The Great Fire of 2007

While getting ready to meet some friends the other night, Sage or Skye (we will never know which one) almost set the entire house on fire.

Matt was trying to get into the holiday spirit by turning on our gas fireplace. We NEVER use our fireplace. I can count on one hand how many times we have used it. Anyway, we don't have a screen in front of the fireplace because we don't use it and because it is horribly ugly. While Matt was in the shower and I in our room one of our pets pushed (sometimes when they get excited they run and slide on Sage's bed across the hardwood) Sage's bed into the fire place. I noticed Sage walk into our room and then layed down on her other bed. A few minutes later she got up and started sniffing the air. I thought something was up, but then told myself to ignore it because I was probably being overly paranoid. But then I thought maybe I did smell something funny. So I got up and as I headed out of our bedroom door I noticed an orange glow coming from the living room. AAAAAAAHHHHH! I turned the corner and realized that Sage's bed was on fire. Her bed is one of those memory foam things from Sam's Club. All synthetic fibers that were catching on fire very quickly. I ran over (in my terry cloth bathrobe) and picked the bed up. One half of the bed wasn't on fire, yet. I thought, "I need to carry this outside." But as I turned to carry it outside I realized that little pieces of blazing foam were falling to the ground. This wouldn't work. I would set the dining room table, all of the dining room chairs, and the coat rack on fire before I would finally get the bed outside. Plan B. Drop the bed, run into the bathroom, alert Matt to the fire situation, run to the kitchen and grab the extinguisher, meet Matt (now wet with his towel wrapped around his waist) in the living room, pull the pin from the extinguisher, hand it to Matt and hope Matt knows how to use it. He did. Within a few seconds the fire was out. Our house was covered with a thin layer of white dust, but the fire was out. Here are the pictures.We began clean-up before this picture was taken, so this is actually better than it looked immediately after the fire. The black stuff is the sticky residue left-over from the melted styrofoam.