New surprises every day...

Unique experiences when your home burns down:

1. The TimeWarner man comes to your condo to start your phone/internet line and you get a phone number. Immediately it hits you; you may have a number, but you don't have any phones.

2. A dear man, who you don't know, but cares a lot, buys your new mattress, brings it over to your temporary condo, and happens to have the cutters to cut the padlock on the garage that no longer has a key to it.

3. That medicine cabinet won't clean up, so you buy some more shelf liner.

4. The CD cases that weren't completely burned, were drowned by python-sized fire hoses. So, you take out the only slightly burned CD to clean and see if it happens to still have music on it.

5. While listing every single Playmobil toy you have ever purchased for the kids (researching the company site and ebay for a couple of hours), you remember that your kids also had Littlest Pet Shop, Barbies, cars, Star Wars and Prince Caspian toys. It's good the computer still works.

6. While putting your groceries and orchid you have dreamed of buying for 3 years, and have bitten the bullet and picked out, the lady ahead of you asks you a question that brings up the fire (can't remember the question - sorry), and then she tells you she's been searching for your cat. You've never met her before, but she still cares about the details of your family's lives.

7. Countless calls, a ton of new clothes for a really tall son, and a 20 minute stop for a massage (another luxery I've waited a year for), and the realization that the eggs your kids found down by the hotel's creek were snake eggs - okay that's just creepy. You know what else WAS down there? Tree frogs. And they not only can stick to trees, but also red hotel walls, in spite of their fatigue from tree frog races up and down the stairs.

So many surprises, so many little joys, and a few critters I really didn't want to meet; overall, it was a very good day!