What would you like for breakfast today, Johnny? FIYA.

Too soon?

If you haven't already heard, which you probably haven't if you're not a family member, we had a fire in our kitchen on Saturday. This wasn't just your little play fire that you make while cooking flambé; "Ohh mommy, look what I can do!!!" If you didn't catch that MadTV reference, please note that I do not condone children cooking with stoves or ovens, nor do I think children should play with fire. Also, please note that you need to go to Youtube and watch MadTV skits of Stuart immediately. So there I am. It's the afternoon, and I'm sleeping in my parents' bed, because it's warmer, bigger, comfier, and my mom's side of the bed smells like her perfume. I woke up that morning feeling like crap--more on that later--and spent most of the day in bed. All of a sudden, I am woken up by the sound of my mother screaming and then I heard Peanut bark in what seemed like a reaction to my mother yelling, "Nooo!!" To be honest, I thought Peanut was running around, bit onto the bottom of the Christmas tree, and pulled it over, as she tends to misbehave ALL THE TIME/my mom has a tendency to freak out over small things. But then, 0.5 seconds later, I hear this incredibly loud, odd sound. It was almost as if someone took a large bucket of thousands of marbles and dumped them onto a tile floor. I immediately knew something was wrong, so I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs. I saw the entire area above the kitchen sink up in flames--it caught me so off guard that I couldn't even think enough to use profanity, which is always my first reaction to pretty much anything that occurs in my life. Well, I guess you could say, I immediately went into panic mode. I couldn't tell you for sure what my mom was screaming, but I'm guessing it was something along the lines of, "FIREEEEE!! FIREEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!" I quickly realized that my younger brother, Mikey, was also sleeping, so I started screaming, "MIKEYYYY!!!!" to make sure that he woke up. So, together, my mom and I probably sounded something like, "FIKKEEYYY!!!!" or "MIIIRRRREEEE" which would explain why it took so long (4 seconds instead of my 2) for Mikey to come out of his room. He probably woke up and laid in bed thinking my mom and I were having an argument in gibberish, as we are wont to do in our spare time. Finally, Mikey ran out of his room shirtless and very obviously shaken up. Later that day, he told me he thought someone got murdered. I bet you were sitting there thinking, "Man, there is NOTHING worse than a home fire!" Uhhh, well, you're wrong. MURDER is worse than a fire. So, I can understand Mikey's shocked and confused face when he ran out of his room. Back to the fire. Okay, so Mikey is shirtless, I'm standing on the stairs right next to the kitchen, and my mom yells, "GET OUT!!!" I sprint to the living room to grab Peanut and turn around to run outside through the garage. In hindsight, the safest way to exit my house from the living room was probably the front door, but I panicked and MY KITCHEN WAS ON FIRE. As I'm running out of the house with Peanut in my arms and Mikey (still shirtless) in front of me, my dad runs into the kitchen from the garage, which are right next to each other, with what I'm guessing was a towel. He runs over to the sink and pulls down the rod that is holding the curtains that are on fire and immediately starts stomping out the fire (with his hand, so technically no stomping occurred). This method definitely would not put out the size of the fire, but it did stall the fire until my mom could get the fire extinguisher from the closet in the laundry room. At this point, Mikey and I were standing on the driveway, him shirtless, I wearing basketball shorts, both of us shoeless, and Mikey was on the phone with 911. I could hear my mom in the background also on the phone with 911. My dad now had the fire extinguisher in his hands. He pulled the pen, and tried to extinguish, but nothing was happening. He shook it, tried spraying and BOOM it was working. He sprayed it everywhere and the fire was finally out. In reality, the whole thing probably occurred in less than a minute, but when the firefighters come to your elementary school and tell you that fire spreads very quickly THEY'RE NOT MAKING IT MORE DRAMATIC TO KEEP YOUR ATTENTION. Another several seconds and I think the fire would have spread upstairs. After my dad put the fire out, we were advised over the phone to not enter back into the house, so Mikey, Peanut, and I went to our neighbors house. I hadn't been inside this neighbor's house since I was oh...I don't know...maybe 11? And I wasn't wearing my glasses or contacts, so I couldn't see anything. The same goes for Mikey. Not only did we look ridiculous in our firefighting outfits of bball shorts and flip flops, we also squinted at people who spoke to us at a foot's distance. Thankfully, our neighbors are incredibly nice and they gave us socks and blankets to warm up. They also didn't judge or make fun of us--at least to our face--and for that I am eternally grateful. Eventually, the several firetrucks and several Fire Chief SUVs realized that maybe they overestimated the backup they would need, especially after they showed up and there was no fire. I'm glad they overestimated and didn't underestimate though....that wouldn't have been good. So everybody leaves and I go back into the house and everything is okay, but we're all shaken up. Except for Peanut. She still wants to jump around and bite everyone's hand. Ya gotta hand it to her though, she really knows how to keep a positive attitude in tough situations.

