Chaos

After a weekend away in McCleary, celebrating an early Thanksgiving with Brian's family, we got home early evening. We were pretty tired, I was personally exhausted after a few days with minimal sleep, so we went to bed early. At 1:30am we were awakened to the fire alarms, we have THREE in our little apartment,  blaring in our apartment. The siren was piercing, deafening, almost crippling and just outrageously loud. It wasn't just our alarms going off, it was the whole building. Once the siren started up the cat darted off my chest and went into hiding. Honestly, I panicked. My heart was beating a thousand times a minute and all I could think of was to grab my coat, my ID, and try to grab the cat. After Brian and I put on our coats we tried to find Olive. We couldn't find her! We were looking in the same spots over and over yet she was nowhere to be seen. After several minutes of us chaotically scrambling around the apartment trying to at least find her, we had to get out. Meanwhile I could hear our upstairs neighbors running back and forth across their apartment which didn't help my anxiety. Brian grabbed our folders full of our important paperwork and we headed to the stairs. Neighbors we had never seen before were conjugating outside in their robes, sweaters and pjs. Once we were outside there was no sign of a fire so we figured some person had smoke in their apartment and opened the door to the hall to let it out (which the complex warned never to do for this reason!). The whole time we were waiting the siren kept blaring. I just wanted them to at least turn the alarm off because all I could think of was poor Olive in the apartment and I was kicking myself for not staying to look harder and longer for her. It took about 10 minutes for the fire department to show up. Once they were here it took another 5-10 minutes for the alarm to quiet. Finally the sirens quit and everyone decided to wander back to their apartments. When we got back in my adrenaline was just skyrocketing. We both were calling Olive and she came out from under the couch. We had looked there about 5x and didn't see her. Now we know for next time where to look with a flashlight. I am just so thankful there was no real emergency and after this false alarm hopefully I will feel better prepared if this happens again. IF being the keyword. Needless to say I needed a nap! If any of you know me, I cannot live without plenty of sleep. I've tried to, but it's just not me.