False Alarm

It's not a big secret that I have a rather extensive collection of nightgowns, mostly purchased at Wal-Mart. I often come home from work and spend the evening in one of them. Some are cuteish, most are pretty ugly. That will be important in a minute.

Tonight it's cold, right - we've gotten this pretty sudden swath of cold air from the north and it's not only colder than the average, but the temperature varies by like 30 degrees from when you go to work in the morning to the afternoon when the sun is at its brightest. So I'm not acclimatized to sudden winter yet and I get home tonight feeling tired and sick of everything, so I put on a super comfy outfit: longish pink striped nightgown with POCKETS that zips up and hits just below the knee (Germil has a matching blue one that I purchased for her after surgery - it's that kind of thing) ; really old cream flannel pajama bottoms that are a hair too short and kind of tapered in an unflattering way, and also have red flowers on them; blue fuzzy socks. My hair is out of its ponytail and has a million weird dents and I'm looking settled in for the night.

So I've just sprayed the tub with, like, Easy-Off Bam! and it's all very cat lady, and my cell phone rings - it's the alarm monitoring company, which is never good. Fortunately, it's always been a false alarm, but your reaction is never different despite that - instant panic, drop everything, grab the keys and hop in the car to see if D&A's house is on fire like I've just been told. And the thing I always forget about the fire alarm is that they will always send the Fire Department, because you don't want to risk it with fire, right? So I go wandering around, seeing and smelling no fires, call Robbie & Brian to come over and go behind me, and when I hear sirens in the distance? Yeah, it was for us. I don't need to tell you I wasn't wearing a bra.

Not one but two fire trucks show up, which, if the house had really been on fire, I don't think that the 20 minutes it took them to get here would have really done a whole lot of good. The one from about 6 miles away is volunteer, and the now 24-hour fully staffed one about 3 miles away was off in Carrboro, 15 miles away, fighting an actual fire. How embarrassing.

So 7 guys are standing around in the driveway while the chiefs from both departments check stuff out and realize, of course, it's a false alarm. We stand around the driveway a bit waiting for one dude to fill out the paperwork and the Chief starts chasing Cookie the cat, trying to pet her, since she's crying like crazy, hanging on my super ugly pant leg, looking for food. The cutest of the volunteer fireman says, "I was watching Grey's Anatomy" in that voice where you're meant to feel really bad - which, sorry, cute rednecky fireman - and I hope he has TiVo until I remember that GA is terrible this season and he should quit watching it anyway. And then Chief man starts talking about the garage in Carrboro that's burning down with cars inside and meanwhile I'm standing in the driveway at 9:30 at night in some seriously fugly loungewear, surrounded by country firemen and one whiny kitty.

In high school I would sometimes wear slippers and sweats to school, and I would pretend out loud that it was just for comfort but it was clearly for attention, because it's actually NOT comfortable to wear slippers all day - there's no arch support. The point is sometimes I pretend to be embarrassed for being "caught" in something tragic, because I have this secret little craving to be seen as kooky or crazy or like I just couldn't care less about how I look . . . this is not one of those times. I think I might still be blushing.