An eventful day

Last Tuesday, I had quite an exciting morning. The end result was kind of embarassing, but I'm sure you will all get a good laugh out of it...

It all started when, instead of giving Hudson 2 of her morning pills (yes, my dogs are on pills), I accidentally gave her one of hers and one of mine (an anti-anxiety pill). I must have been really distracted because I have done the dogs' pill routine every single morning for the past few YEARS, so I can do it in my sleep (or at least I thought I could). Luckily, I realized what I had done and immediately called the vet in a panic. He said it wasn't life-threatening but to call Animal Poison Control right away.

So I called and as I'm on hold with them, wouldn't you know, the carbon monoxide detector went off. After the first few confused seconds of "What the heck is that god-awful noise?", I jumped up, raced down the stairs, grabbed the kids and the dogs and ran outside. At that point, I realized I didn't have car keys, jackets or shoes for the kids (in 25 degree weather) or leashes for the dogs. So I left the kids and dogs in the yard and braved the contaminated house--racing around, holding my breath, knocking things out of my way (in an overly dramatic fashion, I'm sure) while grabbing whatever I could before I had to take another breath. I felt like I was the hero of some cheesy action movie. I'm such a dork.

Anyway, I didn't have my cell phone on me, so I drove over to my friend's house and used her phone. In the meantime, I still didn't have an answer about Hudson. So I called Animal Poison Control and ($60 later) a vet told me that she would be fine. Phew! One crisis solved! It turns out that because the dosage was so low and because Hudson is a fairly big dog, it wouldn't really do anything to her except make her lethargic for a day (which it did).

I called Brad next and he said to call the Plainville Fire Department about the alarm, so I did, and they told me they would send someone over right away. I called Brad back and after making the astute point that if I wasn't there when they arrived, they would have to break down the door, I hightailed it back home. I expected maybe one or two cars to be there when I arrived, but certainly not 4 firetrucks/cars and about 7 or 8 firemen. It was quite a scene. And quite an embarassment, I might add. Neighbors were gawking, people were gathering, traffic on our street was stopping. So imagine my further embarassment when the fire marshall comes out and tells me that it was not the carbon monoxide detector at all, but merely a malfunctioning smoke detector. I was mortified (but also quite happy it was nothing serious). The firemen took pity on me (even the one who was holding Sonja while she had a giant, stinky load in her diaper) and played the whole thing down. Of course, as my dad pointed out, they were all probably having a good laugh at my expense once they got back to the firehouse.

As it turns out, our whole street, including our house, had a power outage that morning (which I didn't even realize because I was in the midst of the Hudson pill crisis--you can imagine how even more idiotic it made me look when I said to the firemen "Huh? Our power went out? What?"), which is what caused our very old, crappy smoke detectors to malfunction (thanks to their lack of a battery back-up). The gracious firemen took them down for us and we will be getting them replaced very soon.

Ah, all's well that ends well, I guess. I'm just glad that we're all safe and sound. I just wish it didn't have to be so embarassing! :)

--C.