From calamity and calm

On Friday night, we came home to find smoke billowing out of our house. It was a very scary thing to come home to, and we have a lot of people to thank.

Saanich Fire Department coming to save the day

Hubs got smoke inhalation

I’m so very grateful for the help of friends, family, and our community who all stepped up to help us out through a very chaotic time. This is likely not an exhaustive list (oddly I’ve been a bit scattered since it all happened), but I wanted to make sure to give thanks;

• Huge thank you to the Saanich Fire Department who were there instantly to avert disaster and who took the time to find our kitties who had been locked in the house.
• Thanks to our neighbours, Keith and Linda who took our girls over to their house for milk and cookies as a distraction while the firefighters were working their magic.
• Thanks to our neighbours who offered the use of their laundry facilities to help us get through the 40+ loads of laundry that needed to get done.
• Thank you to David for the advice on how to clean the smoke smell out of the house, and for finding the air scrubber to help purify the air in our home.
• Thank you to Reedy and Robin for showing up with dinner and wine, and providing a much needed distraction and reminder that this too shall pass.
• Thank you to our families near and far who called to make sure that we were okay, and that we hadn’t lost our minds dealing with the clean up.
• Thank you to our friends for the texts, phone calls, and messages giving us words of support, offers to take the kids for play dates, offers to help clean up, and for the hugs.
• Thank you to my hubs and kids for their unflagging dedication to pitch in and clean up, even though the work seemed insurmountable, and even though we were missing out on a beautiful, sunny weekend.

We’re still working on clearing out the smoke smell, but it’s just stuff – it’s replaceable and ultimately meaningless.

The only thing that really matters is that no one was hurt; we were so lucky not to have lost any humans or kitties.

I’m so unbelievably grateful for that.