Things to remember

I was chatting with my neighbor the other day, and she was telling me that she's having issues with the gas in her apartment. Apparently she has a leaky gas line. She said she and her boyfriend "almost expired" one night at home.

So it's of course very alarming that someone in a neighboring building apparently almost died of carbon monoxide poisoning, but what I found really interesting was her use of the word "expired" instead of "died." She used it again a bit later in the same conversation, when talking about a gas leak is very serious, how it can lead to one expiring.

She also mentioned that she was former military. Is that a military thing, to use the word expired instead of dead?

I don't know that I 100% believe that she really had carbon monoxide poisoning that bad..because wouldn't they have had to evacuate the entire building? Would she have really gone back to live in the apartment where she was apparently still having issues with the gas (the reason she was outside and started talking to me was because she was waiting for the gas company repairman to come in).

There was an article in the paper about a dad and two daughters dying in an apartment fire. That kind of scares the shit out of me. We don't have super easy access to our back door, in case a fire started in the front of our apartment. But that is something we can easily fix. And I know our smoke detectors work because they are sensitive just to Brendan's cooking, and even just to the heat of our hallway gas heater. But yeah...there's a lot that can kill us frail humans. Scary.

I wish I could believe that the start of a new year was somehow magical, that I would feel the weight of burdens and cares and sorrows lift off me at the stroke of midnight tomorrow night. But at least I can take tomorrow to try and get some shit done before the new year starts.