Calm in Emergencies in Still Listening to Spirit

Some of you have commented on my calm during the earthquake. I have always been that way. When it is a true emergency, I recognize it immediately and this dead calm comes over me, there is no panic and I become deadly clinical and observant--my mind snapping quickly to do the first right thing, and I act immediately.

Example: I was curling my daughter's hair at 4am on the day we were traveling to another town for my uncle's funeral and burial. This 60 year old house had its original electrical connections and the curling iron was plugged into the fluorescent light fixture that lighted the mirror in the bathroom.

I heard a ZZZZZZ and then saw a spark followed by flame coming from the top of the fixture. I unrolled the hair from the iron, pushed my daughter toward the bathroom door and told her to run upstairs and wake her stepfather, then to get out of the house.

I flipped off the lightswitch as I left the bathroom and went across the hall to the telephone. I dialed 911. The dispatcher answered, I calmly recited our address and told her I had a fire. She asked "Do you see flame?" I peeked back in the room and said "Yes, there is flame."

Dispatcher asked "So you are reporting a fire at xxxxxx reciting my address"

I said "Yes, I am reporting a fire at __, will you send help please."

I think she was used to screaming, confused, excited utterances and wasn't trusting my deadpan, monotone voice reporting a fire.

As I hung up, I heard the sirens from our station about 6 blocks away. I also saw that the flame had gone out above the light fixture. By the time I walked to the front of the house, firemen were coming through my front door in a controlled rush.

I showed the first one back to the bathroom and where the flame had been. He raised his axe to start bashing my bathroom wall when I yelled "Stop, Stop, I have a better idea."

He was so startled, he stopped with the axe mid swing. I said, here, come here, as I lead him into the closet of the bedroom behind the bathroom wall. This was quite a few steps down the hall, past the staircase, and into a room that adjoined the bathroom and living room---a den.

I opened the closet and said, here, this is behind that fixture, here is where you want to tear out the wall to get to the wiring of that fixture.

He was consulting his other firefighters and they were following along, I wonder if they thought I was a crazy woman--probably not because they didn't rush me out of the house so they could fight the fire....

They took out quite a bit of the closet wall, located the blown ballast in the light fixture that was the problem, determined they could tie off a couple of electric lines, problem solved.

That is the kind of calm that comes over me in an emergency. Oh, I shake with adrenalin afterwards and feel like throwing up.

We did finish our preparations for traveling out of town to the funeral, and we still had a bathroom that was intact and really we didn't even need to make repairs to the closet wall, although we did.

Nothing to report today, nothing to write about. Another rainy day, quiet Sunday because we have only 1 small ship in town carrying 500 people. Time to get errands run downtown, etc. before the crush of the week comes again.

Blessed be!