Saturday will be 5 years since we lost everything in our fire at our apartment on Glenwood Street. It’s kind of a morbid anniversary to remember, but it’s not something that’s easily forgotten.  I had just finished doing the wash and was bringing bags of clean laundry upstairs when I heard the smoke detector in the basement start to go off.  I got up to my apartment and stood in my doorway for a minute, listening to the beeping of the smoke detector.  I threw my laundry in my apartment and turned around and went downstairs.  The beeping didn’t seem to be coming from either of the basement apartments.  I went back upstairs and paused in my doorway.  The woman across the hallway opened her door and looked at me.  “Do you… do you hear something, do you smell, something?” I asked her.  “I smell smoke,” she replied.  I looked down at the floor of her apartment and saw smoke rising and I pointed.  “Do you have a land line?” I asked her.  She nodded her head and I told her that I only had a cell phone so she better call 911 since cell phones weren’t e911 compliant.  Why did I think of that at that moment?  Who knows.

I left my neighbor as she was dialing 911 and I went to the front two apartments and then upstairs to knock on the apartment doors.  “Hello!  The smoke detector is going off in the basement and I think there’s a fire.  We’ve called 911 and we have to leave the building!” I shouted at the doors.  No one answered.  It was early evening on a Sunday in June – no one was home.  I went back down to the first floor and walked down the hallway towards my apartment.  I went downstairs to the basement to knock on the two apartment doors downstairs.  No answers again.  I turned back towards the stairs and paused.  I looked down the hallway towards the back of the basement and curiousity took hold.  I saw smoke curling up in the light streaming through the window at the back of the basement.  I took two steps towards the back and then two things happened that made me stop.  The lights suddenly went out in the building (leaving me standing in a dark, smokey basement) and the neighbor upstairs that I’d been talking to ran down the hallway to the front of the building yelling, “GET OUT! GET OUT! THERE’S A FIRE!!”  I turned around and hurried back up the stairs.

I got in my apartment and stared at the smoke now coming up through my floorboards.  I was frozen for a second trying to decide if it was really happening.  I looked around for my cat, Molly.  She ran away from me as I rushed towards her.  I finally grabbed her and was able to wrestle her into a soft sided cat carrier (word of advice: keep a hard cat carrier around… stuffing a cat into a fabric cat carrier while you’re trying to rush out of a burning building is not easy or fun).  I grabbed my car keys and my purse, which I slung over my body, and tucked the cat carrier under my arm.  As I was leaving my apartment, my phone rang and, oddly enough, I answered it.  I said hello and then listened to Beck for a minute – I have no idea what she was saying – and then said, “Yeah, um, I’ve gotta go… my apartment’s on fire.”

I got outside and put the cat in my car and cracked the windows so she wouldn’t suffocate in the oppressive heat.  I walked around to the side of the building, watching the smoke get heavier and I called Alex, who was working at Mohawk Ambulance that day.

“Yeah?” he answered – he was on a call.

“Hey Hon -” I started and he interrupted me, “Babe, I gotta go, we just got called out.”

“Yeah?” I asked, “Is it for a fire?”

“Yeah,” he responded.

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s our house.”

I continued walking around to the front of the building and got there right about the time the first fire truck came screaming up the street.  When they asked where the fire was, I told them that it was in the back left corner of the basement, and that they’d be better off going through the garage door (which was on the basement level) than going in the front door because to get to the basement from the first floor you’d have to go all the way down the hallway to get to the stairs, then come down the stairs and then turn around and go all the way to the back of the building (a giant Z, basically).  I was ignored.  Alex arrived in the ambulance and stood with me, looking at the building.  We watched for the next few hours while the fire got worse.  Black smoke billowed out of the windows.  Flames licked the sides of the building.  I was standing by my neighbors back porch when something in her apartment exploded, sending a couple firefighters sailing backwards as they were attempting to enter the building from that entrance.  Alex and I stood and watched as everything we owned was destroyed.

I remember thinking that it all seemed very surreal.  I didn’t believe that it was happening when I was still inside the apartment – I actually remember thinking that I was being stupid for getting the cat out since it was “just smoke” in the basement.  Turns out, where there’s smoke there actually is fire.  I’d only been out of the building for less than five minutes when the little bit of smoke had turned into black smoke and flames.

Now, five years later, the fire is still a part of our lives.  I don’t think there’s a week that goes by that I don’t find myself saying, “…yeah we used to have [insert item here] but it burned.”  There are things that we lost that I still miss.  Particular items of clothing stand out in my mind – a blue and gold button down peasant shirt, the Guinness fitted rugby shirt that I got in Dublin, a hot pink t-shirt (and the hot pink bra that matched), a pink ruched button down… I definitely dressed better before the fire.  Sigh.  I miss our Pottery Barn-esque khaki slipcovered overstuffed sofa and the bright red armoire our TV was in.  I miss the brand new dark brown pub height butterfly leaf table from our dining room.

