I hung
that laundry to dry on the clothes line, just like every other load I was (we
don’t have the luxury of a dryer). Last Thursday night though was one of those
‘winter is definitely here or just around the corner’ types of nights. Neither
one of us could get warm not matter how much we bundled up (we don’t have
central heating or air in the apartment – just one small gas furnace in the
living room. Handy when you are sitting, watching TV – it at least helps to
warm the room up a tad). I tossed and turned that night trying to sleep as well
because of the sub-zero temperature of the tip of my nose. So when my alarm
rang in my head at 6:45am, I was exhausted, frozen to the bone and not in any
mood to drudge myself to work. But because of 3 girls having to share 1
bathroom that morning, I quickly headed to the bathroom to take a shower.
Fridays at work are casual dress days, which on mornings like last Friday
(another Baltic day), I was happy for the option to wear jeans and my tall
boots in an attempt to stay warm.
Checking
my jeans from washing them the previous night, I was utterly disappointed to
find them still soaking wet, and not even just damp, but literally almost
frosted over because of how cold the house got during the night. (There is no
way I would leave that gas furnace in the living room to run all night for fear
of blowing up the whole apartment complex.) This was probably the only moment
since moving here that I was genuinely upset with our lack of dryer (well maybe
that and having to use cold, crunchy towels due to the indoor clothes line
versus hot fluffy ones straight from the dryer; heated towel racks are a much
needed investment I think.) Making a split-second decision (I was in a rush to
take my shower and desperately wanted to wear those jeans to work), I blasted
on the gas furnace (you have to ignite it with a grill lighter because the
ignition switch has long since broken – I mean, this thing is straight from the
‘70’s):
Becoming
nice and toasty in a jiffy, I threw my jeans on top, hanging the top bit in
front of the front grill, since that was the wettest part of the jeans. Running
to the shower, I was washing as quickly as possible, knowing Bec and Kelly
still had to have a turn. Mid lather of my long mane, I hear the smoke alarm
going off. ‘Strange,’ I thought, ‘Bec must have burned some toast in the toaster.’
(We have an extremely sensitive smoke alarm that cries out even when I have a
stir-fry on the cooktop) – so the fact that burnt toast was setting it off did
not even phase me. Well, not until I heard, Waaahhhhhhh!!!!AHHHHHHHH!! OHHHHH
MY GOOOSHHHH!!!! YOU’RE PANTS ARE ON FIIIIIIIIIIREEEEEE!!!
I have to
admit, I’m not even 100% clear on what happened for about the next 90 seconds.
All I know is that, for still recouping from the ankle, I have never in my life
bolted faster from a bathroom, thankfully grabbing a towel in the process to
cover at least my front half. Widely rounding the corner into our living room,
I see my jeans, lying in a heap in the middle of the floor and Bec running
towards the kitchen. Flinging open the doors to our balcony as quickly as
humanly possible, I grabbed the jeans with my only free hand, threw then jeans
outside, just in time for Bec to arrive with a huge pitcher of water (I had
never even seen the pitcher before – so no clue where it magically appeared
from), but thankfully it had appeared, in Bec’s hand, to douse out the
smouldering jeans now laying limp and charred on our balcony. After regaining
my breath, and fully wrapping myself with my towel, I look over and Kelly,
poor, sweet Kelly is perched on the edge of the couch, with the most shocked,
sleepy and bewildered face I have ever seen. She was speechless. Now, I can’t
be too sure if it was because after she finally was able to speak, she admitted
she thought the house alarm was sounding because a stranger had broken in to
rob and murder us all, or because she just had to look at my hind side running
around the living room for a good minute and a half. Either way, after the
shock had worn off, she declared that she would have to stay over more often
because we were just so amazingly amusing.
Finally
able to return to the shower, I rinsed out the now-drying-shampoo from my hair
and jumped out to a wall of swirling smoke still billowing throughout the
house. I threw on my only other pair of casual pants and attempted the best I could to open all
the windows and doors, turn on the fans and spray some air freshener. My only
concern at this point was Bec now hates me because of nearly giving her a heart
attack and death scare at 7am on a Friday. I also was worried that we would all
die of smoke inhalation and our clothes would be ruined (especially all those
freshly cleaned ones still hanging on the clothes line.) Having to run off to
work though left little concern for the rest of the day because there really
was nothing else I could do at that point. I just had to hope the smell of
smoke dissipated by the time I got home that night (which it had, phew!) Bec
helped clear the air with not only a Facebook post, but also a sweet text
message stating:
“Sad to
say good-bye to a nice pair of jeans. Maybe we can make some artwork out of
them??? Hahaha… sorry, I’m peeing my pants laughing.”
Well,
this wasn’t really the ego boost I was hoping for, but at least she didn’t want
to murder me! The continual waves of laughter persisted for the entire rest of
the day between her, Kelly and me. I called my mom while waiting for the train
to tell her what had happened. The connection was tragic, so all she heard was something
about fire, the loud noises from the station (which she convinced herself was
the fire department outside my house), and then my laughing, (which she
couldn’t distinguish between laughing and crying.) Frantically texting to ask
if I was ok, I told her everything was fine and that I would call her back.
Once I reached the office, I called her back to explain everything, to the
response of, “Well, I guess there’s a new meaning of ‘hot pants!’” – HA!
At work,
our project team is called Project Orange (don’t ask me why, this was already
in place when I joined), we have stand-up meetings every Friday. This is where
each of the work streams can give a progress update, new joiners can be
introduced, and we give out awards. Orange awards go to people who had excelled
on something the last couple of weeks - an award of grandeur. The other award
is the lemon award. You can only imagine what the qualifications of a lemon
award are. People have been known to nominate themselves for moments of idiocy
over the past two weeks, but usually the award goes to the person who had not
realised anyone had seen their moment of idiocy.
Now, I
know what you’re thinking – someone saw Kelly and Bec’s brilliantly humiliating
posts already on Facebook by 8am that day – and nominated me for the award.
This isn’t so. Being the loud mouth that I am, when my manager arrived to the
office, and asked how my morning was going, I just had to reply, ‘Well,
thankfully I’m still alive. I almost burned my house down this morning.’ Of
course, he and the rest of the team sitting around me had to hear the explanation
of this outrageous admission. So, although I did not win the lemon award that
day (it went to a moment documented on camera of a fellow team member parked in
a pedestrian crosswalk with people attempting to walk around his car), I was
nominated that week.
You know,
thankfully I could laugh at myself because no real damage was done (well maybe
minus scarring Kelly and Bec forever with my living-room-streaking and near
death experience). Our porch is now starting to look like a dump between my
jeans that are yes, still out there and Bec’s mud-covered-tennis shoes from
Tough Mudder. I might just have to take
Bec up on that challenge to create some artwork – who knows what masterpiece
could be created!?
So yes,
my Friday started out just like any other day, until my smart-self decided to speed
up the drying process with an antiquated heater. Lesson learned the hard way.
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