Woeful Wednesday

What is my tale of woe this week? Let me tell you! Oh the shame and embarrassment that I feel when I think back to Monday evening... but I'm jumping ahead of myself. Let's begin my story. On Monday I spent a delightful afternoon going through all my files and organizing like mad, creating a recycle pile and pile to be shredded (old pay stubs/bank statements). At the supper table I mentioned that I had a bunch of stuff to shred and dad suggested that I just burn it in our woodstove. Seeing as we don't even have a paper shredder I thought, ok! good idea... "Just start with a third of the stack or so" said Dad. We already had a small fire started as a chill was starting to creep into the house (yes... it was hot and humid and May and now it's chilly in June!). I started tossing my old bank statement onto the fire... two by two.... four by four... wow, this is making a good fire! "Hey dad, there's going to be a lot of ashes!" says I. I threw some more papers onto the fire. Poke, poke with the fire poker... hey... what's that roaring noise? It's getting louder... "Dad? DAD?!? AUGGGGHH! Come quick!!" Dad rushed over and shut the whole woodstove down (closed the damper and whatnot) and I raced outside. Black/brownish smoke was BILLOWING from our chimney. Oh no! I started freaking out... oh no, oh no, please please please don't be a chimney fire. I raced back in to see how dad was doing and then raced outside again. Even worse this time! Flames were shooting out the chimney!!!! What have I done? What have I done? I flew back inside to holler the horrible news to dad and ran to grab the phone to call the fire department. This was my first time dialing 9-1-1 by the way. After screaming (well not quite :P) chimney fire! into the receiver and barking out our address, I ran back outside to see that dad had thrown a ladder up against the house, whipped out the garden hose and sprayed the fire out from the chimney. (I was quite proud about how quick thinking he was! Especially since he was sick!). In the distance I could hear the sirens wailing as the firetrucks approached. Oh the shame, the shame! The firemen poked around in the woodstove a bit, emptying it of the ashes, and on our roof checking out the chimney and spraying some more water down it for good measure but that was about the extent of their doing. I'm just so thankful that no damage (besides our downstairs and freshly washed laundry hung to dry reaking like smoke) was done. But I'm still awfully embarrassed that I did such a foolish thing. Here are a few pictures of the events. They aren't the best quality but I was pretty embarrassed to be taking their pictures!