Up In Smoke

Have you ever been in a situation where you just can't believe it's really happening?  Like you are watching a scene of your life play out in front of you, but it's not really happening?

That's what the next 12 hours felt like.

Walking up to Justin and Maddie, while firefighters and emergency persnnel coming and going from our house was surreal.  Trying to balance finding out what happened while comforting and protecting Maddie from the possibilities was exhausting. 

My mind never stopped.   We're all okay. This can't really be happening.  What caused this?  Why us?  This year sucks.  We're all okay.  How bad can it be?  They were only gone an hour.  How bad can it be?  We're all okay.  We're all okay.  We're all okay.  This sucks.

The firefighters came over and told us it was a relatively small fire.  Thank God.  But there was a lot of smoke damage.  How bad can smoke be?  And it was still really hot in the house.  Wait- you just told us it was a small fire.  How can it still be hot?  And that they had to shut off the water and electricity.  I guess that means we won't be staying at the house tonight. .  .

We waited until we got clearance to go into the house. 

We walked into a nightmare. 

And the nightmare was named "Smoke."  And Smoke is kinda a bitch.