It's Been a Long Day...

*This was written on Wednesday, but I didn't get a chance to post it until now. I don't have the energy to go through and update everything as if I was really posting it today. Sorry!*

I guess our "day" actually started last night around 10pm. I was on the verge of heading to bed (read: turn off Christmas lights, check to be sure doors are locked, check on Garrett, take out contacts, take prenatal vitamins, get dressed for bed) when Keith asked me if I could smell something burning. I said no (which is pretty typical, but being pregnant, my sense of smell has been stronger than normal). He jumped up and immediately started going through the house checking things out. He said "Something is on fire!"


Now, I'm not sure what kind of person I am in a stressful or panicked situation. There have been few times where I was seriously stressed and have seen how I handle it and those times certainly vary. In high school, my sister and I were rear ended and my instinctive reaction was to jump out of the car and take off to go punch the guy that ran into us. I don't know why. It seriously was an instinct. Obviously he didn't intentionally hit us. Grace immediately jumped out of the driver's seat and intercepted me before I hauled off and hit the other driver. Another time my family was on the way to church and another driver ran a red light and we hit them. My sister Christie hit the windshield because of it. Initially I gave the driver of the other car my "what were you thinking!" face complete with hand gestures (not THOSE kind of hand gestures) and then jumped out of the car to get ice for Christie at the gas station close by. However, when our house was hit by a tornado, I had a hard time keeping myself together in order to call Keith and tell him what happened. It was a short period of time but then I got myself under control and managed to make a few coherent phone calls to the insurance agent and our home builder.

So you can see why I don't really know what my response is in stressful situations. Obviously when you hear your husband basically say that your house is on fire, it constitutes stress. But my first instinct was just to calm Keith down. He started running all over, unplugging everything because he said it was definitely an electrical fire. So I went from room to room unplugging my Christmas candle lights that I have in each window. Once he decided it wasn't any of those things plugged in that were causing the smell, he climbed into the attic to see if he saw smoke up there. No smoke in the attic. As soon as he walked back into the house, he said the smell was very strong and he knew something was wrong. So we started walking around the house sniffing the appliances that stay plugged in 24/7. We finally narrowed it down to the kitchen appliances and then eventually focused on the refrigerator.


We pulled the fridge out from the wall (easier than I thought it would be, by the way). And Keith started looking it over, while I freaked out over the mess that was under and behind the fridge. I remembered spilling an entire bottle of juice awhile back and apparently quite a bit of it went under the refrigerator without me realizing it. So I hauled out the vacuum cleaner to clean up all the dust, dead ants (they try to colonize in our house every summer), and cobwebs. Then I got out my Shark Steam Mop (I love this thing!) and went to work on the sticky, caked-on juice. You know, I got all of the juice up using just my steam mop, no chemicals were required. I thought that was pretty dang awesome.


Sorry, this isn't an infomercial. Anyway, Keith decided there was definitely something wrong with the fridge so he started pulling various panels off (something I would be utterly fearful of doing because I would probably break one in the process) and then he began vacuuming underneath the fridge. That was gross. I did not realize how much dust accumulates under your refrigerator. I now want to pull out my stove and dishwasher and do this same kind of cleaning.


Bottom line, Keith did not trust the fridge to stay plugged in all night without potentially shorting out and burning us down as we slept. So we left it unplugged. There were a few discussions over whether or not we should do something with the food inside, but seeing as how we don't have a deep freezer and also don't have a large cooler, we didn't have any options that didn't involve driving to Walmart at midnight. We decided to leave the food and hope everything kept overnight. Keith found all the fridge's paperwork and decided to call Sears to see if they could come out and fix it today because their service number says to call day or night. I probably should have pointed out that the odds were pretty good that if you called in the middle of the night you were going to get someone in another country, but I was too tired to really think clearly. So Keith ends up talking to a man in India. If you know Keith, that's really not the best thing. At one point he looks at me and says (without covering up the the phone) "Do I really want to give my credit card information to somebody in India?) Finally the guy agreed to book him for a service appointment without prepayment, but it wasn't going to be until Friday! That was probably punishment for Keith refusing to give out his credit card number.

So we woke up this morning and Keith found a local guy to come out and check on our fridge. In the mean time he ran to Walmart and got the biggest cooler they had (which is ridiculously huge) along with several bags of ice. We decided to wait until the repairman had looked at it before we started moving food around. Everything still felt cold in the fridge and all the food in the freezer was still frozen solid. Thank goodness this happened in December and not August!

Once the repairman got here, I took Garrett into his bedroom to keep him out of the way. He was super thrilled that we spent our time in there cleaning and organizing his toys and closet. After a couple of hours the repairman left and our fridge was fixed!! Some starter something or other had gone out and he changed it. Thank goodness! So we didn't have to empty the fridge and now it's all clean underneath it as well.

Since Keith was already home for the day, we decided to spend that time in the bedroom. Don't let your minds get too far into the gutter. We reorganized our furniture. Since baby #2 will be joining us in June, we've been doing some rearranging of things. One of them being that the treadmill has moved into our bedroom. However, with our old arrangement there wasn't anywhere to put the treadmill where it would be relatively out of the way. So we moved our bed to a different wall and the treadmill barely fit into another corner of the room that was now free. Thank goodness our's is one of those space-saver kinds where the running base folds up because otherwise it would not fit at all.

Eventually I'll post pictures of our "new" bedroom", but I still need to clean out the bookshelf. (Keith asked me last night why I had that many books. Once I've read them I should get rid of them. I told him that I don't say that about his guns, so he can't say that about my books. All the books I own are books that I enjoy reading multiple times. Yes, there are a lot of them, but hey, they're cheaper than most other hobbies, so they're staying.) I also want to hang curtains and pictures in there. Yes, we've lived here for 6 years and haven't hung one picture or curtain in our bedroom. I hang my head in decorator's shame. I promise I have the curtains and the pictures to hang, they just haven't made it to where they belong.

We wrapped up the day with me going to MOPS (Mothers of Preschools for those unfamiliar) at 6:00pm and Keith going to a church finance committee meeting at 7:30pm. Now it's time to kick back and watch "Life". Ironic, isn't it?