FIRE!!

 Saturday morning I’d been asleep for about 90 minutes when I was awakened by a smell. Now, I take Ambien to sleep AND the PTSD med when I go to bed so for me to wake up after 90 minutes you have to understand that it has to be something earth shattering, I mean, I can sleep through tornado sirens, landscapers, car alarms….. And I sat straight up!!! 

First my brain tries to process wtf is happening. Is my husband awake? No. My son? Nope. It’s the smell. What In God’s name is that smell? It’s so strong and… Bitter… Rubber? Plastic? ELECTRICAL FIRE?!!

Now, my brain is still in slow gear but even in slow gear I’m not an idiot…. I reach over to my husband and shake him… “ J, I think there’s a fire” How would you like to be woken up by that? And in a fairly calm voice too, because, well, Ambien.

He gets into high gear immediately which was good because my brain said “ Cool. I can go back to sleep now. He’s got this”

And he did. He was running around unplugging everything that could be plugged in and then I hear the youngest come out and ask what that SMELL is. My husband keeps running from room to room with a fire extinguisher and it’s really making it hard to sleep. 

With no fans going it sounds unusually quiet in the house but my drugged up brain puts two and two together because even on my worst days I’m a fucking genius, a two semester psychiatrist after all, so I call out…” J! It’s the A/C! It’s not on. There must be a wire on fire!”  And then I can go back to sleep because I solved it and he’s located the burning wires and insulation. Thank God, Ambien thinks… this is really irritating and smells so fucking bad….

I don’t know if you know this but if you ever tell the on call maintenance guy that you have an electrical fire they come in seconds. My husband told me later that the guy tried to turn on the blown fuse and started the fire again while also getting a good old electrical jolt that turned the poor guy gray as clay. 

Now, you gotta know that of course this happened during a long three day weekend so we can’t get the parts to fix it and it’s in the “ Feels like 120 degrees” time of year so we have two MASSIVE portable A/C units in our LIVING ROOM. 

Never underestimate me, that’s really the point of all this.

Happy 4th of July!