I shit the house on fire. A guest post by FWB

FWB (our dear friend Fireworks Bruce) was the first person to wake on the fateful April morning. Here is his guest blog post. He is shown in this picture.

"I Shit the House on fire

A CPAP is not a sexy thing on a 45-year old obese man, but it makes for a good night's sleep, so I cut it a break for getting me off the LDs' couch first thing in the morning. I'm a light sleeper, so I'm pretty sure I'm the first one up, and a short shuffle into the kitchen confirms that. Continuing down the hall to the bathroom, I fight with the drawstring on my fleece pajamas while hopping from foot to foot in a hilarious and desperate rendition of the pee-pee dance. 90 seconds later and I'm walking back into the living room, where I attempt to turn on the TV, and after 3 minutes of unfruitful fumbling with the touch controls in the dimness of the morning, I give up and crawl back into the couch. Where it becomes immediately apparent that maybe I left the bathroom a hair too soon. Snatching up my iPad, I bolt for the bathroom, and settle down to some light reading while I wait for nature to take its course. 5 minutes later and I'm out the door again, this time bumping into Shane as I turn the corner, where he looks at the ceiling and says, "It's really smoky in here, isn't it?"

I look up myself, and realize the smudgy vision I thought was the result of a late night of drinking and early morning strenuous "exercise" was actually a moderately thick layer of smoke gathering beneath the ceiling.

As if they heard our conversation, the house fire alarms start blaring.

My morning brain tried doing its morning brain things, and the next thing I knew, Shane had donned a headlamp and gone into the basement. I crawled into the couch again once more, but was up on my feet quickly when Shane came running up the basement stairs not-quite-yelling, "There's a fire in the basement!"

Shane sprinted for the garage, and I ran for the office. I met him coming back through the kitchen with one of those industrial-sized fire extinguishers the size of a mailbox, while I had grabbed the thermos-sized extinguisher from the office. He tore around the corner and was down into the basement and out of sight when I got to the top of the stairs. Smoke was at this point pouring out of the pitch-black basement, and when I flicked the light switch, there was no response. I ran into the kitchen, looking for a headlamp, under the toaster, in an empty can of coffee, behind the fruit bowl, all the usual sorts of places you'd find a headlamp when the house was burning down.

Shane came back up the stairs and I shoved the smaller fire extinguisher into his hands as he yelled, full volume this time, "There's a fire. We need to call 911 and get everybody out of the house!" He ran up the stairs and I could hear him calmly but firmly waking up Madeleine, while I threw all of my belongings around the living room, searching for my phone. After exhausting all the usual hiding places for my phone, I realized my searching had been slowed considerably by the fact that I was only using one hand, because the other one was clutching my phone. From upstairs, I could hear Madeleine saying, "I don't even know who's here? Who's sleeping here?"

"ABBY!!" I shouted up to her, hoping that Abby would hear me even if Madeleine didn't, while I tried to make this weird black rectangular thing in my hand do something, but I couldn't quite remember what the thing was I was trying to make it do: tell time? add numbers? It looked sort of calculator-y, what with it's 9-point pattern on the front. Oh right! It was my phone! I had to put in the passcode and call 911! What the FUCK was my passcode?!? Wait, was this my phone? What if it was someone else's phone and I put in my passcode? Would I only be able to talk to their friends?

Shane came down the stairs, still calm, exuding competence, and waved me toward the door. "Just get outside. I'm calling 911." Thank fuck for that, because I couldn't call 911 with this stupid calculator! I ran the 7 feet required to get me out the door, then turned around and ran back, threw all my shit into my suitcase, slammed it shut without latching it, and chucked it out onto the porch, like I was boarding the last lifeboat on the Titanic. I took the three steps to the porch, leaving the door open to clear out some of the smoke, and saw Abby come down the stairs without actually taking a single step. Madeleine follows, carrying something my brain immediately edits out, but I do notice that neither of them are attired for the 30 degree morning, nor am I, so I step back inside the house and put on my shoes and grab my coat, all while standing next to the door. Shane quickly joins us on the lawn, as Madeleine literally hops around the yard, screaming, "Sirens! I just want to hear sirens!!" until the first tanker truck appears."