And this is why my mother calls me Grace.

Friday night was a classic Mandy moment. But first, I have to explain the layout of my apartment. When you come in the front door, you have two options...

1. Walk up the stairs to go into the bathroom and the bedroom.
2. Turn to your left, walk down two stairs to go into the living room, dining room or kitchen.

Around midnight Friday night I turned on my dishwasher and decided to go upstairs, read for a little bit and then go to sleep. So, I'm laying in my bed, reading a book I had just bought, and minding my own business, when I started noticing a strange smell. So, I got out of bed and walked down the stairs and once I got about half way down, I noticed that my living room was filled with a smokey haze and a foul and mysterious odor. So, once I get to the front door, I turn and, apparently, forgot that there were two steps to get down to the living room. People, I fell and I fell hard on my left ankle. At first I thought, "Great, my apartment is on fire and I have just broke my ankle." But I was able to hobble around a little bit. I gimped my way into the kitchen and noticed there was water all over the floor and smoke was coming out of the dishwasher. So, I opened the dishwasher and notice that the element was red, which I figured was normal, and I looked around the dishwasher as best I could but my glasses were slightly fogged up and the foul and mysterious odor was getting worse. So, as you all have probably guessed, my Worst-Case Scenario cape appeared and I started thinking, "Oh my GOD! Whatever this smell is is toxic and I'm going to die!" So, I start running around the apartment (Well, more like a quick limp...running on a twisted ankle is not possible.) As I'm opening the blinds on the sliding glass door, it occurs to me that I am only wearing a tank top and boy shorts. So, I have to gimp my way back up the stairs and find a pair of pajama pants. (Here's another one of my weird quirks, my pajamas have to match. Each pair of pants that I have has a coordinating shirt/tank top that goes with it. If the shirt is dirty then I can't wear the pants.) I was in such a hurry, I just threw on the first pair of jammy pants I could find, the whole time trying to hold my breath so I wouldn't breathe in any of the toxic fumes, this is not easy with me being a smoker and all. So, I have on a black and white striped tank top with a pair of white jammy pants with little rainbows all over them...I looked stunning. So, I called the apartment office twice and left messages on the emergency hotline. I was sitting outside on the steps waiting for the maintenance man to call me back. After about 30 minutes, I decide that I'm going to go over to my mother's house and stay there until morning, because I didn't want to die. I go in my house, close the sliding glass door, but leave the windows in my bedroom open to get the foul and mysterious odor out, I grabbed my purse, put on some flip flops (they didn't match either.) and drove over to Mom's house. The time at this point is about 1am and I don't have a key to Mom's house. I decided I would ring the doorbell for a while and if that didn't work, I would tap on her window. (Usually, Mom and Megan sleep like the dead.) I started ringing the doorbell, after about the 8th time Megan came to the door, asked who was there and let me in. Once in, I headed to Jereth's bedroom and went to sleep, around 1:30 am, the maintenance guy called me back and told me he was going to go check my dishwasher. The next morning, I had to explain the limp to the mother and the sister and they got a good laugh out of it. (We laugh at each other when we fall, don't judge us...it's our thing.) Then Megan told me that she had broke up with her boyfriend that night and when she heard the doorbell ringing she almost didn't get up for fear that it was him, drunk, with a "boom box" and a Peter Gabriel CD. So, I go back to my apartment and when I walk into the kitchen there is some weird, black, mangled thing on the cabinet...a measuring spoon fell in the bottom of the dishwasher. I felt like an idiot, my ankle was the size of a softball and there was probably some weird curse put on me because I woke some poor guy up. So, I spent the rest of the weekend laid up on the couch with my foot elevated and icing my ankle in 15 minute intervals. A friend of mine told me, "Well, Mandy, this was a fire drill, and you failed it miserably."

Until next time...

Mandy