8/4/2003 09:46:55 AM|||Ellen|||I set fire to our living room Thursday night.


The "heir" woke up at 2:30 am, prompting me to slip outta the bedroom to try to keep the papa-to-be from waking up,�Junior and I�decide to eat waffles. (multi-grain, whole wheat Trader Joe type)� Waiting for the toaster, decided to water my poor bedraggled plants.� Switched on the first light, no light shines forth.� Turn on the other light, give the plants a bit of water and switch off the light.� Back to eating waffles and magazine reading in the family room.� About 10 minutes later my preggers nose smells the faintest whiff of something .... uhhh.... maybe the toaster?� no.� maybe the electrical outlets?� no.....� so I get worried about electrical fires in the walls and wake Bob up.� Traipsing thru the house we don't seem to find anything.
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We go to the front door, me thinking it's something outdoors and my super preggers smell sensory has just picked it up.� Turning away from the door, I see a haze of smoke in our front living room.� Uhhh, babe, there's smoke in the front room......� He looks, tells me to get whatever I need and get outta the house.
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I, of course, put on my contacts, grab a sweater and the dog and pop outside.� By now, Bobby's woken up my aunt, gotten the phone and is filling a bowl full of water to stop the blaze that was once my grandma's roccoco lamp (yes, it was a golden figuring of a boy and girl holding hands sans the enormous lampshade) and one of my favorite cardigan sweaters I had rescued from the garage sale. That lamp did turn on when I first flipped the switch, it was just so buried under clothes and crap that I didn't see it turn on, and neglected to flip the switch off again.� Let's just say that cashmere and a bare bulb make flammable friends.
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The little blaze managed to singe the wall, the love seat and a stack of clothes and crap that I had hazardly piled up near the lamp.� We thought we had put the fire out with a wet towel but it managed to flame up again.� Thank goodness by this time the firetrucks had come - as requested without sirens whaling.� It was a little hysterical that there were 3 fire trucks from one station and another truck from another station (we found out we live right in between 2 different fire stations) as well as 2 cop cars for a fire that was maybe two feet tall......
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Then who should stroll up the street but my wonderful in-laws??� My mother in law was worried about me and the heir, and Bob, Sr. was trying to wake up to survey the scene.� They whisked me away, my brother took my aunt to his house and Bobby stayed to supervise the firefighters.
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Needless to say all's well that ends well.� Glad that the 911 operator understood my hesitant call enough to send someone anyway (ma'am, is there still a fire?� Well, yeah .... but it's a SMALL fire, do the trucks have to have their sirens on??)� and that I stayed awake after the waffle munching instead of heading back to bed which would have let our entire front room burn down and effectively barricaded all of us in our bedrooms.
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And hey, talk about jump starting the wood floor installation.� Uhhhh, not the way that I wanted it to happen, but let's just say God works in� mysterious ways.
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|||106001561504440550|||Fuss Around Fire Starter