Putting the “Car” in Carbon Monoxide
Or, rather, putting the kids in the car and leaving
We lost an entire Saturday morning because there was a chance we had a carbon monoxide leak.
So look, most Saturdays start off slow, and then my husband typically makes eggs and pancakes1 and then takes our toddler to Costco while the baby and I do laundry. We’ll both work out at some point. It’s not as structured as a Sunday,2 but it’s a nice day with a familiar feel like old jeans.
I had recently won a battle to replace pancakes with a different sweet breakfast food every other week and was debuting sourdough french toast. I used some leftover spinach in the fridge for a giant frittata.3 We were enjoying breakfast when our alarm went off.
As a thirty-something lady who has consumed some action-adventure sequences in my day, an alarm to me pretty much always means intruder. (I had finished cooking and nothing was ACTIVELY SMOKING, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t the fire alarm, which is my actual first thought.) And intruders pretty much mean hostage situations. From the first BEEPBEEPBEEP, my synapses are firing on irrational fears of being duct taped to a chair and trying to remember to make sure that my chair is near a paper clip (would the ornament hook I found after the Christmas decorations were put away work?) or scissors or something. I am less prepared to tip over the chair so that I can grab a sharp implement, but again, a whole-body bruise is a small price to pay for saving the United States.
Incredibly, my husband seems to be aware that there are different sounds for different things an alarm might tell you about? Handy guy.
So my husband starts googling the different types of noises that our alarm system can make and I start working on another piece of sourdough French Toast. The baby is fussing, so she and I head upstairs to feed her and put her down for her nap. A few minutes later, my husband is upstairs opening windows. Then I overhear him with our toddler, telling him to get dressed because we all need to go to the hardware store because we all need to get out of the house. At this point, the baby has not been meaningfully fed, she has not taken a nap,4 and I am still in pajamas.
So I throw on clothes, no makeup, and experience a sinking feeling that maybe our house is going to explode and should I grab the passports? We leave, with all the windows open, no passports in my bag, and absolutely no plan.
I would like to take this moment to remind you all that my husband and I are both firstborns. I can’t vouch for him, but I can assure you that I am highly impressionable when reading things. Little House on the Prairie gave me dysentery; Dickens gave me consumption; WebM still gives me cancer. So how do you think we felt after reading the descriptions for carbon monoxide poisoning? Disoriented, irritable, trouble focusing, flu-like symptoms. What I lacked in flu-like symptoms I tried to make up for in irritability.
Anyway.
We went to Home Depot, got in touch with an HVAC company, went home so I could grab an irrational supply bag and put on makeup, drove past a coffee shop, determined it was too busy, parked at the library to feed the baby while the boys went into the coffee shop for a to-go cappuccino (and a blueberry galette) that dramatically reduced the irritability, drove to Costco, got distracted by the Home Goods in the parking lot, went to Home Goods, played “find me something with a horse on it” in Home Goods, found three such items, found a clearance rocket ship wall art for my son’s room ($3.50 to explain it’s not a toy! What a bargain!), then went to Costco, then got the call that the HVAC guy was on his way, left Costco in kind of a rush with me carrying a wrapped hot dog and a slice of cheese pizza on a paper plate through the parking lot while pushing the Doona, not remembering where we parked, called the husband who was circling the parking lot, found the car, got home, met the HVAC guy, determined there was NOT a carbon monoxide leak, and began to heat our house back up from 58 degrees.
It turns out it’s just very difficult to properly weigh black swan events. Sure, there wasn’t carbon monoxide so we could have stayed put. But if there had been, that would have been a very dangerous choice. So, we spent an extra $100 for an HVAC visit, $11.29 for a coffee snack (I have no idea; just a guess), $37 at Home Goods (there was also a decorative platter and a holiday table cloth on clearance), honestly a little less than usual at Costco because we rushed out without organic beef sticks, and a lot of lost productivity. But we were all fine.
And I think that’s the thing I didn’t realize about being a parent when I was a kid: pancakes every Saturday is usually within your grasp and so many things aren’t. So you carve out the routine as a bulwark against the unknown. And even still, some weekends you cruise around in your car for a few hours and kill time because it’s better than letting carbon monoxide kill you.
Every Saturday morning growing up, my mom would make eggs, bacon, and either pancakes or waffles. My recollection is that my dad liked waffles but my mom thought pancakes were faster and the batter was the same. As a kid, I was happy either way. If pancakes, I liked them doughy in the middle; if waffles, soft. We went through phases. We did mostly pancakes when I was younger, and then my high school years were full of not just waffles, but coconut pecan waffles, and if we had company then we also had the best hash browns you’ve ever had. In college or law school, the waffles gave way to copycat Snooze OMG French Toast, made with brioche, caramel sauce, vanilla sauce, mascarpone, and fresh strawberries. Also, this breakfast was ready by 8 am. My mom is a superhero.
As an adult—two kids and several bouts of COVID later—I am sorry to report that my tastes have changed. Bacon (and microwave popcorn, fwiw) doesn’t taste quite right to me. It’s fine in things, but the satisfaction of a perfectly crisp slice or two on a Saturday morning has been replaced by an uneasiness, wariness, and sense of coming betrayal, like when you know someone is about to tickle you. The smell of eggs was absolutely heinous when I was pregnant with our second and I am still not convinced that it’s something I should eat. To my husband’s surprise and frustration, the sous vide egg bites pioneered by Starbucks and sold by Kirkland present no such qualms. Somewhere in here, I also quit liking doughy pancakes. And kind of pancakes overall?
It’s very disorienting to have longtime preferences change.
Look, everyone is out there trying to “win the week” by crushing Monday workouts or meal prepping on Sundays or whatever, and I am happy for you. But Mondays are my most productive days because Sundays are rest and a flawless routine. Please feel free to steal: church, Torchy’s Tacos, ice cream (we do Graeter’s), naps, walk around the neighborhood, cheese and crackers for dinner, kids to bed, movie.
If that’s not your best life, I don’t want to know how you live.
I am going to put the over/under on two for how many of my kids’ future classmates will be named Frittata.
The baby is better at car naps than her brother, but unfortunately they are both below average in their ability to sleep in the car. Oh well. They’re mine.