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the great smoke monster
14 years ago
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Don't wait for the queue to shrink—the commission docket is rarely empty.i didn't post about this the day it happened, because i was kind of in shock, and i ended up too injured to actually do the typing it would have taken. seeing as i've recovered, i figured i'd finally share.
two days ago i was at home, working. headphones were on, i was enjoying a pretty typical day for me lately.
i heard what sounded a little like sirens, but i was listening to a new audio track -- a soundscape, you know, with binaural beats -- the kind designed to train your brain to certain frequencies -- and didn't realize it wasn't part of it. my headphones are pretty good. but the track finally ended and i realized the sirens were actually EVERY SINGLE SMOKE ALARM IN THE HOUSE GOING OFF.
i assume cory's mom/brother are cooking downstairs... the smoke alarms go off occasionally because they can be a little forgetful.
i open the door to my office, which is upstairs, and am greeted with smoke. billowing, vision-obscuring smoke. my eyes immediately start burning and i can't see anything.
i dash downstairs, assuming maybe someone made toast and forgot about it. no one else is home.
i run into the kitchen but i can't see anything. the back door is open, but no windows are open. cory's mother and brother are apparently gone and i have no idea where the smoke is coming from. i dash into the kitchen and try to find the source of the smoke but i can't see. i'm finally able to wave the smoke away enough to see that someone has set the oven to "self-clean". i try to frantically hammer every button to turn it off, but i can't. but i can't stand there fiddling with it because i'm inhaling dense smoke and my eyes are burning so badly i'm vocalizing with the pain of it, so i dash out the back door for air.
i take a moment and realize cory's mother, my mother-in-law, set the oven to "self-clean" and then just left the house with cory's brother. no warning, no assumption that anything bad was going to happen.
i start freaking out. the entire house is full of smoke, every alarm in the house is going off so loudly i can barely think and the neighbors are already starting to come out of their houses, puzzled, wondering what the hell is going on. i run back inside, covering my mouth, trying to get enough breath stored up to get to the oven and figure out how to disable the self-clean function. i fail and run back outside, cough violently, and throw up.
this happens several more times. the entire time i'm trying to call cory on his cell, hoping he has his mother's cell # so he can call her and tell her to get back home and undo whatever fresh hell she's unleashed. her cell is sitting on the kitchen counter.
i realize that smoke rises, and my sugargliders are in my office, upstairs, totally unprotected. i run upstairs, nearly killing myself in the process, and run into the game room. i throw the blinds on all the windows and proceed to try to wrench the windows open -- windows which are painted shut -- and immediately rip off three of the five fingernails on my right hand in doing so.
i run to my office (where echo and topher's cage is) and, luckily, am able to quickly open the window. i shut the door and drop a towel on the floor, blocking the crack, and struggle to call my husband. i leave voice mails at his work and on his cell. i text every number he could possibly check and call constantly, because i can't even go inside to deal with the situation. the smoke is too thick and my eyes are burning so badly i can't step back in for more than a few seconds. i totally lose my ability to think straight. i'm not good under moderate pressure. if the house had been on fire, i could have probably carried out a dozen small children, but the house is just full of smoke and i've managed to shut the oven off, so i'm stuck in temporary catatonia. i'm not sure if i'm over-reacting or under-reacting. i need his help.
when he finally gets back to the office from a lunch break with his coworkers, i tearfully tell him what's happened. i'm a mess. he tells his boss he has to run home because of an emergency and hurries back. the alarms have already stopped ringing, the smoke is still thick but is slowly starting to clear, but i beg him to come home anyway because i'm a wreck and i can't reach most of the fans or open most of the windows.
when he finally makes it to the house to help me turn on fans too high for me to reach, open the remaining windows, locate fans in the garage to set up in the windows and blow out the smoke, and assess the damage, i'm nearly catatonic. when cory's mom makes it back home from lunch, she is puzzled, but hardly apologetic. i get a "huh." that's what i get. a puzzled, dismissive "huh". like "that's weird." no, it fucking isn't.
