The Fire Stinky Smoke at BananaBomb's House

Like my play on titles there?

I had a very rude awakening at 5:47 this morning. I had just dozed off after getting up to use the bathroom. Half-way back to Dream World, I could hear what I thought was my son's alarm clock. I could also hear one of my dogs having a cow downstairs. When I remembered that the dog doesn't freak out at the alarm clock, I realized that it wasn't a clock at all. It was the smoke detector from the basement. I was out of bed in a flash. My other son came back upstairs yelling at me that the basement was full of smoke. I got my coat on, grabbed the dogs and my purse and cell phone, and we got the hell out of the house. (My husband is gone for the weekend, and our other son is hunting at his uncle's, so they weren't home.)

I called 911, and I think I might have sworn at the operator. I can't remember exactly what I said to her (I know her personally anyway), it wasn't f-bombs or anything, I think I said that it smelled like shit or something. [I don't swear much in the blog, but away from here, I can make my sailor nephew blush.] She paged out the teams, I thanked her by name, which I think startled her, and hung up. Then I called my husband and gave him a heart attack.

I live in small-town Iowa (population less than 3,000), and all of our teams are all volunteer. I live a block from where the ambulances are stored, and three blocks from the fire station, so their response time was phenomenal. I also know the majority of the firemen (used to work with the Chief) and the EMTs (my best friend is a veteran on the ambulance squad). When the firetrucks got there, the chief came over and asked me what was goin' on. I told him that the alarm went off, the basement was full of smoke and I panicked. Turns out there weren't any flames, just a hell of a lot of stinky smoke. And absolutely no damage. The firemen were here for less than an hour.

Our house is old, and it has steam heat. We have a boiler instead of a furnace, and radiators instead of heat vents. What happened was a motor on the boiler burned out. It smelled like a combination of burnt hair, burnt rubber, and hot asphalt. And the house will probably smell like that all weekend. Plus, they turned the boiler off [no heat], and it's like 30 degrees here with a wind chill of 16. It was way colder at six o'clock this morning, standing in the driveway in my pajamas. If I open the windows, the heat gets out. If I don't, the smell makes me sick to my stomach. Talk about a lose-lose situation.

So I tell you what, I don't think my weekend could get any worse. [Knock on wood.] Thursday night, my cat had diarrhea on a brand-new rug, and I stepped in it wearing brand-new shoes. When I went down to the laundry room to clean my shoe, the f#@king sewer had backed up all over. Last night when I took my son to meet his cousin, her car had broken down on the highway and her grandfather had gone to pick her up. I drove home in 20 mile-an-hour wind-driven snow with a semi on my ass. And then this noise happened this morning. Now the furnace guys are here fixing the boiler so hopefully the heat will come back on before my fingers turn blue.

Normally, I wouldn't post about this stuff here, well, anywhere, for that matter. But I feel a bit better about it now that it's all out in black and white.

I am going to get drunk sleep good tonight, fo' sho'.