Sometimes I look at the pictures from when we were able to get back into the apartment and remember the things that we used to have.  Everything looks horror scene awful in the pictures.  It was horror scene awful – and it smelled terrible.  We had to catalog everything for the insurance claim.  I had a mini tape recorder and I walked around the apartment speaking out everything that I saw.  All around me was the wreckage of what used to be our stuff.  It was a hot, humid, nasty week in June and it smelled terrible.  What an awful task that was.  I look back on it now and I can’t believe that, at 26, I was able to handle all that.

And that’s one of the good things that resulted from the fire.  I realized that I can handle pretty much anything.  I’m one of those people who is calm in a crisis and can deal with the aftermath.  I proved that again earlier this year (unfortunately).  The other positive thing that resulted from the fire was the solidification of my relationship with Alex.  It helped us realize that we were a unit – a strong, solid couple who got through tough times without falling apart.  Alex told me when he proposed that it was really the fire that made him realize that we were going to be together forever.  And really, what could be a better result of a terrible event than that?

That’s what I think.

I’m back on the Weight Watchers wagon again. I’m not sure how this time is going to be different from the last time I decided I was back on the wagon, or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that when I made it to lifetime membership which was actually my second attempt at Weight Watchers, having started and lost a lot of weight the first time around in 2002.

I’ve been good at gaining weight and I’ve been good at losing it in the past, but obviously I haven’t learned yet how to keep it off. I guess that’s what I hope for this time around. Actually, honestly, what I really hope for this time around is that I’ll have to stop going in a month because I’ll be pregnant. Sigh. Well, I guess every month that doesn’t happen is a month that I’ll hopefully be losing weight. So hopefully I can focus on the weight loss thing in the meantime and the pregnancy thing will come when it comes and I won’t be so focused on it until then. Yeah, right.

So, hopefully, this time back on the wagon I can finally find my way off of the wheel and climb up on top and stay there.

What Alex was referring to was my offense against red wine everywhere that occurred last week: I’d opened a bottle, poured a glass, and promptly forgot about the rest of the bottle, which sat open on the counter for a few days until he got home from the academy. What I immediately thought was, “yep, I shouldn’t be allowed to have any. I should be almost 8 months pregnant, getting ready to have a baby in July.” Alex had unwittingly tossed out a landmine that I fell on hard.

I kind of thought I was over it. I mean, I’d been referring to it as “our quitter baby… our little emo fetus who couldn’t take life” when I needed to talk about it. Joking is my way of dealing with things and I thought it was dealt with. Guess not. I’m really, really, really not looking forward to July. July is usually a really great month for me – I love fireworks and family so the Fourth is one of my favorite holidays, my birthday is in July, and our wedding anniversary – but this year I’m afraid of July. I’m afraid I’m going to get really depressed towards the end of July when our due date comes and goes and we’re no closer to being “back on track” and pregnant again.

I don’t feel like this all the time. Most days I can be pretty positive and tell myself that it’ll happen when the time is right and that next time will be great and we won’t go through this again and everything happens for a reason and blah blah blah. But then I’ll step on a landmine and suddenly I’ll be consumed with fears over having multiple miscarriages or having difficulties getting pregnant again. I get frustrated that it’s taking so long for it to happen again (it’s been four months now since I’ve been physically able to try) since it was so easy for us before. I get worried that it means something that it’s taking a long time now (when, rationally, I know that it’s probably just because our timing is just not right with Alex being away every week at the academy). I stare at my BBT charts and get nervous about what signs they might be giving me and I think, “My waking temps seem much lower than a normal person’s… Could I have some sort of hormone deficiency?! Is that what caused the miscarriage?! Does it mean that it’ll happen again?!” I got so spun up over thoughts like that the other day that I called the doctor’s office that I want to switch to to make an appointment, and the first thing they had for the doctor that everyone raved about was in August. I took the appointment, and then called my current doctor’s office to see if I could get in there sooner and the first thing they had was July. I took that appointment too and then hung up the phone and cried.

I get so frustrated because everyone tells me not to worry. Just calm down and let nature take its course. Que sera, sera, right? Yeah, I wish I could be like that. I don’t know how to not be neurotic, though. I try and tell myself to not worry about it until after Alex graduates, to just stop taking my waking temps and put it all out of my head and not focus on it again until after June. I actually started off this month pretty good in that respect. I was still charting my temps because that’s just what I do – what I have been doing for almost two years now. But just when I thought I was out, I got pulled back in. I thought I saw a “sign” that made me think that we had a chance this month. I actually even had a positive looking test, which turned out to be a false positive. That pretty much sucked a lot. I can obsess enough on my own without “proof”.

