Smoke

Mark says that I'm an old biddy like Mrs. Kravitz on Bewitched. That's because I know almost all my neighbors, and I like to stop and swap scuttlebutt and scandals. Anyway, so much has happened around here the last few days that I am going to tell you about it in two parts starting with yesterday. Oh, and none of these stories are very lighthearted.

It was around eight fifteen in the morning and I was on the phone to my veterinarian's office. Bette had got into something bad the night before and she was walking around the house like a drunk, all wobbly and falling down (more about that later). So I'm talking to the lady at the vet's office when the room starts filling with smoke.
    "You can bring her in at nine thirty." The lady said.
    "Oh my god, the house is on fire!"
    "I see. So is nine thirty alright with you?"
    "Hack, hack...  yes fine... gotta go. House on fire!"
I ran to the front door just as Mark came coughing out of the bedroom. In a panic we both ran out the door into thick smoke that was laying across the back yard like a fog. We could hear the fire engines screaming down our street as smoke came billowing over the roof of the house, so we went around to the front to see where the fire was. Now Mark says that I disappeared into the smoke and abandoned him without checking to see if he was okay. True that he has breathing problems and this dense smoke was not in his best interest, but I assumed that as a grown man he would know enough to get the hell out of the smoke.
    "All I saw was you fading off into the smoke. I could have been passed out over here and you wouldn't even know it." Mark cried.

No, our house wasn't on fire. It was a house on the other side of the street, and it was quite dramatic with firemen breaking windows and paramedics pushing stretchers down the street. Luckily, nobody was seriously injured. Unluckily, now three families are homeless with all of their belongings ruined.