Exciting Day

OK, 2 blogs in a row. Well, for a change I had quite an exciting day. Not all good either.--

On top of the excitement I have to share in the bulk of this blog Rick broke a tooth at lunch and had to have an emergency visit to the dentist. They put a temporary crown on it. So for the next 2 weeks or so he'll be a little tender, unless he can get them to fix the temporary crown to fit better.--

Now, back to my excitement. I woke up with plans to work outside. When I got up at about 9 it was all of 35º outside. It would have to wait. So I played around on my computer and by 11:30 it was up to about 47º so I headed out. It wasn't bad.--

I started weeding and trimming, readying my front yard for the winter. Leaves had already been raked into piles and the yard waste was all loaded onto a tarp and dragged out into the woods.--

After a couple hours I heard a woman scream. Then, about 5 minutes later I heard a man yell. He yelled again. And again. He could have been saying "Help!", I couldn't make it out. Then I decided to see if I could find out where it was coming from but it quit. I ran into a couple other neighbors who were also concerned. But it had stopped. Then all of a sudden, there it was again! This time I could tell where it was coming from and that it didn't involve words. Sharon (our local Gladys Kravitz) invited me into her back yard and we discovered it was the kid next door to her. We scolded him and told him he nearly got the cops at his front door!

So, mystery solved, I went back to work on my yard. I was nearly 75% done I'd say and maybe 15 minutes after I got back to work I heard a siren come screaming into the neighborhood. That was very unusual, they normally turn off their sirens once they turn off of the main drag, Auburn-Black Diamond Road.--

They were on the other side of the block, then turned onto the street headed toward me and stopped before they got to the corner. It wasn't the cops answering a 911 call about the yelling people down the street.--

I have 2 friends living on that street and there are only about 5 houses so there's always a good chance if an emergency vehicle stops on that street that it's going to one of my friends' house. So I always snoop. Sure 'nuff, it was stopped in front of the Haydens' house. And it was a fire truck.--

My first thoughts were that it was Kevin, the husband, and that he'd had another heart attack. I'm always scared that I'll see that again some day. The other neighbor I know on that street, Steve, also recently had a heart attack. But this time it was no heart attack. It was a fire.--

I got there and Mary and the neighbor, Steve, were outside Mary's house by her car. Turns out Mary had turned on a burner on her stove, maybe to boil water, and left the kitchen to go lay down, go to the bathroom, whatever. After a few minutes she heard something and, returning to the kitchen, she found it in flames. She heard the flames.--

She had turned on the wrong burner, she turned on the one with the pan full of grease sitting on it.--

Somehow she got Steve over there and he tried unsuccessfully to douse the fire. He decided they should get out when the smoke was so thick he couldn't see his own hand 2 feet in front of him.--

So the firemen got there, put the fire out, aired out the house, sprayed more water and left. The smoke was so thick and black. It came out from all the vents under the eaves, the whole length of the house. My guess is that everything in that house was ruined, either from smoke or water. It'll probably have to be gutted.--

I told Mary that all will be OK. She told me that she loved me.