"No Torching in the House" is a rule we have. Now.

Here are pictures of my old heater which has two openings. On the floor of the living room in the corner and in the hallway across from Katie's room. The pictures show Fred USING AN OXYGEN/ACETYLENE TORCH TO DEMOLISH IT AND REMOVE IT FROM THE HOUSE, INCLUDING THE NATURAL GAS PIPELINE THAT IS ATTACHED TO IT. This is inside my house. I am famous for being easily frightened by loud noises, sparks and other startling things. I was in the garage and came through my bedroom when I see Little Javi squatting in my hallway over the hole that used to be my heater making sure that the sparks that are jumping onto the wood from the steel from the cutting torch. Sparks are falling onto my varnished wood and wood chips from Katie's recently installed bedroom door. Wood chips that are ready to be used as tender to cause a devastating house fire. Mind you, I have not even seen what is going on in the other room, nor why there are even sparks. But I'm a welder's old lady from 25 years ago and I've seen both sparks and bonehead moves in my years, so I shouldn't have been surprised when I saw Fred laying on the floor of the living room using a torch to cut the heater out. I couldn't breathe. I looked around for a fire extinguisher, but the one they were using was an oldy moldy one we had in the backyard that had expired in 2000. Super duper. I bolted to the trailer to get my newest extinguisher. That's Michael standing there in the picture. I told him to stay and look for sparks or smoke until I got back. Just as I got back into the house, Stephanie came home for lunch and saw the pandemonium. There was smoke everywhere from the hot steel and dust of the heater. Then we smelled wood smoke. This was very bad. My friend recently had a roof fire and she'd told me the first thing the firefighters did when they ran in her house was to yank all of her pictures off the walls and run them outside. They told her this was the first thing that gets ruined when the walls are hit with the fire hoses. So I started stacking the pictures that WERE STILL HANGING about Fred and the heater. I totally panicked. Now, I am a calm person and I'm not always drama. But not now. I was probably hooting and yelping like a crazed Pomeranian. Stephanie offered to get me out of there, which would have been a good idea if I didn't already know what they were doing and how stupid it was to do it. Stephanie and I went to the pantry and removed the cover to the bottom of the house so it would be accessible should there actually be real fire, not just the piece of paper that caught on fire and made everything smell like wood snoke. I found an Ativan, drank some beer and went in and sat on my bed and I actually cried. I wish I had Nani to put on my head. I appreciate that Fred is putting in air conditioning for me. He doesn't care if it's hot. But I turn into such a psycho during construction. My poor Lucys are wondering where the hell I've been. I've been under my bed until 9 a.m. this morning when Bobbi the housekeeper arrived, bless her heart. She and I cleaned my house which looked like someone literally and liberally threw handfuls of flour and powdered sugar on everything in my house. Every book and rug, every picture and glass. Ugh. We finished about 3 or 4. I actually had to lay down about 2:30 because I was so exhausted. I got up an hour later and kept going after Bobbi left. I love her. She totally gets me and is as crazy as I am.

Here are pictures of Daisy looking at the guinea pig named Tito and the two hamsters named Fatty and Tiny. They were given away to a lovely Mexican family this morning. Katie's kitten, Diablo, remains. He lives in her room and doesn't seem to mind Daisy's obsession with her. I know they'll get along.