I awoke somewhere in the middle of last night and it came to me, like a second story man inching his leg through a window. The title for the book I've been writing.

I'm going to claim executive privilege. You're not going to know what the title is. You got a problem with that?

Fuck you. Subpoena me.

It's been a long day, pardon my French. I've been scribbling in this blog, working on my book, I've been on fire with ideas, and my house almost burned down.

Say what?

My house almost burned down. It was about 6:30 p.m. The smoke alarm started to scream. I thought what a lot of us think ( I think ) when we hear anything resembling a ring tone. Someone's calling. Or the device is malfunctioning. My take was that the alarm was acting out. Having a breakdown. Not doing its job, just making some noise.

Until I saw the sparks coming out of the chimney of our wood burning stove.

" Call 911, " I said calmly to Donna.

" I just did, " she said. " But I didn't get through. "

" You didn't get through? "

I was going to ask her if she'd dialed the right number. If she'd pushed the buttons hard enough. If she'd waited long enough to get a response. Then I thought better of that. This was no time for us get into any kind of discussion. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf this was not.

Our house was ( almost ) on fire.

I grabbed my cell phone and called 911. The dispatcher said she'd already gotten the call. Donna's call had gone through.

The firefighters came. They were great. Professional. Polite. Kept us informed every step of the way with what they were doing to protect our house from the sparks that could have grown into the fire that burned our house down.

A total of ten firefighters worked on the problem. Notice I'm not calling it a fire. It wasn't. But it had the potential to become one. It didn't. God bless those guys. That team. That big truck that backed into yard. That ladder that stretched from that truck to our roof.

God bless them, and keep them all safe. The next time they get that 911 call.