After resting up from doing yard work, I decided I was tired of being hot & sticky, so it was shower time. So I get in the shower and I’m basking in the cool clean water and all of a sudden the power goes out for about 3 seconds and I hear a sound I can only describe as “mmmnnnnnffff”. At first the paranoid me thinks maybe it’s the zombie apocolypse, so maybe I need to find a gun. So I grab my towel and dripping wet, I creep out of the bathroom and peek around corners and am quickly satisfied that there are no boogie men or women about, so I figure we had a brown out type of thing going on. Thinking I’ll be a good citizen and consumer, I turn the central heat up so the a/c won’t kick on and use more electricity, and it was at his point that I smelled something burning. I might be more aware of this smell than the average woman because I’ve lived with The Volunteer Firefighter for 33 years and if I had a dollar for every time he’s made the comment “I smell something that smells like burnt insulation” we could all go out and eat a pretty nice meal.

So it’s time to find the fire. I have it in my head that it’s coming from the central unit so I’m kinda freaked about maybe the fire is in the ceiling, and bye bye house. But like Toucan Sam on the old Fruit Loops commercial, I followed my nose. There are 2 doors in the hallway, one for the water heater and one for the central heat & air. I open the door to the water heater and there it is, nice little flames coming out. AAAAAAGGGGHHH!! PANIC TIME!! Time to call a fireman, time to call MY HUSBAND!! I call, the phone’s ringing, I’m thinking “pick up! Pick up!” Finally, after an eternity, he answers and I of course yell, “the water heater’s on fire!” In addition to calling my beloved husband & fireman, I had grabbed the fire extinguisher and I’m looking at the fire I decide good grief I don’t want to figure out this extinguisher, so I snuff out the fire with my towel. IT WORKED, IT WORKED, PRAISE GOD IT WORKED!! But is that the only place the fire is burning? Did I mention I was in panic mode?

So Dear Husband/Volunteer Firefighter is yelling “turn the power off!” which I hadn’t thought about yet, because for some reason, I’m thinking we have a gas water heater, never mind that I KNOW it’s electric and we’ve never had a gas heater in our 33 years of married life. I’m trying to tell him “I already have it out!”, but my wonderful wonderful Samsung 3, piece of crap phone is doing its thing where I can hear him & he can’t hear me.

Sooooo, he goes into hyper-drive, high adrenalin save my fair lady from suffocating or burning up in a house fire mode. I hear him hollering about something, so I assume he’s grabbing Sam to come with him because when they’re together and there’s a fire, that’s what he does. At this point I realize I have no towel around my body or anything else around my body, so better get some clothes on, Ethel you shameless hussy! I grab a shirt and some pants, put ’em on, pick up the phone, and like magic, we can hear each other again. And he’s about 300 yards from the house.

What I didn’t know was that my Dear Husband was screaming because he was trying to bail off the tractor to come rescue me and had pretty much done a wishbone, got his left leg stuck in a place legs aren’t supposed to go on tractors and his right foot’s hanging around up on the clutch. Easy move for a ballerina, not so much for my farmer. He can give the details on that much better than I. Let’s just say he has numerous “owies” and that’s three accidents for him in two days and that’s enough.

Thank you, Lord, for watching out for naked firefighters and their pumped up on adrenalin firefighter husbands!!