our smokin' hot new year

My mom generously offered to babysit Stella overnight so we could do a practice run of being away from her when we are on vacation. Now that we are parents we need a good reason to stay up late on purpose. So we opted to get a room at the Hotel Adolphus, the place where we had our wedding reception. We got dressed up for dinner, Stephen was looking sharp and I put on my favorite magical evening gown. This dress is amazing. It made me feel gorgeous when I first bought it, when I was pregnant, and now 35 lbs smaller. I seriously feel like Daisy Buchanan in it. It is so delicate, almost like wearing a spiderweb with beading.

Anyway, we are about to step out the door, when Stephen's phone rings. It's one of our tenants. Our duplex is on fire. Happy freaking new year! Ours was smokin'!

It was a five alarm fire started by a heater unit that we had hired a company to work on earlier that day. Stephen called them in the afternoon after smelling smoke and asked them to come back and take a look, but perhaps with party on the brain, who knows, they chalked it up to dust burning off the coils, declined to come back and said not to worry about it. Then the sun went down, the heater kicked in to high gear, and the whole place went up in flames. Our charming 1920s duplex, that Stephen had just remodeled, was apparently built to burn. The fire started above the downstairs bathroom and quickly spread to the second floor bathroom and the entire attic. The good news is that no one was hurt, and big-time snaps to the Dallas Fire Department for containing the fire as quickly as they did. It could have easily burned the whole block of charming 1920s duplexes.

It is completely uninhabitable, you can see pictures on our Flickr site. Oh how I wish that it was snow in the pictures.

One of our tenants has renters insurance, she's going to be fine. The other one, not so much. We put her up in a hotel and got her some clothes, shoes, etc. and are helping her move her stuff into a new apartment.

If you are reading this and you are a renter, let me just step up onto my soapbox for a moment. Ahem. GET THE DAMN INSURANCE. It's only a few bucks a month and if your place accidentally burns down or floods you will have a place to live and possessions. Otherwise you are totally screwed. Our insured tenant immediately got $5,000 to cover living expenses for the next month, she is comfortably set up in a hotel and shopping for new stuff. Her insurance is paying for her possessions to be moved, catalogued, cleaned and stored until she moves into a new place. Stuff that is damaged will be replaced. She's going to be fine. Our uninsured tenant, on the other hand, would not have had a place to sleep if we hadn't put her up in a hotel. She would have only her cat, her pajamas and her wet slippers while things got figured out. Now that things are figured out, she has found a new place to live but literally has to go pick through the remains of her charred and wet apartment, where the ceiling continues to fall and the fireplace tilts dangerously, and get what she can salvage. She will have to clean it herself and just deal with the loss. So if you are renting, ask yourself, how nice is my landlord? Probably not as nice as us. GET THE DAMN INSURANCE, because even if your landlord is nice, he will not be reimbursed for the niceness.