A little fire follow-up

If you've been reading this blog for longer than two months, you likely noticed this post. Since the lace looks about the same (a big blob of grey) I thought I'd give a little update on our post-fire situation.

As I wrote back in July, we have a new condo. It's nice. We like it. The main floor is pretty awesome: very lofty-warehouse-chic, with it's high ceiling and open-concept and wall of floor to ceiling windows. What the kitchen lacks in cupboard space it makes up for in fantastic appliances. The upstairs is alright, but it is much, much smaller than the last place. This is posing some serious issues with regard to unpacking. In order to unpack, we need to have a place to put everything, but in order to have that place we need to get the boxes out of the way and unpacked but in order to unpack them...you see? What we are calling "Peanut's Room" is, in fact, wall to wall boxes, about four feet high. It's a damned good thing she still sleeps in bed with us: there is no room for a crib anywhere. We'd have to put her in the living room, I think, if she was in a crib.

The neighbourhood isn't bad. On one hand, we really like it. There are a lot of kids down the street from us, and they often congregate at the concrete barricade (the block is divided to prevent through-traffic) in the evenings, so once Peanut is walking (could be any day now!) I think she'll really enjoy playing with her fellow toddlers. There's a fabulous little Italian grocer at the top of the block. The Man has discovered that their fresh cut bacon is both better quality and cheaper than the cheap bacon from the supermarket, so he's quite happy making weekend bacon runs. And I need to start generating some income if only so that I can support my cheese habit. They have the BEST CHEESE.

We're walking distance - granted, a long walk - from a farmer's market, where I have found the best garlic of all time. If you are on the knittyboard, you may have seen my thread in GHS about garlic storage. I still have to figure out how I'll get and keep a stock of this garlic all winter. It's just too good to go without. Buying local produce direct from the grower is nice for so many reasons, amongst them the fact that it's usually less expensive (at least, for the vegetables and fruit I've been buying, it is). We like that.

It's not all cheap bacon and garlic bulbs, though. While the street is largely residential, one end of it - our end of it - is primarily commercial.  There's a large storage facility for Public Works, a paint store/warehouse, and a smallish factory with several businesses including a presentation company (supply equipment for staging and events) and a couple of printing houses all right across the street from us.  There is a giant semi backing down my street (because, with such a narrow street and that concrete barricade, they have no choice but to back all the way past my house) just about every single day, and almost invariably while Peanut is finally having a nap.

It's infuriating.  Add on top of that that places to which we used to walk in ten minutes now take about forty-five minutes and it has really started to make me wonder if we made a mistake.  I'm sitting in our living room, the street outside quiet and dark, our main floor so bright and funky, and I want to love everything about this place, but I know that there could easily be a big Penske truck backing down the street at 2am tomorrow morning, should that presentation company strike a gig late at night.  And I know that I've barely seen my very, very good friend K all summer.  She lives around the corner from our old place, the one that burned, and took us in the morning of the fire - plied us with tea and strawberries and homebaked bread - and now it's a chore just to spend a few hours with her.  It makes me sad.

We may have prioritized a little incorrectly.  It seemed so important to get a place as soon as possible, and someplace really nice so that we could essentially pretend that we wanted to move.  Unfortunately, we may have missed the mark with this one.  In fairness to ourselves, though, we only saw this place in the evening and on a holiday, so there was no way to know how much commercial traffic comes through here.

Homelessness is unpleasant.  No, we were never living under threat of having to live under a bridge or in a box or in a shelter, but we were definitely without a home of our own for two weeks there.  It was so unsettling it may have driven us to choose a home too quickly.  Not having a place of our own was just too uncomfortable, too scary.  And the real kicker is that it now appears that the building that burned isn't being demolished.  It now appears they will rebuild from the inside out all the units which were burned.  The latest report is "all except the last three units".  So our former home will sit, empty and unloved and untouched and unharmed, for about another year.  While we live here.  It bites.*

We'll likely stick out our year and then move back into the core.  We really did adore living downtown, despite all the drawbacks, like lack of parking, noisy neighbours, sirens, and drunks wandering around the street.  I think it's where we're meant to be.

For now, I'll just have to be patient, and get used to long, long walks to see my friends.

*I know, I know, living immediately adjacent to a construction zone would bite, too, even worse, perhaps, than living where we currently do.  Plus, there's the whole "danger" issue.  I think, as a victim of peril, that I have the freedom to be mildly irrational.

