Florence + the Fire

Well this morning brings me TWO things I just can't wait to tell you all about, so buckle up!

First of all, welcome to the world Florence! My first upgrade since having an iPhone and now a beautiful rose gold 6s.

She's Florence, and I'm the Machine (PLOT TWIST!)

And, can you guess what the first phone call made on her was? No, you can't. It was a 911 call! How many of you can say that about your phones??

Last evening was nice, because after picking her up, coming home, working out, having dinner and texting with the boyfriend (this is our generation) the three of us (me, Florence and Khaleesi) all snuggled up in bed for night-night time, listening to the sporadic rain.

I woke up at what turned out to be about 3:30am to my smoke alarm screeching incessantly. I was initially in a stupor, thinking it was someone else's, or it would just quiet down on it's own. When it started to dawn on me that it was a SMOKE ALARM and that it was MY SMOKE ALARM, I got up and went to investigate, and when I entered the living room, there was a really strong smell of smoke and fire.

I started to wake up in my panic and came over to my heater (which, in this old apartment is in the floor and has a grate over it) and it was hot and as I stared down into the area where the pilot light was, I could actually see fire. Now, it wasn't a lot, but I know it was more than a pilot light, AND because my landlord locks the side gates, I wasn't able to go get a look at the side where the gas and heater are to see if the bottom of the house was actually on fire. The smoke smell was strong, I could see fire below, so Florence came to the rescue and I made a 911 call for the fire department.

They took my info and told me I should evacuate to be on the safe side, but since I knew nothing was going to blow up immediately, I went to the bathroom first and saw Khaleesi, hazy-eyed from also being woken up in a stupor giving me a look that said "this better be taken care of soon, peasant".

Well I went and waited for them outside and felt embarrassed just hearing the sirens coming from a distance and to see like 3 fire trucks roll up. I wish I could have told them just to send like 2 guys so we could get an estimate or an opinion, but I don't think the fire department works like that??

I led them in and told them how my smoke alarm woke me up and you could obviously smell the smoke and led them to the floor grate with the flames below. The chief man talked on a radio to others, and he told them "just the dust burn-up from the heater being run the first time" before he said it to me. So I felt a little stupid. He explained the obvious, that the temperature dropped, the heater kicked in, and the settled dust from the year was burning for the first time. They weren't at all rude or condescending, but I wished he would have humored me a little more, lolololol.

They wanted to go around the house and check out the gas area and underneath just to be on the safe side, so they went marching out my back door. I knew Khaleesi was back there somewhere, so I worried about her getting out when they opened the door, but there was no reason to worry, because as soon as their line finished filing through, Khaleesi came bolting to the bedroom like a bat out of hell, slipping and sliding over the floor and then jumping onto the bed and flailing around because she only made it to the side of the bed and had to pull herself up but she was panicking too much. It was adorable.

Everything was fine, but then before they left, the chief man was testing my smoke alarm above my door and it wasn't going off. I told him I had been banging on it. "You were banging on it?" he asked. "Well, yeah. I had already called the fire department, and it wouldn't shut up" I told him. He actually chuckled and then said he'd be right back. He brought me a brand new smoke detector in a box and everything and told me to tell my landlord to mount it. Ha!

The moral of the story is: if you need a new smoke detector, just call 911!