the smell and were worried that we should call back.
I went back in her room and practically took it apart. I dumped out her toy box and checked all the drawers. I could find nothing that could be the cause. As I was cleaning I came across one of her old Halloween costumes and took a whiff. The smell! It was there as if it had sank in much like the stinky car in that episode of Seinfeld where they couldn’t get the smell out. I decided to remove it to see if that helped. I started smelling things to see if I could find more items to remove so I could get to the bottom of this. Her bedding? Yeah, definitely had to be removed. There were no stains or errant fecal matter to speak of. It was just stink.
I put the items in the bathroom and shut the window and door in there to test my theory.
Apparently it was gas but more of the methane variety than natural. Well, you know what I mean. My daughter made such a package that the odor sank into every fiber of her bedding and refused to air out no matter what I tried. Only in my house could a stink be so strong yet leave no traces that we think it’s a gas leak.
That’s my girl. My stinky, stinky girl.
