Hello. My name is The Maven and I'm addicted to mayhem (hence the blog name). Or, perhaps, mistress Mayhem is addicted to me. For, try as I might to make life as smooth a ride as possible for my home of little hatchlings, we seem to be hitting a lot of potholes lately.

This year alone, we barely kept afloat with Geekster's reduced work hours and salary, my three-year-old was struck by a rare auto-immune disease, we had a dryer fire (say that three times fast - it sounds cool: dryer fire, dryer fire, dryer fire!), our middle gremlin struggled through some serious anxiety and depression, and - oh, yes - my van caught on fire.

What? I haven't told the van on fire story yet? That's because it only happened two days ago. I've been trying to write it out for the last 24 hours but my horned wonders have been too busy butting heads for me to compose more than one interrupted paragraph at a time. Still, it's story worth telling in all its chaotic glory. Come sit next to me on my pity potty and I'll tell you all about it.

The drive started nice enough, and Spawnling drifted off to sleep within ten minutes. I was just turning onto a highway onramp when I smelled something funky - brakes, perhaps? Meh. Must have been the dude behind me. My van just had brake work done three weeks ago. The Maven takes care of her metal baby.

I had managed to get maybe a kilometre down the road before I realized I couldn't get above 80. And that smell got worse, and I was just thinking I might want to pull over and check things out when a truck that had been behind me merges into the lane beside me and starts flagging me over, honking his horn and flashing his lights.

I pull over. He pulls in behind me, runs over and says "You need to get out of your vehicle right now. Your back wheel is on fire."

Say what, now?

I feel the shock wash over me. Sadly, when my body gets flooded with adrenaline, I get stone cold dumb. Like in a bad dream, everything feels like it's going in slow motion. Taking a sleeping Spawnling out of the van probably took seconds, but it felt like minutes. Meanwhile, all I can hear is good samaritan behind me saying "Do you have a fire extinguisher? You don't? I don't, either. Damn. Do you have water?" Not even coffee, I tell him like that's a complete irregularity. I hadn't had a chance to pick one up yet. Probably a good thing, since it would have met its untimely end being splashed on the driver's side rear wheel.

It doesn't get more tragic than that.

"Stand way, way back and call 911," says the good samaritan. "The fire is near the gas tank. You don't want to be close right now."

So I run back several feet and call 911. First, I talk to someone from the national 911 dispatch. I tell her I'm in Gatineau, but she transfers me to Ottawa emergency services, likely because my cell's area code falls on the Ottawa side. Fine. I tell them I have a car fire in Gatineau and they transfer me to - *drumroll* - Ottawa fire dispatch. Because that makes sense! Meanwhile the flames are getting bigger and the good samaritan is trying to find something in his truck to put it out with. I tell Ottawa fire what's going on and they say they'll relay the information to Gatineau. Swell. Nothing like a middleman to speed things up. In the time it took me to talk to all these people, I probably could have run across the field and adjesent Wal-Mart to the fire station behind it and just knocked on the bloody glass myself.

Watching the fire and smoke from a relatively safe distance, holding a now sobbing and terrified three-year-old, I imagined what life would be like without my van. I've never been one to get emotionally attached to material things (exclusions: our house, my grandma's antique china, and anything that has an apple on it and begins with the letter 'i'), but a very real fear hit me that the van I had lovingly handpicked all shiny and new off the lot five years ago might go up in flames at any minute.

Mistress Mayhem strikes again.

The samaritan who's name I regret never asking dug two water bottles out of the back of his truck and splashed my tire. "The fire looks like it's out," he said to me. "I really have to get going, but wait for the firetruck and do NOT drive this van. It's not safe until you've had it looked at, ok?"

No duh. Like, as if I'm getting within 50 feet of that thing until getting the mechanical "all clear." The Maven may be gorgeous, but not at the exclusion of brains. I like breathing.

He left, two more people stopped to make sure we were okay, the rest of the cars whizzed passed us at 100km/hr as Spawnling cried and I waited for a vehicular explosion. The firetruck did eventually come and confirmed that the flames were out. The biggest tragedy of this event was that I had spent most of the day makeup-less in a pool and looked like absolute ass with my sunburn, chlorine-fried hair food-stained shirt in front of three gorgeous firemen.

I've met hot firemen twice this year. The last time, about as close as I got to presentable was that I managed to throw a bra on under my shirt and sport some less-than-sexy yoga pants before leaving my smoke-filled house (yes, the kids were all outside at this point - my vanity takes a backseat to child safety, but not much else, I'm afraid). I always look like I'm stepping out of an episode of "Cops" when I meet the firemen. Just once I'd like to look a little more "meow" and a little less "woof." Just once.

I tried several times to call my husband, but he was outside and couldn't hear the phone. I managed to get him on the fifth or sixth try and he came just as the flatbed tow truck was getting there. We had it towed, we went home, we stressed over what happened and whether or not it would cost us a great deal of money to fix it. Scared little Spawnling fell asleep on the couch holding the fire chief badge hot fireman #1 gave him. I brought him into our bed and held him all night. He still remembers the last fire and is still freaked out by the earthquake we had a couple of weeks ago. He did not need this, too. Poor kiddo.

Mayhem loves me and just won't leave me alone. She runs just slightly ahead of me, upsetting the order of my life and leaving just enough mess for me to begrudgingly clean up once I get there. Thankfully, Mayhem is not an entirely cruel mistress. As far as this year goes, Spawnling is no longer sick, Geekster's full pay is being reinstated, Gutsy is in therapy and much happier, and the drier works just fine after a little cleanup.

What I've learned as the wise woman I am, is that road of life goes on despite the potholes. My van did not go up in flames and is once again drivable. As it turns out, the cause was faulty brake pads. I was ready to drop the words "lawyer" and "it's in your best interest to fix this at no expense to me" and "we could have died leaving my millions of blog readers without new posts" had we needed to, but the garage took full responsibility and had my van back to me a few hours later, free of charge. Like most of the potholes we've hit lately, it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

The good news is that, after much searching of last year's posts, I've finally found something worthy of reading at this year's Blog Out Loud Ottawa. And all it took was potentially getting engulfed in flames while driving on the highway.

I need a coffee.