That Time Our Apartment Almost Burned Down

Yesterday we almost lost everything. 

Let me back up a bit-

We went to the grocery store yesterday morning after breakfast. When we came home I went to wash my hands, because ew! gross! grocery! store! germs! when I noticed there was no hot water. No big deal, C looked at the hot water heater, determined it wasn't on (?) and flipped the breaker to get it going again. (For the record, the apartments we live in are about as old as we are, and every time something stops working ((most recently the AC)) we're told to, 'Just flip the breaker! Then it'll work.' Of course it never does.) Regardless. The hot water heater starts working again and we continue on with our lives for the next hour or so.

C and T had been planning on going over to my aunt's house to swim yesterday afternoon. I wanted to stay home and catch up on my DVR/maybe take a nap/finish 38 loads of laundry. So, that's what I did.

Right about the time the boys were getting ready to leave, my brother noticed a smell. It smelled like burning rubber. I had just started my 12th (kidding, sort of) load of laundry so I was bitching that the dryer was probably on it's last leg. But no, the smell wasn't coming from there. So C walked over to the closet that our hot water heater is in and starts unscrewing things, looking for the source of the smell, because it was definitely getting stronger. 

All of a sudden C runs down the hall to flip the breaker again (to turn the hot water heater off). Yeah, our hot water heater was basically on fire. Burning through wires, and all. 

OMG. 

If the boys would have left to go swimming 3 minutes sooner I would have either a) Decided to forgo my Teen Mom marathon I was about to partake in and go for the nap instead or b) Noticed the smell, and freaked out about what to do about it, because I don't even know what the water heater looks like, regardless of how to unscrew things to figure out that that was where the issue was!

I could have been asleep. 

We could have lost everything. 

I can't imagine how things could have ended differently had they left before they actually did. 

We haven't had hot water since then, and of course it's a holiday weekend so the maintenance guy is nowhere to be found. So that's been fun. 

I told C that maybe we should look into getting renter's insurance again. We've had it before, but not at this current apartment. 

Not having hot water for a few days is a small price to pay for keeping our apartment standing.