The Laird Lowdown: Why do I smell smoke?

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Why do I smell smoke?

Monday morning (bright and early, now that she's on her "regular" 7am work schedule) Jen woke me up to tell me that the interior lights and the radio in her car didn't work. The car started OK, though, so we figured it wasn't worth worrying about. About 20 minutes later, Jen called me (just so everyone is aware, I'm *not* a morning person) to say that the keyless entry stopped working as well...she had to lock the doors the old fashion way.

She got home that night just fine, so I figured it was just a blown fuse. Of course, it's like 15 degrees outside and I'm trying to look in the fuse box under the dash. And the fuses are 3 inches inside the dash, so I'm scraping my frostbitten hands up trying to pull a fuse out. The fuse for the radio/clock was fine; there were about 3 fuses labeled "Lights" and I wasn't going to try to check each one.

Here's where the story gets a little strange. I Googled the issue, and after some search changes, I found a site dedicated to Subaru Foresters that mentioned the exact same issue. There's an unlabeled fuse in the engine compartment fuse box that actually controls every item we were having trouble with (interior lights, clock, radio, keyless entry). I find the fuse and pull it, sure enough, it's blown. And the fuse box has spare fuses already, so I replaced it quickly and easily.

One of the forums I'm on has a number of Subaru drivers, so I figured I'd share the story just in case anyone else runs into it. While writing up the post, I realize that I should include the actual number of the fuse. The owners manual was sitting in the passenger's seat (where I had left it while I was in the drivers seat going through the interior fuses). I went outside, opened the passenger door (happy that the dome light was working again) and opened up the manual.

Out of the corner of my eye, though, I see this lightshow on the snow under the car--under the open passenger door, to be specific. Then I start to smell smoke.

I stopped and looked under the door. Hanging from the door are two wires, on the end of which appears to be some sort of small wiring harness. Or at least that's what it used to be, because at that point it was actually a little ball of flame. There was enough wire for me to maneuver the harness away from the door so that nothing else got burned. After about 15 seconds, one of the wires finally melted out and the sparking stopped; the plastic burnt itself out shortly after. I ran around to the drivers side, popped the hood, and pulled the new fuse back out.

I finally had a chance to see what the issue was. Coming out from between the interior plastic door panel and the metal door frame were these wires and harness. The plastic panel is against the door frame *tight*. I put the quarter in the picture to give some reference--there's no way that this harness just fell out; it couldn't have possibly fit between the panel and the door frame.

After some more research (I didn't eat dinner until 10pm Monday night) I found that this is the harness for the light that is in the bottom corner of the door. The light comes on when the interior lights come on. When I opened the passenger door to read the owners manual, these wires powered up and either the damage from the harness being shut in the door or just the snow shorted it out. My best guess is that it's been like this for a while--at some point, the passenger door was probably frozen shut, and in a massive show of strength, someone opened it...separating out the interior panel from the door frame and popping the harness off the light. It fell through the gap, then the door was finally opened.

Most people know I'm not a big one for Providence...I don't think God cares what color shirt I wear or who wins the football game. But sometimes you're just being looked over, and there's no denying it. Had I not decided to post about the fuse--leading me to go back out to the car, open the passenger door, and have the harness burn itself out while hanging in mid-air, Jen might have wound up with the harness catching fire when she was heading to work or somewhere in town. It could have been close enough to the interior panel to start it burning, at which point we'd be talking about a real car fire.

I put the blown fuse back into the fusebox for right now, which means Jen doesn't have any tunes while driving. It's a small sacrifice until I can figure out a way to cap off the hot wire in that pair and tuck it back into the door panel.

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Our Adoption Story

Everyone always wants to know our adoption story. It is a long and complicated affair, but the short of it goes like this:

Tim and I decided after long discussion to build a family through adoption. Any children we adopted would be ours but just not have his eyes, or my hair… Anyway, we started our adoption journey on September 11, 2003 in an international program to Thailand.

In late February of 2005 we received word that the Thai government had turned down our request. We were devastated. We began looking into other options. We turned to domestic adoption.

A girl at Aquinas, where I work, had a friend who was looking to find an adoptive home for her baby. We decided to go ahead and find out more about her. We then got news that she was pregnant with twin boys. Oh my… what to do? So after talking and praying we decided if that was what God meant for us, then that was great.

So we talked with her and it was progressing toward us having twins. Unfortunately, the mother went into premature labor and one of the boys was still born and the other boy was very sick. The mother wanted to keep him, which was fine with us, since to voluntarily give up a child is one thing, but to have one taken from you is another.

After much sorrow, we again started over. We had our portfolio looked at by a bunch of birth parents, but nothing came of it, so we waited… and waited… and waited. Until one day I was getting out of a meeting and my telephone rang at work. It was the social worker calling about a birth family. Finally we had been chosen. That was Tuesday, September 19th, 2006

The only downside was the baby would be here any minute, literally. The birth mother had come in on her due date to make an adoption plan… oh my, again! We said that yes of course we’d take the baby, so in a mad dash, we finished paperwork, bought out Babies R Us, and made many phone calls to parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, and the list went on.

It was Tuesday when we got the call and by Sunday, September 24th, we were a wreck, so we went to church. After church we had to do a little more shopping to get ready and so we stopped for lunch at Taco Bell. A familiar face jumped out of the crowd at Tim, it was the pregnancy counselor, Emily. He saw that she was talking on her phone and said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if she was talking about our baby?” I think I answered that it would be “scary, not funny.” So he went over to say hi. Well, it turns out he was right. She was talking to the birth mother; she had just gone into labor.

At around 7pm that evening we got to meet our little miracle, our Kaylee. Two days later we got to take her home to a house that was full of people waiting to hold her and even more people waiting to come over to the house to hold her. On, June 13, 2007, Kaylee Raquel Elaina Laird became officially ours and we are so happy to finally have an “official” complete family.