Is your house on fire?

This is the question my neighbor very politely posed to me this afternoon after she rang my doorbell.  My answer was, "I don't think so!"  Now, if you think about it, these are both funny statements, because if I knew my house was on fire, would I still be in it?  And, why would she be asking me this question if in fact, my house was not on fire? 

So yes, my house was on fire... sort of.  Yes, we are all fine, but boy did we have an eventful afternoon.  After this polite exchange of information, I stepped out my front door to see a rather large plume of black smoke rising from the roof of the house.  After a few minutes of panic (the boys were asleep upstairs... closer to the roof and said black smoke,) my neighbor and I each grabbed a very startled little boy out of their bed and ran them across the driveway to her house.  My husband would also be happy to know that I grabbed the computer on my way out.  We're good, kids and the computer.  It's also worth knowing that N doesn't usually nap with pants on, so he made the dart across the driveway pantless.  That only added to the effect.  

Then we called the fire department, which was an adventure in itself.  You see, we live in off base, base housing, so no one really seemed to know who was responsible for responding.  So just to be on the safe side, both the local British fire department and the base department sent at least two fire trucks each.  Yes, count with me now, there were four fire trucks on our street, as well as four police cars, a fire marshal truck, and several others milling around.  I'm telling you, these people weren't messing around.  Well, except for that they couldn't figure out how to get into the neighborhood.  Finally the gaggle of frantic women clued them in.  

Then in an odd sense of irony, just as all the firemen in Suffolk showed up at our house, the smoke stopped.  Just stopped.  That's when I realized it must be the heater, and as the heat clicked off, the smoke stopped too.  It turns out that the flue from our boiler was almost totally stopped up with soot.  When we opened the boiler closet (I waited for the firemen to do that one - I personally am not a personal fan of heavy black smoke) I could see the soot pushing out the seams in the flue pipe.  So needless to say, the firemen turned off the main switch to the boiler and told me in no uncertain terms to not turn it on.  No problem.  Again, not a big fan of black smoke coming from my house.  

Housing office was called, and the heating contractor said they couldn't fix it until tomorrow.  We were given the option of taking some electric space heaters and turning on the emergency electric hot water heater, or taking a room in billeting.  I opted for the heaters... I'm starting to think that may have been a poor choice.  I'll be carting these things all over the house with me until it's fixed!

So in the middle of all of this, I thought it was important to let my husband know that our house was spewing thick black smoke and every fire truck in East Anglia was here.  When I called he was a little busy, and the guy that answered the phone said something along the lines of, "he's briefing, is it important or can he call you back?"  I think I stuttered something truly cohesive like, "um, our house is on fire," which did seem important enough to interrupt said briefing.  Later he asked me if I took a picture.  Nope, with two kids without shoes, one without pants, literally every neighbor on the street (many of whom I haven't met before - hello, nice to meet you, I'm K, my house is on fire), and a million firemen walking around, I didn't get to a photo.  But I will say, great minds think alike, I did wish I would have grabbed the camera!  

I will say the boys were troopers and were more than happy to watch the action in the arms of neighbors they don't know all that well... again without shoes, or pants.  Classy.  

So it's been a busy afternoon.  I'm off to bed, I'll be carrying my electric space heater upstairs with me!