i love her, i love his family, but for fuck's sake, i can't take much more of this. the economy isn't great right now, and i love having my own office, but the lack of control we have over our living situation due to their irresponsible and casual approach to existence is really going to put me into an early grave.
cory did call her and insist that she apologize -- "sure, duh, it wasn't intended but you should still apologize" -- I really appreciated that. but this added to the fact that it was cory's mother and brother that led to scrambles getting lost in february (a month-long hell and a disaster only narrowly averted by what this atheist still can only consider a miracle), that they both REFUSE to lock the doors at night no matter how much i bitch and whine (even after some 12-year-old kid wandered into our house in the middle of the day because he "thought it would be funny"), and the fact that we have a roach problem due to the fact that they don't seem to equate leaving food out after cooking, all night long = roaches, and then want to bomb the house when i have two very sensitive, very fragile, VERY EXPENSIVE MARSUPIALS up here -- for fuck's sake, i can't deal.
i got scrambles a new collar (cory's mother and brother let her get lost by leaving the front door open and taking off her collar/tags) -- and i said, firmly and almost angrily this time, "the collar is not to come off FOR ANY REASON", and within three fucking hours i come out and it's off, because cory's brother wanted to take her for a walk and took it off because it interfered with her harness.
i don't want to yell at jesse because he has asperger's and i know his thought processes aren't exactly normal (and i do love him), but i'm at wit's end over scrambles' safety because losing her in february just about killed me. if the collar comes off again i will absolutely take no issue with threatening him with physical violence for a third infraction. i want to be fair, i want to be understanding, but i have limits.
i am fucking tired of people disregarding my wishes, when i seem to be the only person with any kind of safety in mind. it's really, REALLY pissing me off. i am not the type of person to bottle-and-blow -- i say what i feel, when i feel it, but it doesn't seem to do me any good. no one listens. maybe it's because i say what i feel immediately that it always seems so mild by comparison. maybe i SHOULD bottle my feelings. maybe then my blow-ups would be impressive enough to scare these people into doing what i ask.
i was scared all day that echo and topher would get sick and die from the smoke that ended up flowing upstairs.. all night i waited for them to wake up and come out so i'd be sure they were okay. they didn't wake up at first... i begged cory to come up and check on them for me, because i knew i'd lose my shit if i was the one who'd find them dead after his mom let the house fill up with smoke. he pushed on their pouch and made a bunch of noise and the pouch was dead weight.
i actually fell back against the wall with my hand clasped over my mouth, THISCLOSE to breaking into sobs, and he gave me this look of combined disgust and fear when he had a moment of realization that maybe i wasn't being paranoid... then he opened the cage and lifted the pouch, and oh my god, the joy i felt at the sound of their screeching and crabbing at being disturbed. most glorious sound i've ever heard.
so, yes, good news, echo and topher are totally fine. after cory's mom nearly caused me to lose my dog, this incidence of her absentminded carelessness didn't cause me to lose echo and topher. if i'd had to call whitney and tell her "i'm sorry, but the babies you entrusted to me didn't make it", i would have been guilt-ridden for years. thank god i didn't have to do that.
again. she's a good, kind woman. there are worse mother-in-laws to have. but still.
but fucking seriously, we need to make more money and get out on our own again... i can't deal with having so little control over my life situation anymore.
naturally, the downstairs part of the house has cleared out thanks to the six windows we opened. the upstairs -- which only cory and i really deal with -- smells like hell. absolute hell. so, of course, to cory's mother and brother, it's like it never even happened. it's upsetting, if i'm allowed an understatement.
many thanks to anzel and all of my clients for putting up with me for two more days while i waited for my hand to stop hurting after ripping my fingernails to shit trying to bust open the windows. and many thanks to azelyn for letting me sob over text messages and giving me the angry support you need from a friend in a time like this. she really kept me from punching a wall.
good lord, life needs to calm the hell down for a while.
i realize this whole journal is really whiny, and for that i'm sorry. there are much much worse things that can happen to you. i'm glad it was only a house full of smoke and that no one was hurt. i'm happy to have a roof over my head that COULD be filled to the brim with smoke, and that it didn't burn down. i'm glad i only had to deal with a day of burning eyes and a hurt hand and nothing else. it doesn't make it pleasant. pain is experience and all that. i just don't want another "event" like this for a while. i need a break.
