Zzzzzzzz...

First, I have to talk about something that has nothing to do with this post. All you people who have been pregnant...is it normal to feel ENORMOUS at 12 weeks? Oh my WORD! I'm like, I can't suck it in, I feel bloated and huge, and it's that point where one could look at me and go, "Is sheeeee????? Or iiisssn't sheeee?" and then conclude I'm probably just "packing on a few." I step on the scale at work and I haven't gained a pound yet. But if I don't make a conscious effort to "suck it in," I could easily pass for several weeks farther along than I am. Ugh!!!! So I've finally just given in to the maternity clothes. This is partly because due to some very awesome people at work, my closet is FILLING with hand-me-downs. Jeans, dress pants, capris, cute tops...way cuter stuff than I would normally be wearing. So there you have it. I've finally caved to the elastic. I LOVE the ones that stretch clear up to your collar bone!!! hahahaha! You may never find me NOT wearing maternity clothes AGAIN!!!!!

Now to my story.

It's 12:30am. I wake up to pee. For the second time since I went to bed at 10. I was just up about an hour ago, stumbled down the stairs, slogged back up, covered the dog with a blanket because the AC was blasting (it gets pretty hot in the upstairs) and I could tell she was cold, and fell back into bed. Then I woke up again, dang it. Laid there for a long time trying to figure out if I REALLY needed to pee again. That's when I looked up and noticed that the window at the other end of the room seemed awful bright (the window over our head is covered with a thick blanket at night - we like it DARK). Odd. Put my head back down, still contemplating if I really want to go all the way back downstairs.......MAN, something's really rumbling out there. Train whistle in the background - is that just a MASSIVE train I hear a few blocks away?? WHY is it so bright in that window? Are the neighbor boys sitting in our driveway with the brights on??? Oh for cryin' out LOUD - I DO have to pee - arghhhh....

So I get up and make my way for the stairs. Overcome with curiosity and mildly annoyed (I'm just certain someone's using our driveway to idle their car with the brights on), I peek through the blinds toward our neighbors' house - which sits nearly on top of our driveway, about 15 or 20 feet away.

There are three fire engines in the street.

Police cars.

All of their strobes are on.

A floodlight in the front yard. Like a dang movie set.

Firefighters swiping huge flashlights through the upstairs bedroom just spitting distance from where I'm peeking through the blinds.

Gobs of people milling in the street...actually, the entire street is blocked off.

I pull back, snap the blinds shut. Naw. Run downstairs, pull open the big blinds in the kitchen. Well shoot! It's the same scene! Our neighbors are sitting on the sidewalk in front of our house, the lady with her head in her hands. Firefighters are peeling off parts of the house and tossing them on the front yard.

So I run upstairs and wake up Matt. I contemplated NOT waking him up - I mean, he needs his sleep - but for heaven's sakes, I could not justify waking up in the morning and saying, "Oh, BTW, I got up to pee last night and the neighbor's house was on FIRE. Didja sleep well?" So I woke him up. We went downstairs and got some stuff on, and went out to the family on the sidewalk to see if they were okay, if they needed anything, etc. By that point it was pretty much in cleanup phase, but still - the siding on the front of the house was charred, the windows were burned out, there was a hole in the roof - it was a pretty significant little blaze. They said it started in the attic and everyone got out okay. We stood there for a few minutes taking in the melee, feeling not just a little bit useless and gawky, and then turned around and headed back inside. It took a while to settle ourselves down, and it was about another hour before the engines rumbled away and the lights went out.

Fast-forward to the next morning. I get to work and half the people there already know there was a fire on our street. They heard the sirens and thought the world was ending or something. A picture on the Holland Sentinel's website shows the house with three firemen climbing up the roof, smoke pouring out the attic window. They extinguished the thing in like ten minutes.

And we slept through just about the whole thing! People miles away woke up to the sirens, and they landed on top of our HOUSE, and we slept through. Even the DOG! Molly didn't even peel herself OFF her BED until well AFTER Matt and I had gotten up and headed outside! People, strobes, fire engines, floodlights, and all...and we're snoring away. Wow.

Had I not woken up and pondered my need to micturate, all three of us would have remained comatose through the entire event. I would have gotten up and gotten ready for work, and in stepping outside to walk to work would have thought to myself, "Did someone light a match out here?"

Hopefully I'm a little more, um, wake-able in November!!! hahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!