Even quicker update :)

Looks like we have the condo we saw on Wednesday. We still have to meet with the property manager, but his assistant who showed us the place is confident we have it. Hopefully, we'll sign the lease and get the keys tomorrow morning, and have our things moved in by the evening.

Our contents are all retrieved, and need absolutely no special cleaning. I viewed the contents, and opened a bag of bedding (the bedroom is the room most likely to have gotten smokey) and all I smelled was home. No smoke at all. So no delay and no additional costs.

It's been a very good day. :)

Quick update

Very quick update on what's happening here. The contents of the house were removed yesterday, and in about an hour we'll be going to see it all and find out about what will be entailed to clean it. We may be able to just launder everything ourselves, since there is no real smoke damage or soot.

We've put an application in on another townhouse condo for rent. It's near Little Italy and on a quiet residential side-street, with a home recording studio where The Man and I recorded our friend's album just this past winter. The guy who owns the studio has two small children, so Peanut may be able to make some friends.

We're feeling hopeful, which is a massive step up from how we had been feeling only Tuesday. We know that things will work out.

Providence and Acts of Grace

It may seem trite, but his week has truly been an exercise in living in grace and appreciating blessings.

This fire was massive. It burned for hours before it was discovered, and by then, it was in the small hours of the morning, when we were all deeply asleep. More than a third of the row of units were gutted, the roof over them entirely consumed. Despite that, no one was hurt. Even all the pets in the row escaped.

Somehow, with all the destruction, even in the very next unit, our contents are largely unharmed. We will be able to retrieve essentially everything.

As I wrote yesterday, we've learned that only licensed contractors can retrieve the contents of the house. What I learned only two weeks ago is that my cousin Greg has recently gotten a job working for just such a company. You can call it a coincidence. I call it a blessing. I call it an act of grace. Even though we can not be in there, insuring everything is packed up, that everything we want to save is retrieved, he will be there, looking out for us.

I have a childhood toy, my "lovey" if you will. His name is Bunny. He is, at this point, little more than a rag. To anyone else, he would look like nothing special or important, or even worth keeping. It would be difficult to describe him to be certain that he was found and packed up with the rest of our possessions. But I know that Greg will remember Bunny; he had a bunny just like it. I know that I can tell Greg that Bunny is in there, somewhere in our bedroom, and that he will find Bunny, and bring him out to me. It's just a small childhood toy, but I slept with that rabbit every night until past adolescence, and I don't like the idea of simply abandoning him.

Bad things happen. But my cousin got this job at this time with this company.

I call that Grace.

Condemned

We woke up at a normal hour this morning and had some breakfast in our suite. My sister-in-law brought us some groceries last night, so I was able to have a bowl of yogurt and some grapes from the fruit basket The Man's office had sent over yesterday afternoon. The Man took Wembley out for a walk, and came back about ten minutes later, rushing into the room. He told me he had run into one of the other residents from our building in the hallway, and that there was some news on the building. He recommended we get to the house, so I strapped on Peanut, and we walked over to the site with Wembley.

The official word is in: the city has condemned the building. Because it is condemned, we cannot enter the house. Contractors will be hired to retrieve as much as is salvageable, which in our case should be just about everything.

I will never set foot in our home again.

::

It is certainly true, and important to remember, that there were no fatalities, and that is a very fortunate thing. To call it miraculous would not be an exaggeration, considering the nature of the fire. What I keep hearing and reading is that "no lives were lost". I'm not sure that's an accurate assessment, though. It isn't just about our possessions, even. We lived in that home. It was our home.

We loved living there. Peanut spent her first summer, just a year ago, gazing out that living room window at the trees outside. She had just learned to crawl up our stairs. She had only just discovered, only just last week, how fun it could be to pull herself up at our nearly-floor-length bedroom window to look out, slapping her hands against the glass, and giving it kisses.

The life we built was in that home. We'll build another one, and the construction of that life has already begun, but the one we had is lost. We feel rather lost. As much as I am comforted to know that we'll more likely than not end up with most of our sentimental possessions, and not having to replace everything, I still just want to go home.

And I can't.

Fire, or, Homeless

The Man and I awoke to the crackling sound of fire Monday morning.