So, I haven’t come to any conclusions writing this out. I haven’t solved any problems, but I do feel a little better for now. Guess I just needed a little whine.

Here’s what I’ve been doing for the last hour or so: researching cleaning guidelines and developing daily and weekly checklists for myself to keep on top of the cleaning that must be done. Yep, I’m that much of a procrastinator and that much of a geek. I found a Daily Quick Cleaning Checklist on RealSimple.com. I was like, “This is great! I can totally use this! But… I can’t use it interactively from my iPhone. Boo!” So I decided to create a Google Docs Form that I can access from my iPhone and check off tasks as I do them. But then I decided that really wasn’t enough. I needed something to guide me on the big stuff – the cleaning that needs to be done weekly, monthly, and so on. I found the perfect blend of Geek and Housekeeping… The Periodic Table of Cleaning. This is also from Real Simple, but it’s no longer on their website. I downloaded and modified it so that it’s on one page and printed it out and stuck it on my fridge. And I was like, “This is great! I can totally use this! But… I can’t use it interactively from my iPone. Boo!” So, you guessed it, I created a Google Docs Form that I can access from my iPhone and check off tasks as I do them. Nerdvana.

My Daily Quick Cleaning Checklist
My Weekly Deep Cleaning Checklist

I really want to create Monthly, Quarterly, Bi-Annual, and Annual checklists as well – and I’m sure I will – but I really, really need to stop all this planning and actually start cleaning. Boo cleaning…

But anyway, back to the point. So I was watching that movie while getting some work done and was loving my nerdy setup and then just a few minutes into the movie I realized that my version of multi-tasking was going to really pale in comparison to what my future self’s version of multi-tasking is. You know, when I’m a mom. Sigh… No brooding tonight.

But I’m awake and, pathetically, that’s my default activity. Brooding. I wish I could change my default to something productive, like cleaning. Because, seriously, there is some cleaning to be done. I haven’t gotten into a good routine of doing chores on a regular basis. I’m going to attempt to this week, though. Tomorrow is dusting and tidying, Tuesday will be floors, and Wednesday will be bathrooms. I’m thinking I should create a “chore chart” for myself – stickers and all – so that I have a goal of exactly when I want to do things and get a little prize (weeee! stickers!) when I actually do them.

Of course, that’s just me overplanning and underdoing again. I’ll spend hours, days, weeks, months coming up with a plan for something as mundane as chores, but will I ever actually do the chores? Of course not. The planning is the funnest part!

Sigh. No more brooding or planning or not cleaning tonight. Time for bed!

Unfortunately, I’m just not a patient girl. So, the fact that my body has basically conspired against me to keep us from being able to really start to try again in earnest is torture. It doesn’t help that I literally know half a dozen pregnant girls right now – a constant reminder of what I had and what I want back. Fortunately, I’ve been able to avoid being bitter… I’m just impatient! I know that once next time comes around I’m going to immediately switch to being scared out of my mind that it will end in another miscarriage and vocally fatalistic about that potentiality while remaining secretly optimistic which will lead to being absolutely crushed if it does happen again… But for now I’ve decided to just focus on the getting to the next time around.

Which leads me to my whine. I feel like the whole process is on hold. According to my calculations (because, as I realized today, I track pretty much everything about myself – my thoughts here on my blog, my food intake, weight, and exercise activity on DailyBurn, and my waking temps on FertilityFriend), we really only have one more chance to try when Alex is home on the weekends from the Academy and then after that the timing is just wrong. So, basically, if it doesn’t happen for us this month, we’ll have to wait until after he graduates in June. So here’s my whine: I’m home and lonely and probably have nothing to look forward to in the near future. Boo! Life on hold sucks.

I tackled a couple of simple projects today. I sewed a grocery bag keeper and a tissue box cover.

Grocery Bag Holder

Tissue Box Cover

I’m really just learning the whole sewing thing, so neither of these projects came out perfectly. The seams on the grocery bag holder don’t line up, which annoys me, and the corners of my tissue box cover are sloppy and not right, but I’m still pretty impressed with my efforts. My encounter with the corners today reinforced my suspicion that I’m only going to get so far on the whole self-teaching thing, so I think I’m going to look into sewing classes. I would like to just work with someone to get some of the basics down so that I could feel more confident in tackling new projects and trying to make some things for gifts.

I think the next thing I’ll tackle will be the window treatments in the family room. We haven’t decided on a color for that room yet, so I think picking out some awesome fabric for window treatments would be a great place to start out. The family room is such a low-pressure room to decorate, too, so I think I can get away with some really funky fun fabric. I’d love some sort of aqua and orange combination. I’m sure Alex will nix it, but he’s going to be away for most of the next few months so he won’t have much of a chance to prevent it!