We had four people look at the house earlier today, Sunday. Every weekend we have more and more traffic, so I'm hopeful we'll soon get an offer.

Otherwise the weekend was quiet. Well, until the end. The Hub had to work at the Depot on Saturday, and had to finish up a job today in order to stay "on schedule". So I did a lot of housework and grocery shopping on Saturday. We had a ton of laundry piled up, so I started on that this afternoon.

The Hub came home from finishing up his job, and brought some of his tools in from the jeep and took them down into the basement of the new house. I went down to ask him what he wanted for supper when I heard him say, "Something is burning."

He wasn't kidding. The whole basement was filling with white smoke that smelled a little like burning rubber and a little like an element in a stove that's gone awry.

"Open the door!" I yelled, "Where's the fire?"

"I can't find it!" The Hub yelled back. He was in the laundry room where the smoke was the thickest. He ran past me into the office. I ran out into my fathers old workroom. You have to turn the light on from another part of the basement, so it was dark. I struggled to get the basement door to the exterior open, which relieved some of the smoke. No fire in the workroom.

I hurried back into the laundry room. The Hub had already turned off the dryer, I unplugged it and yanked the lint filter out, planning to toss it into the laundry sink if it was aflame. It wasn't. But smoke was still getting thicker in the laundry room.

"Check the furnace room!" I yelled, but The Hub was already doing that.

"I can't find it!" he said again, coming back through with a flashlight, "Where the hell is it?!"

"I can't tell." I said. I ran up the stairs to get the fire extinguisher (note to self: get fire extinguisher for basement) There was no smoke on the main floor, but now I knew what the dog had previously been pacing about. I could see smoke rising up the steps behind me. Mindful of Clarks advice against do-it-yourself-fire-fighting ( which seemed especially relevant since we couldn't find the fire!) and of the fact that another house in this neighborhood burned to the ground several years ago due to a wiring problem, I made an executive decision, "I'm calling the fire department."

And I did. "This is 5** M*** Drive. Smoke is filling the basement, but we can't find the source of the fire."

"Get everybody out of the house." the dispatcher said, "The fire department is on the way."

"Honey! Come on! We gotta get out of here! Winston, come!"

I've heard that, in a fire, you don't have that much time to get out of the house so all of this "What would you take with you" crap is irrelevant. While I was aware that I probably DID have time to take something or things of importance absolutely nothing entered my mind. I had the dog on the leash and threw the heaviest blanket I had at hand over the pair-a-tweeters. As long as the dog, the birds, and The Hub were out, I was satisfied. I did put my coat on and pick up my handbag. I put the parakeets in the car on the passenger seat. Winston climbed in the car and sat in the drivers seat. I tried to get him out, but after a minute just gave up and closed the door. In there he wouldn't be in anybody's way and he might help keep the parakeets warm. If I had to move the car I'd cross that bridge when I got to it. It wasn't like there were flames shooting through the roof or anything, so I was pretty calm.

Actually, I'm always pretty calm in an emergency. It's daily life that usually has me upset.

That's not to say that my heart didn't lurch when two fire trucks pulled up, lights blazing, and two guys heard only the very basics from me before more or less running into the house with an ax. Then the fire chief showed up. "How ya doin'?" he asked me before proceeding into the house. I thought this was sort of a bizarre question, but I didn't have time to ponder it since the neighbors by now popping up and The Hub was back INSIDE the house with the firefighters. Well, they'd get him out of there if they needed to, I thought. More firemen came and went, but they looked calm. "We can tie into the something something at Willow Drive if we need to." I heard one of them say. I remembered that was why the other house in the neighborhood had been such a loss - the fire department hadn't been able to get enough water onto it in time, so I was grateful to hear them making plans. But did that mean that they'd found it? A young man went by with a heavy square piece of equipment, The Hub and two firefighters came out.

"Did they find it?" I asked. Meanwhile, Shacker, our neighbor from across the street was trading insults with Mr. Insurance from down the street. And the poor lady whose house had burned down all those years ago was trying to figure out who I was in relation to my parents while, apparently, fighting flash backs of her own bad situation.

"They can't find it." The Hub said.

"Oh, God, they think I was crazy to call them!"

"No, no, no! They said we did the right thing. They can smell the smoke, it's all over the basement. They're gonna use an imager to see if it's in the walls. But, it could be the dryer."

That's what it was. Dryers, evidently, are a dangerous thing to have in the home. A certain percentage of them suddenly turn on their owners every year. This one was a sort of middle aged, reconditioned dryer, but it decided to give up it's ghost in a very dramatic way. The imager had not found any signs of heat in the walls, the firefighters were all over the house and attic looking for anything alarming. The fire chief explained that since the smoke was the thickest in the laundry room and dissipated as you moved away from there, the source of the smoke had to be in the laundry room. The dryer itself was extremely hot, though there was no problem at the vent. It's a good thing we were home and noticed all the smoke. Meanwhile the smoke continued to clear.

I took the parakeets back inside and The Hub began the process of getting Winston unstuck from the drivers seat of the car. I called my parents, "Try very hard not to get upset about this, but....."

God bless my parents. They probably wish they'd left me on somebody's doorstep when they had a chance.

So, the smoke cleared, firemen left, the neighbors went home. The dryer is unplugged and sitting out in the exterior basement stairwell. Nice people the neighbors. Still, I wish I could have met them at a block party or something!!