gas and vomit and other reasons to not cook

sunday, my husband steve and i were both in kitchen, oddly enough, throwing together a spaghetti dinner at the gas cooktop when i noticed the strong odor of gas. i didn't think much about it since we did have one of the eyes on. but then later, i noticed the smell again and saw that one of the burners was turned to low, was not in use and had no flame. i turned it off. i came back about an hour later and saw that the burner right beside the one that had been on, was now turned to low, was not in use and had no flame. i turned it off. then i went outside and watered my withering plants that i stupidly planted during a heat wave. it took probably an hour before i was satisfied that everything was either dead or drenched. when i went back in the house, the smell of gas was unmistakeable. when i called the company that had delivered gas to us in the past, i was told the number was not valid. so i called georgia natural gas, even though i knew i was not a customer, in the hope that they could tell me who to call. well, they did even better - they told me they were sending someone to our house to check it out. in the meantime, they asked us to wait outside and to not turn on or off any electrical appliances. they also asked for my cell number - not my home - presumably because the home phone would likely be destroyed in the explosion. so we waited outside, for over an hour. we played with the dogs for a while and then my son mac decided he would kill time by spinning violently around the yard. not surprisingly, he felt sick after that and because it was still over 90 degrees out, despite being nearly 10pm, steve thought he might be more comfortable in the car with some air conditioning. and this seemed to be a great idea, right up until the point where mac vomited spaghetti all over the back seat. in the meantime, the gas guy arrived (from a not-so-nearby town, he pointed out) and was apparently not excited to be at our house. he was even less excited when he informed us that we weren't on natural gas, we had LP gas. he said this as if he were explaining the difference between the floor and the ceiling. he also had detected no gas in our house - at all. and so, we thanked him, he grumbled and then drove away. and so we took our dogs, our daughter and our vomited-covered son back inside and called it a night. and i think we all learned a valuable lesson. i learned that cooking is dangerous and should be avoided and mac learned that violent spinning should only be done at a friend's house.