Kaboom: Story of an almost house fire

This week certainly started with a bang and hasn't let up. First of all, the kids, OK, my son opened the door onto my head the other day at full speed and I had a huge bump, now a nice green bruise that really hurts. But that's OK, nothing I can't live with. It's good to have some sense literally knocked into one's head now and again right? Another count-your-many-blessings moments happened this morning but it could have been a lot more disastrous than having one's head hit with a door.

This morning....a sock caught on fire. Yep, one little sock that almost burned the entire house down. It's a long story. But basically, because I dry my clothes on the line and do not own a dryer (and they are often still not dry the next morning with the cold weather), I sometimes throw a pair of socks in the microwave for say, one minute to warm them up for whomsoever's tootsies they will be covering.

Well, I did that this morning.....put a pair of the husband's socks in for one minute to warm up and I heard the timer go off and I just left them in there to sit for a moment. It sounds weird, I know, but it works (and I even put them on a plate just like food).

I went outside to bring in the rest of the socks to finish warming up in the house during the day, and I walked in to a house full of smoke and the kids saying "what is that smell?" Mr. Awesome (aka the husband) was running around looking for something on fire. He found it- in the shoe and sock basket.

A sock, like a glowing ember, smoking and literally singed with fiery red holes with the fibres burning and spreading, smoking more and more and growing into a flame. I grabbed the sock and carried it to the sink, turned the water on full blast and then drowned it in a full sink.

Mr. Awesome probably would have kept holding the burning sock until it caught his hand on fire- he one time set himself on fire in England while lighting a barbecue but that's a story for another day. He likes fire....a little too much and so do a lot of other English people I observed while living in England. There is a town not far from where we lived where people run through the streets carrying barrels on fire! I have no idea why; I should find it on Wikipedia.

Anyway, I'm guessing Lilz pushed the "quick on" button on the microwave again and started the socks smoking....and then she took them out and put them in the basket by the front door (she's really into putting things where they go) and once the oxygen/air hit the almost on fire sock it actually started to catch on fire. If we hadn't found it when we did the whole basket would have caught on fire....it was starting to burn a hole in the basket, and who knows from there what could have happened.

The basket with the little burned hole

I'm posting some photos to show all of this...because it almost sounds made up. But seriously, this is how life goes in our house. There's never a dull moment! It reminds of the time last year when Lilz put a plastic plate from her tea set in our real oven (I had no idea it was in there), I went to turn it on to bake a cake, the plastic melted and set on fire and we had to call the firemen for the first of many times now.

What remains of a once white sock

This morning after the sock on fire incident, Mr. Awesome said to us, "you guys are determined to burn this house down aren't you?" Ummm, no, we just have a very imaginative little girl who mommy obviously needs to watch like a hawk a little bit more.....because she of course must have inherited the pyromaniac gene from her British pyromaniac father. The microwave is now going to be unplugged unless in actual use by the way.

All I can say in closing is...thank goodness for small miracles.