Half an hour in to January 1st, 2014, a fire broke out in the house next door.

Rewind to 2013.

My blog posts have been noticeably scarce the last two months. Between a business trip and turbulence/drama at my job, and a disappointing attempt to fit into a size 6 cocktail dress in time for a Christmas party, life gave me little time to pen a few notes about my progress–or lack thereof. The holidays made backsliding into old habits so much easier, thus bringing me to the explosive date of 1/1/2014.

So there I was standing out at the curb with my fiance, watching the fire trucks crowd my front lawn, clutching my two pups and shivering my feet off.  I was panicked enough to remember to wear my jacket in my rush to leash the dogs and flee the house before the smoke became too thick to see–but addled enough to forget to wear warm shoes.

I occurred to me–as firemen drowned the burning house down to muddy embers–had New Year’s Eve festivities kept us out all night we might not have had a house to come back to. (On our block, the homes are laid out like garden homes, and neighbors live barely 20 feet away from each other.)

As it was, I was somewhat bloated from the evening’s heavy repast (all you can eat Brazilian steakhouse) and had hit the sack early. Habit kept my man awake, gaming into the wee hours of the morning–and as luck would have it, he was soberly observant of the unnatural glow emanating from the side yard. I was still in a meat coma when he burst into the bedroom and announced that there was a fire. Disbelief dragged my lethargic butt out of bed to see what he was babbling about–then the following “holy $h!t, fire!” moment propelled me into edge-of-the-seat awareness.

Two hours had elapsed before we were assured that our house was fire-free and we were allowed back indoors. At that time, my man was fiercely determined to make a Walmart run to replace our–ahem, cough–disconnected smoke alarms. 

Dawn had finally begun to break before fire officials had finally exited the scene, leaving behind a debris-strewn yard and the ruin of a house. Things could have turned out so much worse–bad smoke detectors, no insurance, nearly $300 spent unwisely on a pile of comic books (lol).

I regard the day as something of a lucky omen–a memorable start to a new year. It’s never too late to get back to the things that need to get done–we replaced those faulty detectors, renewed our renters insurance, and bagged and boxed our precious comics. The opportunities afforded to us by an unlucky event helped us reprogram our course and renewed our enthusiasm to make the coming year better. I resolved to get back on the wagon starting Monday, my fiance resolved to take his meds and made an appointment to see his doctor.

And, it was also a great motivator to get our budget in order so that we can save up for a new house. 

We certainly could have walked away from this incident fearing the worst, harboring a negative outlook about the rest of our year. But we stuck to our schedule, and Monday January 6 brought us to where we planned to start the year: back on the right track. (It didn’t hurt to watch a marathon run of The Big Bang Theory to keep us belly-aching throughout the rest of the week.)

One friend put it this way: now that the year is pre-disastered, nothing else could possibly go wrong.

Welcome to 2014. Make it a good one!

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