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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Generalized Anxiety culture is telling yourself you'll be way more sociable and go out and do things once you move and then spending the majority of your time at home, sometimes due to being overwhelmed, but mostly because you just want to; it's also people acting as if it's the end of the world that you choose staying in with your cat over time with other people.
It can be really hard trying to be sociable and the such I get that. Personally I love cats, I’d join you in staying in with cats any day haha, that sounds so chill.
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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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