(This is actually not the first time I have heard weird noises in the house and thought it was an intruder, but in fairness, there has always been a reason for the noises and I wasn't just hearing things!)
Jenn: I think there's someone in the house!
Ed: (Doesn't move from the couch or look up from the computer) There's no one in the house.
Jenn: No, really. I think there is someone in the house!
Ed: (Sees the mylar balloons in the kitchen moving) It's those balloons moving. (In hindsight, the balloons were moving in the heat draft from the fire - they should not have been moving at all)
Jenn: (Hearing a louder noise and feeling more ill at ease) No there is someone in the house!
Whereupon I jumped up and ran for the door to go outside to scream and alert everyone to the intruder. Ed stood up and slowly walked towards the basement door to calm my fears. :) What a good, kind husband.
As I'm opening the front door, I think to myself "Hmmm it smells like smoke." I step out onto my front porch and there is a strange man running up to my house and he says "Did you know your house is on fire?" I take a step back and turn around and sure enough there is a big orange glow shining behind my house!
I yell "Ed! The house is on fire!" and I run back into the house (not as crazy as it sounds -- there was no visible smoke yet in the house), I grab my little dog Taco, my pocketbook, and my work computer (I know, I wish I had grabbed some scrapbooks instead, but I wasn't thinking and it just happened to be right there by my pocketbook) and I run out to the curb where the good samaritan is on the phone to 911.
I turn around and realize my husband has NOT followed me out of the house. I thrust my dog at the stranger and ask him to hold the dog so that I can go find my husband and I run back to the front porch of the house. The glow of fire is visible when peering into the open front door and a little white smoke is lazily drifting out of our home. Because of these signs, I don't go back in the house, but I stand on the steps and start hollering for Ed .... there is no answer. I'm sure now that Ed has fallen into the fire, hit his head, and is dead. (Yes, I am a catastrophizer.) I run to the side of the house to go to the back yard to see if he is there, but by this time the flames are licking around the side of the house from under the eaves and they are too close to the gate for me to go through it safely ....
So I scream. You know that panicked, crazy person scream that people let out in the movies and that you swear that is not what would happen in real life? I let out that scream. I scream my husbands name praying that he has not fallen victim to the grasping fingers of fire that are destroying our home with their voracious hunger. Miracle of miracles he answers me. "I'm here." He says this with a tone of irritation in his voice. Like I am interrupting him. I find out later in fact he was trying to get to the garden hose and get it hooked up to try and contain the fire. So he had been IGNORING ME when I was calling his name and worrying that he was dead! I am so glad that he is ok, that I'm not even mad that he caused me such panic. But for next time, if the house is not on fire, I tell him he has to answer me before I have to start screaming like a banshee!