Here is a picture of some of the damage:

Oh boy, whatta Saturday afternoon. OH WAIT. I forgot. The day gets better! Several hours after the fire, I'm woken up by my dad so he can check my temperature. Lucky me, it's 101.5˚F, and at the beginning of chemotherapy treatment my oncologist told me that if my WBC count is low and I have a temperature above 100.4˚F, I need to go the ER. Guess what my last blood work showed. A WBC COUNT OF 2.1 (this is low). Here I come, ER!!! But oh no, the fun didn't stop there. The doctor needed to check a urine sample, and OF COURSE I walked out of the bathroom with my cup of pee and backless hospital gown to find an old friend that I haven't seen in years who now apparently works in the hospital. You could say she was smiling because she was happy to see me, but I'm pretty sure she was stifling laughter at how ridiculous the situation was. Not to mention, there was a patient hopped up on Bath Salts directly behind us screaming, "YOU BITCH, GET OUT!!!" over and over again. It was the most spectacular of reunions. Hours later all of the test results came back and everything looked okay and my WBC count had gone back up to a safe level, so the fever was not reason enough for hospital admission. 

This would be the part of the blog where I post a picture of the patient that overdosed on Bath Salts, but we all know you shouldn't take pictures of strangers #rude. JUST KIDDING, IT'S COMPLETELY NOT OKAY TO TAKE A PICTURE OF A PATIENT THAT DOES NOT CONSENT TO HAVING THEIR PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN, NOR SHOULD CONSENT WHILE UNDER THE INFLUENCE COUNT AS ACTUAL CONSENT. Children who read my blog, it is best to just never take a photo in a hospital unless it's a close up selfie of your unibrow or something.

Well, in other (small) news. I'M IN REMISSION. As you may have read in my last post, my last day of treatment was December 31, 2013. You may be wondering why it took me so long to write an entry talking about the most exciting part of my journey...well, I was waiting for the fire. I just don't like to leave you guys wanting more and nobody likes reading a success story. Okay, New Year's Eve night. I got to have a big glass of wine with my family at my aunt's house during her annual New Year's Eve gathering. My uncle purchased this really nice Spanish wine made in a southwestern town in Spain, called Jumilla. It was excellent and probably the best red wine I have ever had. If I ever splurge on a bottle of wine, that will probably be what I buy, but it's safe to say I won't be splurging on a bottle of wine for another 10 years or so and have actually have a decent paycheck. Also, this wine was 15.5% ABV. You can never go wrong with that. At midnight, I also had some champagne. I know I probably shouldn't have, and I probably shouldn't have had as big a glass of wine as I did, but whatever. I'm young. I'll bounce back. I mean, LOOK AT ME NOW. 84 days later and I'm in remission. Can't stop, won't stop.

Annnddddddd, I'm stopping. I hope everyone had a great holiday season and is as excited for 2014 as I am!

Fire? I don't care. I am not leaving this house unless I am physically carried out of here. Yeah, you come back to me after you've spent all day chewing up all the socks and eating your own poop. Shit ain't easy.