The Guilty Remnant

Just thinkin' about life.

I've spent the last 24 hours convinced I'm dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. My upstairs neighbor's fire alarm went off last night, triggering the alarms in the building that were in the same corner of the alleged danger. At first, the alarm just said, "WARNING! FIRE!"

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. I'll believe it when I see it.

Then, just before it went silent as I was trying to rip it from the ceiling in vain to stop the deafening beep, it said in the same ominous tone, "WARNING! CARBON MONOXIDE!"

And I thought, "Oh, shit. The silent killer."

The fire trucks came within seconds, which I took as a good sign, given I do not trust the sprinklers in my living room. I sat back down at my television and hoped that the family next door with the dog that shits on our doormat would take care of it.

It's always nice to know there will be a pile of shit to greet you at your door.

Alas, I don't believe anybody spoke to the firemen. So, I googled what to do if your carbon monoxide detector goes off. I read the serious warnings and translated them to this:

Just air it out.

I cracked the windows a little bit. I would have opened them fully, but its a pretty urban neighborhood, and I was trying to watch The Leftovers on my boyfriend's HBOGo account. I didn't need people to hear my sobbing.

Of course, I figured if there were high levels of carbon monoxide, I would probably be dead by the end of the episode, but since I stayed awake long enough to finish the series, I assumed my window-cracking had done the trick.

But then I felt really tired at 1 a.m. and kind of sore from trying to work out and had a bit of a headache, so I was sure I was dying from an ongoing leak and would not wake this morning.

I did. Thank God, because I had a really important interview. Although, I think they would have given me the job posthumously for publicity purposes. That's what I would have suggested.

Then, I debated if I could afford to take $20 out of the ATM to pay for parking at my new restaurant gig, and am praying this quarter tank of gas will last the week. I also have two packs of ramen left, but I owe my roommate, like, four.

The life,

TJB: Making It