I have weird dreams. I have forever. Usually, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm a little disoriented from my weird dreams, and it takes me a little while to differentiate between dream and reality. This is important to keep in mind while I tell my story.
Early this morning, I woke up around 2:30, needing to use the facilities. I stepped into the hallway to trek to the bathroom and smelled smoke. I first thought, "Erin. That is not smoke. That is your middle-of-the-night paranoia. Be cool." But, just to be safe, I scurried to the living room to make sure that the candles I had burned throughout the day had safely been extinguished. They had.
I took care of the business that had originally awakened me.
After returning to bed, I laid there for a while. Thinking about smoke and fires. Just in case, I stepped back into the hallway to see if I still smelled smoke. I did. Panic set in...we had hung some Christmas lights in Claire's room to serve as a nightlight. Did they catch fire?? Is Claire still breathing?? I ran to her room to investigate. No fire. Breathing baby. Whew.
Back to bed. Tossing and turning. Thinking about electrical fires burning in the walls...that happens, doesn't it?? No way to check that out...so I ran back to the living room to verify FOR SURE that the candles were out. They were. Something must be wrong with my olfactory senses.
Once back in bed, I decided I should just pray about it. And wake Brad up to see if he smelled smoke. (Note: Brad is very difficult to awaken. Oi.) He told me a) he personally blew out the candles, and b) he did not smell smoke. Ok. Maybe I was overreacting.
But I prayed some more, just in case. I'm nothing if not cautious.
Well, this morning, when I walked into the living room, I saw Brad looking out of the open doorway, and the trash piles (today was trash day, so all the building's dumpsters were right outside our door) scattered everywhere. I walked closer to see what had happened (thinking ruffians and vandals) and saw this:
And this:
I couldn't really make sense of what I was seeing. But, it did explain the smoke smell in the night. And, it completely validated my sanity. Mostly, though, I felt sick for the car's owner. What a horrible start to the day.
Currently, we're not really sure if the fire started with the car or the trash. The trash makes the most sense initially, but it rained yesterday, making all of the trash soggy and wet. However, there are some folks that smoke right there where the melted, blue dumpster is, and they don't always take care to put out the cigarettes when they are finished, which could have sparked a fire. I also felt compassion for this person who was parked in front of the burnt car:
The back bumper was literally melted off. Another bad start to someone's day. Here's some of the burnt trash/melted trash bag that ended up on our doorstep:
At some point while we were gawking at the damage, it occurred to me that my crazy, middle-of-the-night prayers were not in vain, as we have a wooden front door and the fire was, quite literally, right outside. PTL.
Brad posted a picture of the mess on Facebook this morning, and he got all kinds of comments like "how did you not hear that?" (in addition to the fire, the fire department came and put out the fire around 1:30 a.m.). As to why we didn't hear it: our apartment literally has soundproofing throughout (a previous tenet was in recording and soundproofed parts of our place), and we can't hear anything from the back half of the apartment (which is where our bedroom is). It's not that we're just incredibly deep sleepers (at least, one of us isn't); we're just well insulated.
Anyway, that was an exciting beginning to our day. Anybody else have a story?
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