Funny story – years ago Duane and I moved to Discovery Bay, he was remodeling our rental in Reno so I started living in California before him so I could keep working there. It was January when we moved in and we had a wood burning fireplace that I used every night. Everyday he asked me if I had bought a fire extinguisher, 2 actually,  everyday I told him no, but I would go out and get them that day… a week or so went by and I still hadn’t gotten around to it. I figured I was careful so there was no way the fire would shoot out of the fireplace and burn the joint down. (Plus he’s the fire expert he should buy them.)

Well one day I was blow drying my hair and guess what happened – the hairdryer started shooting flames out of it. No joke. Flames shooting out of it. Sparkler things were landing on the bath mat and burning holes in it … it was not a good situation. I went out and bought 4 fire extinguishers that day.  I told him that if he just would have told me that that could happen I would have gone out and got them the first day. 

Fast forward 8 years and I have 5 extinguishers in my house, both bathrooms, kitchen, next to the sauna and next to the fireplace. I never leave the clothes dryer on when I leave and always unplug the toaster, hair straightener and coffee pot when I go out. I warn everyone about Christmas tree lights and space heaters. I am house burning down, fire scared. 

Well a few weeks ago my heater broke. It was 55 degrees in my house when I woke up, and in the 20s and 30s outside… blah blah blah…The warranty people had a new one in 48 hours so it wasn’t so bad, but in the mean time … I was using my gas fireplace until I ran out of propane and then I switched to space heaters. 

There were plugged-in in my bedroom. While I was getting ready for bed or in the shower they worked perfectly. As soon as I got in bed they shut off and blew the breaker. I would get up, flick the breaker back on, switch outlets, move them around the room and no matter what as soon as I laid down in bed .. the breaker blew. 

Duane is still keeping me safe and teaching me lessons. 

– xoxo Victoria

P.S. When they were replacing my heater they found a pretty good leak under my house. My dad fixed it, but there was one day with no heat and no water … it was like m=being back in the motorhome in winter! hahahahaha