Smoke!

My eldest daughter is asleep with Baby Z in her arms. My big boy H is napping without any lunch after a soccer game in the morning till noon. My middle daughter is upstairs waiting for me while I upload the photos from the camera onto the computer. And I'm gulping down lychee (that's my lunch).

The past few days hubby and I have been busy with Hayl AlMaghrib stuff and it has been really dragging for days. It isn't particularly easy trying to get everything by a looming deadline with a crying baby who wakes up every couple o' hours, incessant phone calls due to Hayl stuff, nursing demands from Baby Z, three other kids who have summer programs at scattered hours throughout the day, hubby's orders that the kids do Quran, which I have to supervise on top of everything else, my own sleepiness, and like icing on a cake, a neighbor's house that would have burned our apartment down had we not seen the smoke coming out of our oven.

We were lounging in the living room when we were disrupted by a very intense stench coming from the kitchen. As we had closed the living room window, it was obvious that the smell came from the kitchen window so we closed it. However the stench lingered. It smelled at first like BBQ but each time we went to the kitchen sink the stench grew worse. Just before maghrib, hubby noticed smoke coming from our kitchen. I opened the oven and peeked though I know we didn't have anything in it because I haven't been cooking for days. Smoke was coming out. Immediately hubby went out to look at our neighbor's house. It was filled with smoke!

I was holding Baby Z. Hubby ran next door, pried off their screen and unlocked their door through the window. Apparently and fortunately, no one was in. Smoke billowed out like a pot boiling over. He dashed inside. I stood at our door, still holding Baby Z, not quite knowing what to do. Afraid that hubby would be overwhelmed by the smoke, I grabbed the phone and proceeded to call 911, but thought twice about it.

"What if everything was ok? I would be wasting their time." I held back.

"J!"

"Sgl!" I called out. A sister was coming by to drop money for the P10, and she apparently saw all the smoke coming out of our neighbor's house. It probably looked like our apartment was smoking too.

"My husband's inside!" I yelled to her.

Well, to make a long story short, hubby took off his shirt to silence the smoke alarm while standing on the stair railing. (I know that is a precarious perch, for the railing is very very thin)

"They had a pot on the stove," he said, later on.

He reeked of smoke when he came in. It was maghrib (what I call hectic time in our house).

Apparently they had left a pot on the stove and it had burned.

Alhamdulillah hubby didn't go to the masjid yet, or our apartment might have been filled with smoke too, judging from the smoke coming out of our dormant oven!

Well, alhamdulillah all ended well. I was a little worried about hubby and smoke inhalation, but he was too busy with P10, I don't think he will see a doctor to have it checked.