But I did stay at a crappy Holiday Inn tonight

So I was going to write a blog post about taking Anthony to his school book fair, and how I thought it was funny that lil' Eagle Eye honed in on every book that featured Disney's Cars, and I had to buy them for him or they probably wouldn't have let us back into that school what with the screaming and the crying and the indignity of it all.

Because that's usually the kind of mundane stuff that serves for blog fodder around here.

But then all of a sudden life intervened and our world wasn't so mundane anymore.

On Friday I was working at home, and in between finishing up my news articles I was trying to toubleshoot a faulty dryer so I could get some laundry done. It didn't work in the morning, so, before I went to pick up Anthony, I tried it again. It worked for a few seconds, then I heard a loud pop, it stopped, and the smell of smoke filled the air. It was just a billowy white smoke at first, nothing worse than when I try to cook dinner rather than letting the expert (a.k.a. Brandon) do it, so I wasn't too concerned. But it didn't stop. So, I put Javier in his kitty carrier, just in case I had to vacate premises. By the time I went upstairs, corraled Mr. Kitty, and got back downstairs, a steady stream of black, acrid smoke was pouring from my dryer. I took Javy outside, called 911, and thanked my lucky stars that my baby wasn't at home.

Long story short, by the time eight firefighters in full bunker gear had run a 200-foot hose to my house and put out the fire - for any Modern Family fans out there, no, I did NOT take the time to put on makeup and a low-cut top before the firemen arrived - the kitchen was destroyed and that book fair story was a distant memory.

So, OK, at this point, I'm not going to whine about this because I know it could have been a lot worse. And I know - I KNOW - there are people going through things hundreds of times more devastating.

Our little situation? It sucks. We gutted our kitchen today. We won't be able to move back into our house for a week, and that's thebest-case scenario. I don't know how many thousands of dollars this is going to cost us, and our baby is sick, to boot. We're cooling our heels in a craptastic Holiday Inn (thank you Red Cross, by the way, seriously, you people are awesome) with the soothing sounds of the Golden Glades Interchange (Wikipedia it if you're curious) to lull us to sleep.

But we're sitting here, at 10 p.m., waiting for a Pizza Hut delivery that I'm pretty sure is never going to come, and we're feeling about as grateful as we've ever felt.

Because let me tell you, stuff like this makes you feel the fact that family lives far away more acutely then ever. But when family is thousands of miles away, you still have friends.

Friends who offer to let you use their washer and dryer, even though you just practically burnt down your house with yours. Friends who offer to cook you a homemade dinner and crash at their place, even though they've got the stress of two full-time jobs and a toddler of their own. Friends who come over and spend the entire day helping you gut your kitchen, leaving with their face and clothes covered in soot.

Friends who, over their breakfast cereal, decide they're going to drive thre hours to come down to Miami and take your feverish and mucousy kid off your hands, and by the way? They're not going to take no for an answer.

Thank God for our friends. This weekend isn't our finest hour, but it's taught us a lesson or two.

Don't turn the dryer on and leave to run an errand or go to bed.

Call 911 if you think something is going downhill faster than you can handle.

And be as good to your friends and family as you can possibly be. They really will do the same for you.

That I know for sure.

(I can't get pics of the carnage to post on Holiday Inn's questionable Internet connection, but they are coming soon.)