Terrorized at Dawn

I woke up this morning to the smell of burnt plastic. And my husband berating me for not caring enough that the house might burn down.

Let me explain.

Shortly after 5 o'clock this morning (an ungodly hour if there ever was one), my husband nudges me awake and asks me if I could smell plastic burning. I take a sniff and say yes. I promptly fall back asleep.

I wake up again (seemingly 5 seconds later) with him scrounging around my side of the bed and saying words which my sleep-deprived brain cannot decipher. He won't go away. He's asking me whether any of the multitude of cords I have on my side of the bed has shorted. I say, mhmghym, meaning, I don't think so.

I try to go back to sleep again. He is now insisting that I help him locate the source of the smell as he does not want to come home to a burnt house. I say, jtvnysprqnm, meaning, just unplug everything and leave me be. He goes away in a huff, muttering that I am not taking this house burning down situation seriously.

I fall back asleep and wake up to the sound of my alarm clock. There's still a faint smell of burnt plastic but it doesn't seem as alarming. I get a call from the husband, who's already on his way to work, saying he thinks it might not have been any electrical shortage but could've been our ducted heating dying. He is duly sorry for terrorizing me so early in the morning.

The good news is our house hasn't burnt down. Bad news is it looks like the smell was caused by the heater and it is now dead. I'll be a frozen popsicle by the morning.