two days ago i was at home, working. headphones were on, i was enjoying a pretty typical day for me lately.
i heard what sounded a little like sirens, but i was listening to a new audio track -- a soundscape, you know, with binaural beats -- the kind designed to train your brain to certain frequencies -- and didn't realize it wasn't part of it. my headphones are pretty good. but the track finally ended and i realized the sirens were actually EVERY SINGLE SMOKE ALARM IN THE HOUSE GOING OFF.
i assume cory's mom/brother are cooking downstairs... the smoke alarms go off occasionally because they can be a little forgetful.
i open the door to my office, which is upstairs, and am greeted with smoke. billowing, vision-obscuring smoke. my eyes immediately start burning and i can't see anything.
i dash downstairs, assuming maybe someone made toast and forgot about it. no one else is home.
i run into the kitchen but i can't see anything. the back door is open, but no windows are open. cory's mother and brother are apparently gone and i have no idea where the smoke is coming from. i dash into the kitchen and try to find the source of the smoke but i can't see. i'm finally able to wave the smoke away enough to see that someone has set the oven to "self-clean". i try to frantically hammer every button to turn it off, but i can't. but i can't stand there fiddling with it because i'm inhaling dense smoke and my eyes are burning so badly i'm vocalizing with the pain of it, so i dash out the back door for air.
i take a moment and realize cory's mother, my mother-in-law, set the oven to "self-clean" and then just left the house with cory's brother. no warning, no assumption that anything bad was going to happen.
i start freaking out. the entire house is full of smoke, every alarm in the house is going off so loudly i can barely think and the neighbors are already starting to come out of their houses, puzzled, wondering what the hell is going on. i run back inside, covering my mouth, trying to get enough breath stored up to get to the oven and figure out how to disable the self-clean function. i fail and run back outside, cough violently, and throw up.
this happens several more times. the entire time i'm trying to call cory on his cell, hoping he has his mother's cell # so he can call her and tell her to get back home and undo whatever fresh hell she's unleashed. her cell is sitting on the kitchen counter.
i realize that smoke rises, and my sugargliders are in my office, upstairs, totally unprotected. i run upstairs, nearly killing myself in the process, and run into the game room. i throw the blinds on all the windows and proceed to try to wrench the windows open -- windows which are painted shut -- and immediately rip off three of the five fingernails on my right hand in doing so.
i run to my office (where echo and topher's cage is) and, luckily, am able to quickly open the window. i shut the door and drop a towel on the floor, blocking the crack, and struggle to call my husband. i leave voice mails at his work and on his cell. i text every number he could possibly check and call constantly, because i can't even go inside to deal with the situation. the smoke is too thick and my eyes are burning so badly i can't step back in for more than a few seconds. i totally lose my ability to think straight. i'm not good under moderate pressure. if the house had been on fire, i could have probably carried out a dozen small children, but the house is just full of smoke and i've managed to shut the oven off, so i'm stuck in temporary catatonia. i'm not sure if i'm over-reacting or under-reacting. i need his help.
when he finally gets back to the office from a lunch break with his coworkers, i tearfully tell him what's happened. i'm a mess. he tells his boss he has to run home because of an emergency and hurries back. the alarms have already stopped ringing, the smoke is still thick but is slowly starting to clear, but i beg him to come home anyway because i'm a wreck and i can't reach most of the fans or open most of the windows.
when he finally makes it to the house to help me turn on fans too high for me to reach, open the remaining windows, locate fans in the garage to set up in the windows and blow out the smoke, and assess the damage, i'm nearly catatonic. when cory's mom makes it back home from lunch, she is puzzled, but hardly apologetic. i get a "huh." that's what i get. a puzzled, dismissive "huh". like "that's weird." no, it fucking isn't.
i love her, i love his family, but for fuck's sake, i can't take much more of this. the economy isn't great right now, and i love having my own office, but the lack of control we have over our living situation due to their irresponsible and casual approach to existence is really going to put me into an early grave.
