Fire Alarm

A little after 1:30 this morning Mike and I were awakened to the sound of the fire alarm going off in the building. It was SO loud. There is an alarm in each apartment and several in the hallways. Without saying a word Mike and I each jumped out of bed and went into action. I grabbed Zoe's bag (thankfully it was still full from the trip to church), got the bottles out of the fridge, and got Zoe out of the co-sleeper and threw (not literally) her into the car seat. In the mean time I realize that Mike is standing on the back of the couch taping a washcloth over the fire alarm so that it wouldn't be so loud for Zoe. I had my shoes on and was ready to go.

Melanie: Come on, Mike, get your shoes on. We need to go.

Mike: Look outside and see if there is any smoke.

Our complex is similar to the one in the TV show "Friends" in that each apartment's front door is inside the building with hallways instead of facing outside. I could hear people walking down the hallway and into the stairwell which is just outside our door. I looked out into the hallway and saw a bunch of zombies slowly walking, no one was running. Good sign. No smoke. Another good sign. I then went to the outside gate to see what was going on outside. Just a lot of people sitting around looking like they were pretty much still sleeping.

Melanie: There are a lot of people outside. No smoke. Come on, let's go.

Zoe: (finally wakes up) Hey guys, what's going on?

Mike: Let's just wait to see what's happening, there's no smoke.

Zoe: Who wants to have a contest to see who has the cutest smile?

Melanie: Hi Zoe...hey booga booga. We need to go just in case. I have everything ready. Get your shoes on.

Zoe: I'm winning!

Mike: But the fire department hasn't even come yet. I bet some idiot was cooking toast and burned it.

The fire department did finally come...turned the alarm off...and left. It was not even exciting. They didn't jump out of the trucks running with water. There was obviously no fire.

I learned a couple of things this morning:

1) Always have Zoe's bag ready to go. If there really had been a fire I wouldn't have had time to get her bag ready.

2) This is not news to us, but Mike and I react to situations like this in very different ways. My instinct when I heard the alarm was to GET OUT. Mike was more logical and realized that the fire department (the firehouse is literally a block away and they could have been here within a minute) took a while to get here and the sprinkler system never even went off. So he really had no intention of leaving. But if we had needed to he knew we could get out quick because our apartment is right next to the walkway to the parking garage.

Also, I think I secretly wanted to leave because it would have been a fun adventure. I wanted to go outside where all the people were. Or we could have made it to Lisa and Megan's place in two hours if we needed to.