I was sitting up in bed this morning passing a pleasant hour of blog-reading when a loud squeal erupted in the apartment. I have no sense of sound direction, so it always takes me awhile to figure out what various beeps and squeals actually mean. This one was too long for a bedside alarm, which I couldn’t imagine that Mister Boyfriend had actually set for 8:30 on a Saturday. Perhaps hearing aid feedback? I turned it on and off, and that didn’t make any difference. Fire alarm? Surely not. Too loud. So I sat there and contemplated for a minute, and then thought “I’m going to keep sitting here thinking about this and the house is going to burn down around our ears.” So I leaned over and poked Jeff, who was snoozling contentedly in spite of the squeal.

He got up and wondered through the apartment, finally peering out the peephole in the front door. The flashing alarm lights in the hall signalled it was in fact the building fire alarm that was going off. He also observed one of our neighbors casually taking out her trash, and so decided that it couldn’t be that much of an emergency. I decided to go with that, since my neighbors include a bunch of folks I really don’t want to see in their jammies. I didn’t think they really wanted to see me in disarray, either.

Jeff came back to bed and lit a cigarette. I remember looking over at him and thinking “How will we know if there’s smoke? You smell like smoke!” but I know better than to deprive a longtime smoker of that first morning cigarette, especially when they’ve been unpleasantly awakened and informed of possible impending catastrophe. I went back to reading. Then, a few minutes later I heard “I smell smoke!” from the other side of the bed. Despite my thoughts of approximately two minutes before, I sprang into action.

Now, there are two things you need to know at this point. The first thing is that the two of us tend to place an absurd amount of trust in each other. This is often a problem when we’re negotiating a strange city and get slightly confused. Let’s say one of us is driving and by observation of the sun has determined that we are headed West. This is generally an infallible method, one that doesn’t leave a lot of room for second-guessing oneself. Now, let’s imagine that the other one of us is over in the passenger seat with the map and proceeds to insist that no no no, the map says we’re headed East. The map says East! East, dammit! And here’s the thing: the driving one, who has accurately determined our direction through age-old navigational techniques, will actually believe the other one and turn the car around. This works both ways between us, with absolutely no regard to gender or age. Last summer when we were new to the Twin Cities, we consistently derailed each other even when we knew we were headed for the river, which is sort of a constant. Neither of us is inherently directionally challenged. When either of us is in a car by ourselves, we get wherever we’re going just fine. When we’re together, we get lost. Too much trust.

The second thing you need to know is that all my life, I’ve had deja vu dreams that are generally accurate. And for the past two days my dreams had peripherally involved fire. No great damaged was sustained in either dream, but there was a sense of fire.

So when my beloved smoking smoker smelled smoke, I immediately got dressed, put my contacts in, and went back to the bedroom to put on my brace. At that point, I realized that I had been walking on my repaired ankle without any aid whatsoever. My ankle works! My next thought was, what should we take with us? My photo albums? The gallery prints that represent five years of my honey’s life? The rest of the art? No, the research! “Honey, grab the laptops!”

Then I strapped on my brace and hobbled over to the front door to peek out. Firemen were tromping up the stairs and the neighbors were coming back in. The alarm was shut off. And yes, the only smoke to be smelled anywhere came from Jeff’s cigarette.

It’s not been a lost morning, though. It's a lovely grey rainy spring day outside. I made a frittata for brunch, with potatoes, fresh onions and garlic, thyme, black forest ham, and aged Wisconsin cheddar. Also made a big pot of green tea with citrus. We’re watching ten-year old homemade tapes of the PBS ten part series Rock and Roll while transferring them to DVD. I’m avoiding grading, which I’ll have to get to this afternoon. With the exception of that last item, these are the makings of a good day.