“This morning my kids got out of bed and went to watch a little tv so I could rest. I was so happy. A little nervous, because kids. But happy.
Then I hear the back door open which means they let the dog in. Our lab is a little more chaos than two kids can manage, so I started rolling out of bed.
I hadn’t even had a chance to get my contacts in when I hear the sound of a huge dog clambering down the wood floor hallway.
If toddler silence is a dangerous sound, this is the doggy equivalent. It’s like ‘OOOOH I DID A THING I BETTER RUN IN CIRCLES SO NOBODY NOTICES!’
Well, the thing she did was grab a piece of pizza out of the leftover box from last night. (Don’t judge me; I was going to clean it up this morning.)
Of course being the idiot cumbersome dog she is, she also turned the stove top on HIGH right beneath the cardboard box. But I didn’t know this yet, because I was chasing her around the house trying to dislodge a slice of Meat Lovers.
I grabbed her by the collar, dragged her butt outside, told her she was the worst and we could’ve gotten a better pup at PetSmart, then went to the kitchen to assess the damage.
What I expected was a box of pizza on the floor.
What I found was foot tall flames and a stove top on high.
So, I grab the only side of the box that wasn’t on fire and ran it over to the sink trying to calmly but loudly alert my husband to this significant emergency.
‘UM, IAN. IAN. IAN. *cough* IAN!’
(According to Ian, he thought I stepped on something and was bleeding so he slowly got out of bed.)
When I dropped the box in the sink, the flames were too high to turn the water on. So of course, the kids come running in right then, and what do you know, it was fire safety week at Holland’s preschool, so she starts yelling ‘FIRE! FIRE! WHATS OUR ESCAPE PLAN?’
We don’t have one, but bet we do by this afternoon.
Ian must’ve been peeing at this point because he still thought I stepped on something and was slowly meandering to the kitchen.
I threw a full coffee mug on top of the box of pizza, thank God I never got to drink it yesterday.
It snuffed out the flames enough for me to reach over the box fire and turn on the water.
So, the fire went out HALLELUJAH and at that moment my husband Ian walks into the smoke filled kitchen rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and says, ‘Hey what’s happening?’
At that exact moment the alarms went off and our children started screaming and crying.
So now our house smells like a campfire, my dog is outside wondering why everyone hates her for grabbing a single slice of pizza, and I am googling how high I can increase my anxiety med dose without having heart palpitations.
All of this before 6:00 a.m.
It is 8 now. The alarms stopped and I’m getting the kids ready for church in a stinking house. But we are going, baby.
Because this mama needs the spirit of the Lord in a big way.
FIX. IT. JESUS.
The end.”
This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Mary Katherine Backstrom. Mary’s book Mom Babble: The Messy Truth about Motherhood is available here. Follow Mary on Instagram here. Submit your story here, and be sure to subscribe to our best love stories here.
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