Jen

Don't wake me I plan on sleeping

I don’t want to say you’ll never believe what happened to me last night, but really, you’ll never believe what happened to me last night.

It started with a sweet dream of me camping , sitting in my bright orange tent, with a nice little campfire going. Then I heard a knock, somewhere on my tent wall. Then another knock.

In a half daze, I call out hello. “Jen, you need to wake up, the house next door is on fire.” That was Nathan. A real life voice to a real life event.

My house smelled like burning wood, the wood of the frame house next door. It was about 1:30 in the morning, and I had only been asleep for an hour or so.

Nathan and I woke up Peter and then tried to figure out what to do. A lot of questions go through your mind: Should we leave? Do the firemen even know we are here? They would tell us that it wasn’t safe, right?

We decided to pack up and leave by about 2:00, when we saw flames from the windows and the roof of the house next to us. As we decided to leave, so did the firefighters.

We excited as quickly as we could with Josie putting up a huge struggle: I had to bust past a fire man to get her when she jumped out of my arms and ran back inside.

We waited in the cold for nearly two hours, watching as they basically tore down the house next to ours in order to prevent it from spreading.

No one could give us any answers; are our neighbors ok? When can we go back in our house? Can we do it tonight?

When we were finally let back into our home, we were told to stay up for awhile to make sure that the fire hadn’t secretly spread to our place. As we found out later, everyone next door turned out to be ok, and the fire possibly started in the attic in a trash can.

I couldn’t sleep. I could hear the firemen next door breaking down the house and yelling to each other. I could hear glass breaking and shingles from the roof hit the outside wall of my bedroom. It smelled like a campfire throughout our house, and even with the windows open, it didn’t matter.

I’m so glad that everyone is ok. And I’m so thankful to have Nathan and Peter with me during such a crisis.

God damn, I’m tired.