Fired UP!

So, fire has been strangely insistent on intruding into my life lately. I’m not sure if the sun is in Gemini (my sign) or if I’ve managed to unwittingly piss of some obscure fire god or what, but I’ve had two very scary “almost burned the house down” incidents at my house in the last week.

Scenario del fuego numero uno:

Monday night, I brought the kidlet (although I guess he’s not really a kidlet any more but is actually more of a kid at 6 years old than a kidlet any more…and for those who are new here, kidlet is the diminutive form of kid, the feminine of which would be kidlette, but since mine is masculine, I go with kidlet and WOW was it a bad idea to eat M&M’s while drinking a Diet Coke because look at the brain damaged tangent escaping from my keyboard…) home from a really nice playdate at a friend’s house.

We were both tired and it was cold (it having been the day of the el giganto rainstorm around here) so I turned on the gas fireplace and settled the kidlet at the kitchen table with some hot chocolate and crackers for a snack.

I walked into the living room to get a piece of paper (was gone all of 60 seconds or so) and came back to find said kidlet still (or so I thought) seated at the table finishing his snack. He put his dishes in the sink and left the room to go play and I began tidying up.

As I approached the fireplace, I saw a bunch of black stuff all over the tile hearth and noticed that the fire had been turned off. The warning bells went off immediately and I called the kidlet in to ask if he had touched the fireplace. Of course, he said, “no.” After a bit more prodding (and okay, some stern words), he finally fessed up to what had happened.

In the 60 seconds I was gone from the room, he’d gotten a sheet of stickers from the bookcase, opened the glass fireplace doors, and stuck the sheet of stickers into the fire to “see what would happen.”

When the obvious result occurred, he panicked and dropped the burning paper onto the (THANK GOD) tile hearth where it miraculously missed catching his pants or the nearby fabric bird cage cover on fire.

He then closed the fireplace doors, flipped the switch that turned the fire off and went calmly back to drinking his hot chocolate at the table before I came back in the room.

Never made a peep during the whole incident. Had I not found the ashes and noticed the fire was turned off, I never would have even known what happened.

Kidlet has nerves of steel, I tell you.

Needless to say, Mr. Nerves of Steel went straight to his room and bed with no dessert right then and there and was lectured sternly the entire time by Ms. I-don’t-know-whether-to-hug-him-or-strangle-him (aka me).

I went to the store the next day and bought three different types of safety locks for that stupid fireplace only to get them all home and discover that none of them will fit the handles on the fireplace doors.

And he’s only 6.

Sigh.

Scenario del fuego numero dos to be posted sometime in the next few days (aka when I get around to writing it.

Have a good weekend and safety-lock your fireplaces!!!

KJ