Sassy's Up Late Again

My kids are permantly scarred. I swear I can't win, no matter what I do. Their room was a pig sty. I sent them in to get it cleaned up before they left for their dad's for the weekend. Many threats of barring Santa's route were made. They trudged in and began the process. A few minutes later, DD comes out and says, "Mom, DS says he smells smoke in our room."

They've already dragged this out so long, I'm already grinding my teeth and chanting "White Fluffy Clouds. Find your Happy Place."

On her heels comes DS, "Mom, there IS. There's smoke in our room. It's in the closet."

Now WHY would there be a FIRE in the closet? They don't even have a LIGHT in the closet. There's nothing in there to start a fire. I feel a lecture coming on. I follow them to their room.

Hells Bells, I smell smoke, too. What the HELL?

I start throwing things out of my way (because naturally the path to the closet has been blocked by laundry baskets, a video game chair, a couple of backpacks and a pile of random stuff. The CLEAN part of the room was on the OTHER side. Ha. I make it to the closet, and look around. Defintely smoke. Coming from the laundry that didn't quite make it all the way to the basket.

WHAT THE HELL??

I start digging like a dog on speed, tossing clothes this way and that and finally I get to it: there was a desktop lamp (NOW I see the power cord leading out of the closet and into the outlet nearby), switched on, with a pile of laundry on top of it. I lift the final item resting on top of the glass, and it erupts in flames. Both children begin screaming uncontrollably and run for their lives. I'm sure it only took about 10 seconds for me to beat it out, wrench the dresser away from the wall far enough to grab the power cord and unplug the lamp. But by then, both kids were hysterical, while Rusty is standing in the living room completely dumbfounded trying to ascertain what's going on. He tried to calm them and step into their room to check with me. I blurted out that it was under control and to calm them down. By the time we both returned to the living room (I cannot overstate how SMALL our apartment is), DS is nowhere to be found. DD is crying. A few seconds later she contained herself enough to explain that he'd run outside. I went out to find him. He's nowhere in sight. I start calling for him. Maybe he ran to the apartment office.

LORD, now I've got to stand there and explain to them that it's OK, we were just experimenting burning down their apartment...

So I start walking in that direction when I hear echoing sniffles. I call DS again. He comes running out of the shadows of the breezeway next door. He was running to the fire station on the other side of the complex.

Being a mom is such an incredibly demanding job on your emotions. At this point I'm still boiling with adreneline, mad as hell at both of them for the massive string of laziness that caused this accident, concerned as hell for both of them for their trauma, and proud as hell of him for thinking so quickly and taking charge--a little 6 year old running by himself for help to the fire station.

I just scooped him up and carried him home.

For the next half hour I had to struggle with him to enter his room again to see that the danger had passed, there was no fire, and now he had to help clean up. When he saw that his favorite dinosaur sweatshirt was the main casualty, he erupted into big, wet tears all over again.
I can only hope the trauma has passed when he returns on Christmas Eve.