Saturday, June 21, 2014

What a day!!!!

Yesterday was one of those days!!! It was a doozy. It started when I had to get up incredibly early to get to Chattanooga so I could start the eviction process for a tenant that we inherited when we purchased the townhouses. It isn't a fun process no matter how you work it. But since I've never evicted someone, it was rather nerve wracking.

Everything took longer than I'd planned so I was extremely late picking up Dominic and his friend from camp. I arrive to find out that due to a slight mix-up and change in plans I was not on the list to pick up the friend. After a rather panicked moment I found the other mom who WAS on the list. So she signed him out and I took him home.

We leave for home and are in Spencer when I get pulled over. He said he'd seen my car swerve and I was going a little over the speed limit. I knew I wasn't going very much, if any, over. So I truly thought I was going to get a warning. But when he'd first came to the window he'd seemed extremely interested in the boys. He asked their names, ages, where they'd been, etc. Turns out he was fishing for info. I only had one booster seat in the car. So I'd given it to the friend since he was shorter. But Tennessee has changed the law recently and children need to be 8 yrs old before they can ride in the car without a booster seat. It's endangering your child. So I was given a massively huge ticket for Dominic and he tacked on the speeding as well. I felt he'd fudged the speed and was really upset.

I drop off the friend and arrive home to find the house empty. Everyone was at my in-laws house. They moved in next door the day before (more on that later). I drop off  the work binder, books I'd purchased from McKays, and my purse and head over myself. About 15-20 minutes later I hear Caitlin tell Dominic "I'm going home to get it". A few seconds later we hear her screaming. It's her terrified scream. We run over to hear her say "It's burning inside". Jon looks toward the door to see smoke billowing out of the door. He grabs the fire extinguisher that he keeps in the carport by the steps and within a very scary minute has the fire out. But Kim (my sister-in-law) and Gramps had been throwing still burning items out into the carport. One of the books slid right under the car. I happen to have the keys still in my pocket so while still on the phone with 911 I backed the car out of the carport. Everything I'd placed beside the stove was ruined. My purse, gps, chargers, books, work stuff - all a blackened mess. We stood there in complete shock. No one had used the stove that day. I had checked the stove when I laid my items down beside it. But when Jon ran into the house one of the burners was bright red. When he tried to turn it off, he found the switch in the off position. He had to pull the breaker to get the stove off.

Long story short - our entire house is filled with black sooty smoke and we have a largely unusable kitchen. We sent the kids to the grandparents and changed the sheets on our bed. It was still a bit sooty, but we survived the night. Tomorrow morning we have professionals trumping through the house cleaning up and checking wiring. Because according to the firemen, sometimes stoves just turn themselves on. And because my bag of books was close, we had a fire!

Lesson learned. Never, ever put things anywhere near a stove - Even if it's off!

We've seen blessings in all of this.
Our family moved in just in time.
No one was hurt!
I didn't have to cook super last night. =)

*Please ignore all typos. I'm trying to type this on my iPad since my computer is unusable until the clean up crew gets here. I'm just hoping it can be saved. Joys of having an open concept house!

2 comments:

Richard Lawry said...

Sorry to hear of your rough day. I hope you are able to get along with your new neighbors. :)

tamara said...

I am so glad you guys are okay!