This house is less than a mile from our place. Last Wednesday night the house caught on fire in the middle of the night. No one was injured, but the house is probably a complete loss. Later that afternoon the fire re-ignited from a smoldering mattress requiring another visit from the fire department. That’s a good reminder to check all of the fire alarms tomorrow when we switch from standard time to daylight saving time (the correct spelling, despite all that is seen on Facebook).

A week or so earlier a family of four died from carbon monoxide poisoning. They were a well-known family in the community, part of a much larger family. When they didn’t show up for Church on Sunday morning and then didn’t show up for a family dinner later that day, someone went over to check on them and found them all dead (one died in the shower!). A faulty water heater is suspected to be the cause. Since then every CO detector in town has been sold out! I checked our fire alarms and that’s all they are … fire alarms. We don’t have a CO detector installed. That’s going to change this week as well. I’m not sure we want to be like the woman reported in the news today who had been dead in her car in her garage for six years before she was found.