Inner Workings discussion

I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know what it was… I miss my kids, stress, I’m a night owl for life? Who knows? So I got up. No sense tossing and turning for another hour. I walked through the dark empty house and flipped on the coffee pot and the desktop computer before taking a shower. (I don’t normally shower at one o’clock in the morning, but it happens, sometimes. Nor do I usually get that worried feeling that keeps my mind from settling down.) After getting cleaned up – fresh jammies, towel-dried hair, I poured a cup and hoped I would find something (maybe Red Sox highlight videos?) to occupy my mind - and then I heard a *POP*.

I turned to Wow (my male cat with big yellow eyes) and said, “What was that?”

It came from outside, from across the street - you know when someone fills a paper bag with air and then smacks it really hard? It sounded like that… Maybe it was just kids messing around. I opened the internet explorer browser and went to Wordpress. Another POP. This one sounded more like a whack of a baseball bat against a garbage can. I got up from my chair, turned the monitor off and *POP* *phssszzzzzzzzzzzzphhft!* opened the front door and thought, “Fireworks?” Through the neighbor’s carport, from the other side of the street, I saw a blazing fire! Heavy smoke plumed into the night. It floated westward, over rooftops and beneath a hazy silver moon. I gasped and nearly swallowed the air I had sucked in, went to get the slippers in my bedroom, went back to the front porch, went back to get the camera, went back to the front porch again, and thought, “Someone should call the – *POP*, probably someone already – .” Maybe it was paint cans exploding. *POPPOP*POP*pop* *PHZZZZzzzzphhzzz* And here come the police. Shit. I couldn’t remember how to set the camera speed for action.

Once the two policemen arrived, both the cruiser and the blazer, I finally had the nerve to cross the street and stand in the vacant carport. Wow and Squishy followed, tails in the air. Okay, so maybe this is no big deal for those of you who live in the city. But for us, this is front page news, baby. Tomorrow, all the townspeople will be talking about it down at The post office and grocery store. (I say ‘The’ because we have only one of each.)

A car on fire! Awesome :D

Two cops were parked on one end of the block. I snapped pictures (not realizing until later, they would be blurred and streaked). People came out of their houses – in their street clothes, not in their pj’s – then the volunteer fire department arrived. They sprayed the car with water, switched to the white stuff, and then went back to the water. Funny thing is, nobody was yelling or screaming or talking all that much. The firemen did their job. The policemen stood at a safe distance and watched. After a while, the flames only came from the bottom of the car. Wow. Maybe the gas just needed to burn out? That’s pretty cool. And I thought… all the exciting stuff happens while I’m in my pajamas.

I stayed for a while, snapped pics, turned occasionally to make sure my cats were next to my feet. After the fire was contained, I moved in a little closer. A small crowd gathered on the corner where the policemen were, crossing their arms across their chests, some of them squinting toward my ghostly figure through the smoke. Then it was just a bunch of guys with fire hoses and the pops stopped, and actually, it got kind of boring. I guess because ambulance wasn’t called, I didn’t feel too disrespectful about heading back to the house.

My front door was still open… bet you can’t do that in a big city without worrying about it, huh? The fire trucks left about three a.m.


View from my front door. (I watched from that carport, then moved into the alley behind the house on the left. The fire was across the street and behind that little shed, in the middle.)












Baby Wow 2007

And then later... at 5:30 a.m.








Pretty neat, huh?

I think my daughter shares your view that all the exciting stuff happens when she's in her jammies. From the time she was a baby, she hated going to bed because she thought she was going to "miss something."

Car-b-q!

It is true that this happens with regularity on the highways in Chicago, but I have only rarely actually seen one up in flames. Thank goodness no one was in it.

I could see Wow the cat was with you from your pictures but Squishy...I don't know. Maybe you should take him in for questioning.

Okay, about pajamas... not many people around here own a pair - shorts and a wife-beater, or maybe just shorts. It's too damned hot at night. But after living in the north east, I got used to wearing them... but then, I've always gone against the natural flow of "how things are done" in the land of entrapment. For example, beer and bbq. Love to go to one(I bring the potato salad and a bottle of Bacardi.), but I'm not completely comfortable while cooking on a pit and more than one beer gives me a massive headache.

Wow is a little hussie chaser. He knows the neighborhood well. Squishy, however is a cunning instigator by nature and is rarely caught in the act... very, very sneaky, sir. (Remember the butler from Mr. Deeds? That's my Squishy Cat.)

I like that... "Car-b-q" See, I never would have thought of that :D ... yeah, I always hated 8pm bedtime. Used to get up at night and watch SNL when the parents were in their room. Bill Murray and Gilda Radner were my mentors.

My oldest son is the same way, Shel. Even as a baby, when we had friends over late at night I knew there would be no getting him to sleep. There would be my little one-year-old, in his crib, crying his head off. I'd bring him back into the chaos that was our late night gathering and the crying would cease. I knew from an early age that he would be, like me, always afraid he was about to miss something exciting, or important, or just plain interesting. He didn't understand what we were saying most of the time, but he just couldn't pull himself away.

As far as the car fire is concerned...that's scary! Of course, this comes from a woman who was in a car three years or so ago when it caught on fire. I'm glad no one was hurt!