cory did call her and insist that she apologize -- "sure, duh, it wasn't intended but you should still apologize" -- I really appreciated that. but this added to the fact that it was cory's mother and brother that led to scrambles getting lost in february (a month-long hell and a disaster only narrowly averted by what this atheist still can only consider a miracle), that they both REFUSE to lock the doors at night no matter how much i bitch and whine (even after some 12-year-old kid wandered into our house in the middle of the day because he "thought it would be funny"), and the fact that we have a roach problem due to the fact that they don't seem to equate leaving food out after cooking, all night long = roaches, and then want to bomb the house when i have two very sensitive, very fragile, VERY EXPENSIVE MARSUPIALS up here -- for fuck's sake, i can't deal.
i got scrambles a new collar (cory's mother and brother let her get lost by leaving the front door open and taking off her collar/tags) -- and i said, firmly and almost angrily this time, "the collar is not to come off FOR ANY REASON", and within three fucking hours i come out and it's off, because cory's brother wanted to take her for a walk and took it off because it interfered with her harness.
i don't want to yell at jesse because he has asperger's and i know his thought processes aren't exactly normal (and i do love him), but i'm at wit's end over scrambles' safety because losing her in february just about killed me. if the collar comes off again i will absolutely take no issue with threatening him with physical violence for a third infraction. i want to be fair, i want to be understanding, but i have limits.
i am fucking tired of people disregarding my wishes, when i seem to be the only person with any kind of safety in mind. it's really, REALLY pissing me off. i am not the type of person to bottle-and-blow -- i say what i feel, when i feel it, but it doesn't seem to do me any good. no one listens. maybe it's because i say what i feel immediately that it always seems so mild by comparison. maybe i SHOULD bottle my feelings. maybe then my blow-ups would be impressive enough to scare these people into doing what i ask.
i was scared all day that echo and topher would get sick and die from the smoke that ended up flowing upstairs.. all night i waited for them to wake up and come out so i'd be sure they were okay. they didn't wake up at first... i begged cory to come up and check on them for me, because i knew i'd lose my shit if i was the one who'd find them dead after his mom let the house fill up with smoke. he pushed on their pouch and made a bunch of noise and the pouch was dead weight.
i actually fell back against the wall with my hand clasped over my mouth, THISCLOSE to breaking into sobs, and he gave me this look of combined disgust and fear when he had a moment of realization that maybe i wasn't being paranoid... then he opened the cage and lifted the pouch, and oh my god, the joy i felt at the sound of their screeching and crabbing at being disturbed. most glorious sound i've ever heard.
so, yes, good news, echo and topher are totally fine. after cory's mom nearly caused me to lose my dog, this incidence of her absentminded carelessness didn't cause me to lose echo and topher. if i'd had to call whitney and tell her "i'm sorry, but the babies you entrusted to me didn't make it", i would have been guilt-ridden for years. thank god i didn't have to do that.
again. she's a good, kind woman. there are worse mother-in-laws to have. but still.
but fucking seriously, we need to make more money and get out on our own again... i can't deal with having so little control over my life situation anymore.
naturally, the downstairs part of the house has cleared out thanks to the six windows we opened. the upstairs -- which only cory and i really deal with -- smells like hell. absolute hell. so, of course, to cory's mother and brother, it's like it never even happened. it's upsetting, if i'm allowed an understatement.
many thanks to anzel and all of my clients for putting up with me for two more days while i waited for my hand to stop hurting after ripping my fingernails to shit trying to bust open the windows. and many thanks to azelyn for letting me sob over text messages and giving me the angry support you need from a friend in a time like this. she really kept me from punching a wall.
good lord, life needs to calm the hell down for a while.
i realize this whole journal is really whiny, and for that i'm sorry. there are much much worse things that can happen to you. i'm glad it was only a house full of smoke and that no one was hurt. i'm happy to have a roof over my head that COULD be filled to the brim with smoke, and that it didn't burn down. i'm glad i only had to deal with a day of burning eyes and a hurt hand and nothing else. it doesn't make it pleasant. pain is experience and all that. i just don't want another "event" like this for a while. i need a break.