I was awake, nursing Peanut, and heard a strange sound, like the tapping sound of rain falling on taut plastic. I lay in bed, nursing, and contemplated the sound, trying to sort out what it could be. I could see a bit of sky through the bottom of our bedroom window: the sky looked to be the dark blue of a clear nighttime sky of the first of summer, not the grey sky of a rainy day. The sound was also wrong: it was the rhythm of it. Rain has a certain rhythm, a certain musical quality - which is why I love it - and this sound lacked that. It was just ongoing and...impossible to place.

Peanut was nursing in her sleep, and I was reticent to wake her in the middle of the night just so I could know what the sound was, so I lay still in the bed, wondering. But every fibre in me urged me to go to the window and look out.

I felt The Man stir beside me, and turned my head to see him wake and roll half-way over, looking toward the window quizzically.

"I don't know what that sound is," I whispered, not wanting to wake Peanut. "Can you go see what it is?"

He would have gotten up and gone to the window even had I not spoken. He walked gingerly to the window, peeked out the blinds, screamed, and ran out of the room. He yelled "Fire!" back at me, as he was half way down the stairs.

I leapt out of bed, waking Peanut, who started to cry, but settled as soon as I picked her up. "Do I need to get out of the house?" I called to him, just as I got to the window and saw the bright red and yellow of flames reflecting off the building which backs onto our bedroom.

"Yes!!"

I ran to the closet and tried to find a sweater, but the one I knew was there seemed to have disappeared. I recalled an ancient and enormous wool zippered cardi in a basket of blankets over near the bathroom. With Peanut in my arms, I ran, found it, and ran down the stairs to our first floor.

The Man had found his phone and dialed 911. He was saying to the dispatcher that there was a fire several doors down from our house. His was not the first call. He hung up. We could hear sirens, I think, though it may have been just screaming in my head. I was hyperventilating and shaking and repeatedly saying "Oh God; Ok; oh God; Ok."

I had a pair of slip-on sneakers at the top of the stairs to the front door. I put them on, and handed Peanut to The Man. I grabbed my favourite babywearing wrap from the hooks, also at the top of the stairs, where we keep them, tied it around myself, and put Peanut inside. He had Wembley on her leash already.

I looked at The Man. It had been maybe 60 seconds since we'd gotten up. I asked him, "Is there a single thing in this house that we want?" because I couldn't think of anything, anything at all. He didn't answer, but ran to the bookcase, about 20 feet away, and grabbed the wedding album. He was right beside the coffee table, where our laptop sits. "Grab the laptop!" I told him, "It has all Peanut's baby pictures on it."

And we left.

Our neighbour was outside, looking...bereft, and clinging to her 10 month old daughter. We stood on the sidewalk, watching smoke pour out of the dormer window a few units down to the south from our townhouse. Fire engines had arrived and were all over the street. Water was spraying through the air. We moved across the street and waited.

I watched flames escape the roof of a central unit. I watched the flames spread further south, along the roof, and the next unit to the south catch, and burn. Then I watched the wind turn. I watched the wind drive the flames north. I watched as smoke escaped the chimney, and then the dormer window to the loft of each unit, moving north. Moving toward our unit.

::

The townhouses are stacked; our upper unit, and the unit immediately below us are the only two without smoke or water damage. Firefighters had to run water lines through the units immediately next to us; they suffered both smoke and water damage.



The Man has been in twice to salvage belongings. On his first trip, he grabbed our kilts - my dancing kilt and his wedding kilt - my wedding gown, including the enormous crinoline, his guitar, some of Peanut's clothes, and the dress form my mother had gifted me for my birthday. I received it on Saturday, two days before my birthday; two days before we woke to fire. An inauspicious beginning to my year, to be sure.

Our unit is untouched. No smoke or water damage. Our contents are unharmed. We are incredibly lucky. We will likely be able to save almost everything, though I'm worried about how things will fare given the refrigerator full of rotting food (including milk, breastmilk and eggs), the half-filled bag of dirty cloth diapers in the bathroom, and the rapidly increasing temperatures in the city.

We're still waiting to hear what will happen with our home. We're in a hotel at the moment, thanks to the Red Cross. We have a lot of friends in the city, and our families are all around the city as well. We have a lot of people taking care of us, as well as an outpouring of support and offers of clothes for all three of us from the women of the knittyboard.

We'll be alright. For now, we're homeless, but not hopeless.