scary morning, scary night, and other things

So today I am just going to vent a little. I have a story but I need to vent a little first. I woke up this morning to the one thing every person fears, the smell of something burning. I live in a tiny little house, so naturally that sent me into instant panic mode. I immediately checked everywhere to try to figure out where that hot iron smell was coming from...Kerry's room.. convinced that she had left a flat iron plugged in and it had been sitting for over a day, I searched to no avail. Turns out it was the heating unit in the house. I turned it off and called Julie (who is a worrier like me) and she said to call Jon (the general farm maintenance go-to guy and lawnmower loaner and baker and foaling person for a huge expensive TB farm...see he does it all) who came over at the crack-o-dawn ( he just got off nightwatch) and told me it was the fan not kicking on, so the heating system was overheating. He short term fixed it, but I still turned it off before I came to work. My animals will be fine in a cooling house for a couple of hours while we wait for someone to fix this.

This comes in lieu of seeing that huge explosion in Estill County last night...so very glad no one was hurt, so naturally I was on pins and needles this morning...

Which incidentally sent me into thinking the end of the world was here.....it is 2012 ya know...the Mayans may be right...although we do have until December so I will be doing a ton of things this year that I have always wanted to do to get them in before something bad happens.... carpe diem right?

This also makes me think back to my younger days and another story about my little sister and I. At the time we were living in a house much too large for us. My older sisters had gone to college and my sister and I were still pretty little. Young enough that this particular day we were in the back yard running around on stick horses and setting up jumps with chairs and broomsticks/mops/anything that was long enough and light enough we could make a jump out of it. We heard Mom in the house hollering about something smelling like it was burning. Naturally ( at least in our logic) we ran IN the house to check it out. In our hasty logic we thought we could help. Inside it definitely smelled like something was burning, but in that big old cluttered musty victorian house it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. We searched everywhere and it was getting worse and there was smoke. Now we were all panicked. Instead of calling the fire department just yet, we (mom) insisted she would find it. Finally I think the fear kicked in (all of her antiques might go up in flames) she called 911 and Annie and I in excitement were gallavanting through the house from back door to front door again and again (this has to be where the adrenaline junkie in me started) thinking we would see it if we galloped through the house from back to front, ran around outside for a minute and did it again.

In the end the firefighters found it. It was behind a couch in the living room. A brass candle had fallen off a table and landed on a table lamp cord and caught it on fire (who knew that brass candlesticks would do that, but they will...if you let it sit on the cord of an antique lamp it will cause just enough friction to start a fire.. something about the metals, I'm not a chemist). The reason it didn't go up like a haybarn was because the carpet (this ugly puke green 80's fab thing) was flame retardent so it was smoldering...however by the time the firefighters got there the wall had started to burn. They put it out and cut back the carpet to make sure the floor underneath hadn't caught and that was that.

This little situation scared the living pee out of us. At first it had been fun and games and then when you see the black wall of the room and the torn carpet it becaomes a reality. Its scary and caused both Annie and I some nightmares for awhile. The firefighters said that ugly carpet was lucky (although we had to tear it out after that) and if we had waited any longer to call it could have been much worse. I think that statement is what incited my panic this morning. If you wait too long it could end much worse. You can replace belongings, but you can't replace the ones you love...in my case my two dogs, and my other roomates cats and dog. I would be devastated if I had ignored that this morning and something bad had happened.

And what the heck was my mother thinking letting us galavant around like that. I know what she was thinking...someone left a curling iron on and she was going to find it and unplug it....

Have a good one everyone, stay safe in the cold. Soon I'll have my spring plans for Mira and I. I'll let everyone know. I am hoping for a good year at Prelim culminating in a 1*, so we will see.

signing off

~Mandy