Consolation
How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.
There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.
How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?
Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.
And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car
as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.
By Billy Collins
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The hollow feeling you get when you send someone at the airport, the lump of wishing to be in their place and being happy for them at the same time that is stuck in your throat and the constant voice in your head whispering "where are you going" not only to the person who is leaving but to you for who time and place stays still while everyone and everything grows, the drive back home looking around and everything screams the absence of the person who left and the presence of yours, go live your life, but you send them away and always drive back
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me, an hour ago: "fuck, the stove is on! what do we do?" [immediately does all the wrong things]
PSA: What NOT to do when you smell gas
In this situation, we got home to a smell of gas throughout the house and discovered our gas stove was on without a flame. it was only a tiny stream, and everything turned out fine, but here's a brief list of everything we did wrong:
NOTE: this is for if you smell significant amounts of gas, not a blanket list for all possible gas situations. (If you aren't aware, the methane**/natural gas used in houses smells vaguely like sulfer, or rotten eggs - this is an additive, since it has no natural smell. It's a very recognizable smell, once you've smelled it once. It's not the same smell as gasoline.)
1. If your stove has an electrical/spark ignition, do NOT turn it off.
Spark ignitions often spark when turning on *and* off. Spark + Gas = Boom. Boom is bad. Avoid boom.
Instead, turn off the gas at the source, i.e. the physical valve at the meter. There may be a smaller valve near the stove. If you don't know where the shutoff is, the fire department will find it.
2. Do NOT turn on (or off) vents or fans.
In fact, don't flip any electrical switches - that includes lights, plugging in or unplugging appliances, etc. These cause sparks. Spark + Gas = Boom.
Also, don't start your car. obviously.
3. Do NOT open windows
counterintuitive, I know. This is mostly because you want to prioritize your exit, but it's also to keep the fumes from spreading outside, where you should be waiting for the ~professionals~ to come handle it.
4. DO take all people and pets outside.
Do this very first!! (one thing we actually did right - go us!)
This is obviously because you don't want to go boom, but you also don't want to suffocate. Gas is poison!
NOTE: the gas from your stove is probably methane (natural gas); carbon monoxide is what you get when methane burns, which is why your kitchen needs to be well-ventilated and the stove shouldn't be left burning for long periods of time, but the natural gas itself is *also* potentially deadly. Carbon monoxide detectors dont detect natural gas, so that's what the odorous additive is for.
Inhaling natural gas causes nausea, headaches, dizziness, and makes you just generally woozy, and eventually causes you to lose consciousness and potentially suffocate, just like carbon monoxide does. We don't want that.
5. DO call the fire department/emergency line
They'll check for other leaks, shut gas off if needed, then test for air quality and eventually clear your house for reentry. It takes like 1-2 hours for the gas to dissipate, generally.
Yay, you survived! Congrats!!
NOTE: if you find the stove has been left on with a flame, or it's on with no flame but you don't smell gas, then you should be safe to just open windows and turn on vents and fans to air it out.
idk, this was actually pretty scary, especially when we realized how much of our immediate response was wrong and could have turned a dangerous situation into a real disaster.
tl;dr: If you smell gas when you shouldn't be smelling gas, just get all the people and animals outside, shut off the gas line, and call the fire department or gas company. don't fuck around with gas. you're not overreacting, you're taking the proper safety measures.
**CORRECTED FROM ORIGINAL VERSION. Original said propane, but it's very much not propane, it's methane. too much Hank Hill on the brain, clearly.
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thoughts on "tradwives" as a 19th-century social historian
It's great until it's not.
It's great until he develops an addiction and starts spending all the money on it.
It's great until you realize he's abusive and hid it long enough to get you totally in his power (happened to my great-great-aunt Irene).
It's great until he gets injured and can't work anymore.
It's great until he dies and your options are "learn a marketable skill fast" or "marry the first eligible man you can find."
It's great until he wants child #7 and your body just can't take another pregnancy, but you can't leave or risk desertion because he's your meal ticket.
It's great until he tries to make you run a brothel as a get-rich-quick scheme and deserts you when you refuse, leaving your sisters to desperately fundraise so your house doesn't get foreclosed on (happened to my great-great-aunt Mamie).
It's great until you want to leave but you can't. It's great until you want to do something else with your life but you can't. It's great. Until. It's. Not.
I won't lie to you and say nobody was ever happy that way. Plenty of women have been, and part of feminism is acknowledging that women have the right to choose that sort of life if they want to.
But flinging yourself into it wholeheartedly with no sort of safety net whatsoever, especially in a period where it's EXTREMELY easy for him to leave you- as it should be; no-fault divorce saves lives -is naive at best and dangerous at worst.
Have your own means of support. Keep your own bank account; we fought hard enough to be allowed them. Gods willing, you never need that safety net, but too many women have suffered because they needed it and it wasn't there.
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