Today I am grateful

Thanks to this:

My kitchen now looks like this:

Allow me to Explain

Yesterday, I woke up early and came out to the kitchen to discover our dishwasher had broken overnight and dumped water all over the kitchen floor. I mopped up the water - cursed the stupid dishwasher and went back to my room to get ready.

I then left for a 45 minute meeting at the school.

When I returned, I noticed that more water had pooled on the floor in front of the dishwasher which meant that even more water had accumulated under the flooring/dishwasher and was leaking out. So I mopped it up again - called Jeremy to tell him the circumstance - we agreed that I should go out that morning and start shopping for new dishwashers and we would deal with the water mess later.

I go back to my room to touchup my makeup when I smelled a burning smell.

I went into the kitchen to see if I had left something on the burner or if a candle had smoked out, but no, there was nothing I saw burning so I went back to my room. I continued to get ready when the smell got stronger - this is where pregnancy smelling ability really comes in handy. The smell was definitely a more electrical burning smell - like when you leave something on your burner or whatever. I go back into the kitchen - the smell was stronger and now I heard a popping sound - like a loud sparking sound. I looked under my kitchen sink and smoke started pouring out. I immediately grabbed Chase and the dogs and the phone and went outside to call 911. We are so lucky to have a fire station right down the street. The fireman arrived within minutes and went into the house. They turned off all the electricity to the house and isolated a small electrical fire that was starting under our kitchen sink.

The fireman said that in another ten minutes, the whole wire would have ignited and a full blown fire would have happened. So many things about this story make my heart and soul so grateful and so happy and so lucky that circumstances happened the way they did.

• I was home - not at my school meeting like I had been an hour earlier.
• I was home - not shopping for dishwashers like I was getting ready to go to.
• I was home - not in Portland all day like I was the day before.
• I smelled everything early - thank goodness for a keen sense of smell.
• I heard the popping sound and paid attention to the location.
• The firemen arrived quickly and saved my house and kitchen from a potentially devastating fire situation.
  
  I can't begin to tell you how thankful I feel. The water from the dishwasher did in fact leak all under the laminate flooring in the kitchen - including where the wire goes to the dishwasher. That wire was not covered in protective conduit, so i was exposed and the water must have seeped into a nick or scratch in the wire - thus sparking and about to ignite.

We called our insurance company - Amerprise through Costco's executive membership plan - and they started a claim right away. They also arranged for emergency services and we had an electrician to the house within 2 hours to repair the wire that caught on fire - repair the breaker that did not switch over when the water overloaded the circuit - and turned on our electricity to the house again. They also had a general contractor at our house within four hours to rip up all the flooring, remove the dishwasher, get industrial fans and dehumidifiers in our kitchen to dry up the water damage.

So it looks like a new kitchen floor and dishwasher for us. Honestly, as I said before, I'm just so grateful that we caught everything in time and that our great insurance and contractors have made it very comfortable for us while we repair all the damage.