FIREPLACE OF DEATH!!!

I wonder how many of you read muh blogs and don't read the rest because you may think that the title is somewhat lame.... at least one of you... you know who you are... oh yes... you do...

I hope this title sucked him and the rest of you in as I recently decided to use our fireplace for the first time!

In our new home, we have a fireplace. The home is 70+ years old and so is the fireplace, so we were intimidated to use it... at least I was.

For weeks, I had been getting pointers from my father and people at work. They told me gems such as "Make sure you open the flew" and "If smoke comes back in, you probably have a problem." Everything I was told, I stored away in my little filing cabinet in muh brain. Until last night.

I opened up the fireplace and looked inside. Flew? Ummm... where the hell is this so called flew that people were talking about? I went and got a flashlight, pointed it up and I could see all the way to the top of the fireplace. I immediately called muh father who told me that all I had to do was push it back. Ummm... nope...

With a fireplace about 50 years older than his, I was stumped until I saw a metal chain that was pulled all the way down (I discovered this by pulling -- even though I had visions of a dead body falling on muh head, I pulled anyway.) I deduced that this must be the flew opener thingeramabob.

However, I had a new problem. Pulled down should mean that whatever it was pulling should be open right? Nope, and this was discovered after I lit a couple of pieces of newspaper on fire. The test proved that it was still closed as some smoke decided to visit my in the living room.

I released the cord, heard some wind on the windiest of nights, and lit the fire up confident that this was the "open flew" that I so needed. I got the fire burning and closed the front glass door to the fireplace and got paranoid that I was going to have a problem, so I decided to check to see if smoke was coming out of the chimney.

After putting on muh coat and heading outside, I looked up at the chimney to see if smoke was coming out. "Dufus!" went through muh mind as I realized, you can't see smoke at 6 o'clock at night in December! This would require me to go out on the roof of the front porch and take a peek.

On the roof, I steadied myself as there were strong winds and I looked up. That is the first and last time that I will ever be glad to see smoke coming out of muh house. I smiled and felt a huge sense of release. So much so that my entire body relaxed and forgot to prepare for strong winds.

That's when the huge gust of wind came and blew smack into muh chest. The wind carried me to the edge of the roof and then right off. Muh body fell the fifteen feet to the ground and I landed flat on muh back. I shook it off and walked inside as though nothing had happened.

Did any of you gasp or even feel a bit of relief that I might have gotten a bit more hurt? I wonder if you even read it this far. The entire story was true until the falling off the roof part. The wind did knock me over a bit and I was stupid to stop paying attention to that fact.

There are two morals to this story.

1. BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU ARE ON THE ROOF!
2. ALWAYS READ TO THE END OF THE BLOG!!!

Have a nice day...