-Haz
it's rough. i've lived with folks my own age in several apartments and, while there were the usual complaints, NOTHING like this. >.<
-Haz
she's the one who left the door open and let scrambles run away. that we got her back thanks to a friend on FA conducting a miraculous internet search still blows my mind. i don't anticipate that kind of luck again and i don't want to test it... and i spent $300 trying to get her back, and only got a very vague apology that was very non-committal.
:( thanks for the support. i just didn't expect this living situation to be so hazardous. it seems every complaint i have relates to either my safety or the safety of my pets, and it's very frustrating.
*kisses your fingers better* Wish I could help some way....
i got some fake fingernails to protect the ones that are growing back and so it doesn't feel so weird. :P sounds funny, but it works.
I hope for the best for you
And then after all the trauma, the best you get out of the one responsible is some halfassed "Oh gee. sorry about that. lol." response. If you ask me, you would have been completely justified in throttling a couple of irresponsible jackasses who seem to give no thought or concern towards the safety and well being of everyone who lives in that house. I'm very sorry that you had to go through all of this. I really am. It sounds to me like you're due for a vacation of some sort. Hopefully things will get better for you, and soon.
On another note...I am totally interested in getting a commission or two from you. Hit me up in a note and we can talk business. ;)
And I realize I sound a bit harsh..I have very little sympathy for stupidity, you see. ...i've worked 7+ years in customer service, and I suppose you could say my patience with stupid people wore thin long ago. xD
<3 again, i wouldn't call her stupid at all. she's a wonderful lady. it was just really really scary. i think she felt really really guilty and her way of protecting herself is to externalize nothing, so it comes off looking callous. i do love her, i do. i just know it's hard to break old habits so i'm trying my best to steer everyone toward good habits without having to resort to screaming.
unfortunately, it will mean i DO have to come off looking like a bit of a bitch at the end of the day, but i'm interested in more than just the safety of myself and my pets -- THEY should want to be safe too, y'know? i am a hypochondriac and a bit paranoid about safety, but that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to lock the front door at night... :/
I do really hope that your hand is feeling better, and I'm happy that your sugar gliders are ok
i had to put it in perspective -- i could react by saying WE NEED TO MOVE NOW NOW NOW! but there will always be something else that's scary or bad or out of my control, so i needed to remember that it could be a lot worse and there have GOT to be small ways to slowly make progress in this situation. i just REALLY needed to vent! *LOL*
*big hugs* sorry i didn't tell you. i kinda didn't have any idea who i should tell. it was a hell of a mouthful too.
Here in Montana, there are lots of good, clean apartments for rent that are inexpensive to rent. I'm sure you don't want to move here (at least not until after you do), but there are plenty of places to live, here, unhindered by evil in-laws.
As someone who was diagnosed with Asperger's quite a few years ago by doctors who actually specialized in Autistic Spectrum Disorders, being autistic isn't an excuse for that level of inconsiderateness. Good gravy. >.>
Good luck on moving out, though. I know all too well how it is to be stuck with family members who can't be bothered to treat you like a human being. :/
again, I prefer to just try to engineer a fool-proof, idiotproof surrounding, so with Scrambles, I need to get a harness that doesn't require the removal of her collar if I want to be sure he doesn't take the collar off; yelling isn't going to get me very far.
Secondly, why yell? Speak calmly and politely and when he disagrees or seems reticent, beat him with a baseball bat. And then calmly express regret that he made you do tha, that you don't want to do it, but if he makes you, you will.
i hope everything is ok now and that your hand gets better soon
*hugs*
It may be helpful to get a tag to put on Scrambles' harness or make a way to clip the tag that's on her collar onto her harness.
I'm gonna try to find Scrams a new harness that will clip to the existing collar because I don't want Jesse taking off the collar -- he will inevitably forget to put it back on, and I don't want that being a possibility twice a day.
Regarding the unlocked doors and random people walking in, I really suggest you get yourself a weapon, whatever it may be. A couple months ago