A FIERY ADVENTURE (AKA: RIP, COMPOST BIN)

You may remember Teddy's amazing display of handiness that resulted in our beautiful compost bin (if you can call a compost bin beautiful, which you really probably can't). Here it is in all its former glory:


Yes, that's right. FORMER glory. The compost bin is no more. But I'm getting ahead of myself; let's start at the beginning.

On Presidents' Day, having the day off from my "real" job, I was sitting in my orange chair, which is right in front of a window:


And as I sat there, on the computer, I heard crackling. Like a fire. Which was strange, because I knew there wasn't a fire in the fireplace. But there I continued to sit. For kind of a while.

Eventually, in some corner of my pea-sized brain, the following thought occurred to me: "Wouldn't it be funny if there was a raging fire right outside, and THAT's what the crackling is, and here I am just sitting here like an asshole listening to it burn?" A few seconds later I realized that NO, that wouldn't be funny at all, it would totally suck, and I sat up and looked over my shoulder out the window.

There was a huge fire right across our back driveway, about 12 feet long with flames reaching 20 feet in the air.

Being from the city and all, I had no idea what the fuck to do, but figured that getting the kids out of the basement playroom right across from the fire was probably a good first priority. Then I grabbed the fire extinguisher we hung in the kitchen when we moved in. I ran outside (very bravely, I still think) and emptied that mofo right into the fiery inferno. The whole thing. And? The fire was like "Thanks for the treat, stupid!" I mean, it ate that fire extinguisher for lunch and kept on burning even harder than before, starting in on a tree and our piles of wood.

At this point it became obvious, even to me, that what one does when you live in the country and there's a fire at your house is CALL 911, EINSTEIN. So I did:


This guy showed up first and I was like, "Oh, great. Where are the fucking fire trucks??? What's an idiot in an SUV going to do? This stupid town and its all-volunteer fire department is going to burn my fucking house down!" Then shit got real:





Here are my kids being traumatized for life watching the whole thing go down out the window:


And here's the ironic shot of William's fire truck with all the real firemen in the background:


And real firemen they were: they put the shit out of that fire. I have mad respect for my little town's all-volunteer fire department that I mistakenly assumed were a bunch of dummies who were going to let my house burn down. Besides, the house is stone anyway, so what the hell was I so worried about?

Anyway, we were all fine, the house was fine, a tree was a little charred but OK... However. There was one casualty:


Having been in two bad car accidents, I learned the hard way that when you call someone to tell them about a disaster the first words out of your mouth are "We're all OK." Not, for example, "We were in a car accident." or "There was a fire at our house." I mean, what kind of asshole would do THAT? (Me.)

Ted took the news pretty well, even when I explained that the compost bin was no more. In fact, he's already started on plans for Compost Bin II. He says he learned a lot from making the first one and sees this as a chance to improve upon it. This sort of positive, look-on-the-bright-side attitude is completely foreign to me, to the point where I sometimes wonder if Ted is, in fact, an alien. (Or I guess I could be the alien... Hmmm. Food for thought.) He and the boys brought a case of beer by the fire department a few days later to say thanks. Ted is definitely going to heaven. Maybe I can be his "+1" cause that's pretty much the only shot I've got.

XOXOXO
ABC

PEOPLE I (TRY NOT TO) JUDGE

HOME SWEET HOME