One thing I sometimes spend too much time worrying about is whether Arthur will burn his house down – by accident, I mean. The thing is, Arthur is used to considering himself supremely competent in the management of combustible materials. After all, his career was careening through air by managing a carefully-controlled, ongoing explosion (the helicopter engine). There have been incidents before.
One time he was messing with the propane heater in the kitchen, something wrong with the igniter, and he was lying there with the thing half taken apart, mashing the ignition over and over and meanwhile he hadn’t turned off the gas. I could see that going wrong.
There was another time when he was trying to use his little propane torch to loosen the bolts on the boat trolley. They were almost glowing orange. And he was banging away while still running the torch. I could see that going wrong.
Arthur hasn’t adapted his self-perception away from the self-image that he’s good at working on stuff, including burning, combustible stuff.
Last night, I knew he was feeling much better. How did I know? I had just fallen asleep, and I awoke to the sound of banging down in the basement (boathouse). He had decided it was an excellent time to “repair” the Toyo kerosene heater that’s down there. The strong smell of heating oil was rising up through the house. He’d had a “spill” when trying to manipulate the removable tank that inserts into the heater.
I suggested we’d be better off working on it the next day (today), and finally he shuffled up the stairs to sleep in the main bedroom. I put the pile of kerosene-soaked paper towels that he’d left on the floor outside.
This morning, I repaired the stove – it was showing an error code “EE8” – which I looked up online as being related to the exhaust fan not working right. I found a crack in a hose leading to the exhaust fan, and there was crud in there that had to be cleaned out.
Arthur told me he hadn’t even noticed the error code, and had simply decided based on past experience that it had to be a fuel problem – that’s why he was messing with the fuel. I wonder if he just likes messing with flammable materials?
I might start keeping my most important documents in the car.
