Fire

We had a little scare a couple days ago. I was trying to nap and heard a weird popping noise from the front of the house. I wondered what Lucas was doing in his crib, but looked at the baby monitor and realized that the sound wasn't coming from his room. Maybe it was construction sounds from the roofers across the street? I heard the strange sound again and had to investigate.

As I entered our office I smelled a pungent smoke and saw ash pouring from the computer monitor. Ack, we have a fire!! Not sure what to do, I called Mike at work. Wouldn't you know it, he wasn't at his desk so I left a voice mail. "Our office is on fire, call as soon as you can." I peered into the place where the smoke was rising from and saw a ball of flame inside. Shaking, I dialed 911 for the first time in my life. This thing could blow up and ignite the room, our wooden roof and maybe burn our house down.

As I was talking to the operator, I grabbed my sleeping baby from the next room in one arm and our wedding album in the other. He looked very confused and groggy and perhaps even a little pissed off. If he could have spoken he would have said, "Hey, ma, what are you doing?! Can'tcha see I'm sleeping here." Little did he know, I was saving his life.

As I was getting off with 911, the other line beeped in and it was Mike. I quickly explained the situation. "Did you unplug the monitor?" Uh, no. So, I dropped Lucas off on our bed...I wasn't going to take my baby into the inferno ...and ran in risking my life to try to find the right plug in the sea of wires. Once I unplugged everything in the room, I evacuated the house with the baby. I phoned my parents as the fire engine with sirens screaming pulled up in front. So cool! If only Lucas was old enough to appreciated it. They brought the smoking monitor out of the house and fanned out all of the toxic fumes (though it still smells a little acrid like fried machinery in here).

Mike came home, we went to the mall to allow our place to further air out and he took me out to dinner.

Anyway, as a word of friendly advice...don't leave anything electronic running while you are not at home. The fireman said in another 30 minutes, we would have had a house fire. Praise God that we were all safe, as was our place, all but the toasted monitor. Now Mike has an excuse to finally get that flat screen.