Sudden Freak Out

I had originally planned to have this written by phone and sent as a post before getting to work, but of course, texting and driving at the same time is not a very good idea. So here it is now.

What is my sudden freak out?

My day right after getting out of classes, I'm exhausted and tired and ready to go to sleep. But I can't so I'm sitting and slacking off and waiting for the hours to go by before I start getting ready for work.

My dad calls me at around 2:30, maybe 2:45 in the afternoon and asks me: "Is Mom home yet?" And since I'm holed up in the basement with no connection to the outside world when I'm slacking off, I simply say: "Probably not." Because I hadn't heard the door open nor the dogs barking.

"Well, can you go and check?" he asks.

So I say okay and head up the stairs; even though I know very well that Mom is not home. While I'm upstairs, I tell my dad exactly what my conclusion is: Mom is not home.

"Go check the driveway for her car," he insists. He really wants to make sure that Mom isn't home or something. So I obey and trudge back down to heed his commands. And of course, as I suspect, Mom is not home and neither is Mom's car. So I tell my dad just that.

There is silence on the other line, and then he finally says, "Well, when she does get home, can you tell her that there was a fire in her Chinese kitchen." And it is right about there that I freeze and raise both my brows as if my dad can see my confused and surprised expression.

"Fire," I utter.

"There was a fire," he tells me. "Let her know and then tell her to go back to check it out. Hopefully everything is okay."

"Okay," I say.

He repeats his request a few times, and he even worries that something bad may have happened. I repeat my assurance that I shall do as he orders. I will tell Mom when she gets home that there was a fire in her Chinese kitchen at Dillons. And I will tell her to call Dad when she gets the chance.

Then I return to my chair in the basement and continue my slacking off. But all the while, I'm wondering why Mom hasn't gotten home yet. She's usually home around this time for her lunch break and yet there hadn't been a sign of her yet. Of course, my sleep deprived mind doesn't think much of it. I only conjur the idea that my mother is currently on her way home for her lunch break and when she does get home, then I can relay the necessary message to her.

It never occured to me that Mom never left Dillons to begin with.

At least it never occured to me until Dad calls me yet again around 3:00. By this time, I was trying to kill more time before needing to be off to work by 3:30 He again asks if Mom has come home yet. This time, I confidently respond that she is not home yet. And then he tells me that he's been calling the other Dillons (he works at one and she works at another) and no one has been answering. He's been calling her cell phone and she hasn't been answering.

By the time he finishes this sentence, I am on my feet and he is asking my to leave for work early and swing by Mom's workplace to see about what may have happened and determine that everything is okay.

It's all fine and dandy. I decide to change and leave at that exact moment. At this time I'm still slightly laid back and dull. I go and change, I leave the house and I head for Mom's workplace. But as I'm heading there, everytime I come to a stall in the road, like being unable to pass slow cars, being unable to make a left cause of traffic and things like that, the panic begins to seep in. I'm thiking, What if something actually happened? and What if Mom had gotten hurt in the fire? and I just continue to come up with bogus deals about what could or might have happened.

There had been a fire in my mother's department at Dillons. I literally freaked out. I flipped back and forth from wondering if something might have happened to reassuring myself that everything was okay. I was practically in panic mode.

To cut to the main point of this blog, yes, there was a fire in the Chinese kitchen. The entire Dillons store was closed for the meantime to clean up and when I arrived, the staff of Dillons were trying to usher all costumers away, telling them that the store was closed for a while.

I reached the entrance, I recall stuttering and saying something about my mom being an employee and then I was told to head on inside and see to my mommy.

Well, basically a deep fryer caught on fire because it was defective. Everything was okay, nobody was hurt, and I got told that I look exactly like my mother, twice. It was a lot of interesting fun... really...

As soon as that fiasco was all understood, I left for work and as I drove, I pretty much felt my entire body lose all steam and become even more exhausted than I was before. I called my dad to tell him that everything is okay and then I go on my not so merry way to work.

Yea. I'm tired and I'm pooped out today. All has been chaos and hell and to top it all off, I lock my keys in my car.

Life is swell.

In other news, school is coming to the end of a semester, finals are coming up, summer will begin soon, I will have no social life starting then, and I've written and for the first time, finished a story on my own. It is a short, one-shot that I still need to reread and edit and change for the better. And it is one of a coupole in a series of stand alone short stories.

Otherwise, life is still swell.