Bonfire Disagreements

(Friends don’t let friends drink and blog.)

So, I made the mistake of asking my in-laws over for a bonfire.  And by bonfire, I was thinking of a small fire in the fire pit, which we have done before with no difficulties or drama.  (I might note that I am typing this QUITE drunkenly, and so I apologize for any typos in advance.)

Yes, well, my husband and in laws were thinking ‘the largest fire we can make with the wood at hand’, which was not at all what I had in mind.  Not. At. All.

I was nervous to start out with, what with the flames jumping 8 feet or more, and that was bad enough, but when the heat really starting to reach out and sting my face and cut at my air, I freaked.

Not because of the fire NOW, but rather because of the fire that took our neighbors house.  We tried that night to get in the side door and reach their girls, but there was so much fire.  I was forced off their porch by flames and smoke and choking on it, and it was a nightmare.  A literal nightmare, only there was no relief when I woke up because when we woke up the girls were dead and nothing we had done was good enough to change that.

The heat hit me and then a big billow of smoke, and I started panicking and trying to put it out with the hose, which  my in-laws found quite funny, and my husband was quite annoyed, but it was FIRE and RIGHT THERE, and a I couldn’t BREATHE, and it was horrid.

It’s the first good sized fire I’d been around since their fire.

I was banned to the house for trying to put it out, and the hose was seized.  They didn’t turn it off, but I wasn’t allowed to have it.  So, once I calmed down a bit, I made ice cream, and my husband invited me back out again when it had died down enough that he thought I wouldn’t be hardly alarmed.

It was kind of embarrassing really, but it was really intense with my heart rabbiting along and chills and a cold sweat and just FEAR.  Just this sick FEAR.

But, the fire is nearly died down to nothing now, and I took a good bit and sprayed down heavily around it so it couldn’t spread.  We’ll leave our window and curtains to watch it, and when I go to bed I’ll spray it down until it’s out.

It’s really quite nice because the huge pile of brush that we’ve been struggling to deal with is mostly gone.

Which is nice.

It really is.

Except I don’t think my heart can take much more of that!

Do you have any irrational or quite possibly rational fears that you struggled with?  I didn’t expect to be hit like that, and it was quite a shock.  What are you afraid of?  I’ll admit earwigs will make me shriek!  Inquiring minds want to know.  *smile*