Let me just start by stating I’m not a complete idiot… but I have been known to act before thinking. An excellent example of this would be when I accidentaly set my bathroom on fire… along with myself. Let me point out this happened over 9 years ago so you can add youthful naivety to my normal acting before thinking.

Ok, it all started with a smell. You really need to understand how bad this smell was. It was a mix between, wet dog, angry skunk, and two-day old dead homeless man, none of which I had in my bathroom. I tried everything to get rid of it, I even did the most extreme thing, I cleaned! This is big people, as I’m REALLY not a cleaner. But that freaking reak was still there. So I pulled out my old college oil incense burner and guava oil to try to cover the ode de stank. But I was out of oil, no worries I thought I have tons of yummy smelling things in my bathroom I can use in lieu of the oil, SHUT UP!! I can tell you see where this is going!! I know, not thinking it out! STOP JUDGING ME!! So I grabbed my Bath and Body Works Cucumber Melon Body Spray, lit the tea candle and slowly poured a little of the spray into the metal bowl above the flame… but I bobbled… and splashed some on the candle.

Did you know that when alcohol burns it turns blue? It’s quite pretty… and quite shocking. So when that blue flame leapt from the candle all the way up into the bottle I was holding I was shocked and dropped it on the floor; WELL I SAID I WAS SHOCKED!! Now the bottle is spinning around on the floor spitting out little blue flames, setting my rug, scale, legs, and toilet plunger ablaze. “SHIT!” I scooped everything off the floor and threw it in the shower turning on the spray, grabbed a towel and began swatting at any blue flame I could see.

Now there are two important facts you should know about alcohol fire:

1. The flame flickers from blue to white and when it’s white it is REALLY hard to see, and

2. It starts with just the alcohol burning so if you can extinguish everything quickly the damage is minimal.

SO I was able to save the counter top, tile floor and sink, but then my legs really started hurting. I looked down, nothing, oh wait for it, there it was flicker of blue. Ya, in my hurry to save my security deposit, and riding an amazing adrenalin high, the fact that my legs where still on fire had been put on the back burner… literally. Well now the alcohol had all burned off and my skin was getting a taste of flame. “SHIT!” I slammed the wet towel down on my legs beating the crap out of them, which may have caused more damage than the fire in the end.

It felt like I’d been fighting this fire for hours but it was probably only seconds as at that moment every fire alarm in my apartment started going off. I looked up and saw the sprinkler heads positioned next to the alarms. I then looked over at my hubby’s brand new computer equipment lining the living room floor. “SHIT!” I grabbed a broom and started open season on all fire alarms, again with the help of my adrenalin high, I destroyed every fire alarm in my apartment, demolished them to little plastic remnants.

Ok, time for an inventory, fire out… check, alarms out… check, adrenalin wearing off… ow and check.

I called my hubby. “Hey honey, on your way home would you mind swinging by Rite Aid?”

“Sure babe, watchya need”

“Burn ointment, bandages, and a new bathmat”

“…um…ok”

(I should point out that we had been together for 6 years by then so it was taking more and more to really shock him)