So...I started a fire in our oven the other evening.
Let me preface this by saying that everyone is alive, so all you lovelies and Michael can stop worrying.
Jake was in the tub, and I noticed that the kitchen was smoky. I figured some spiders were burning. Is that a strange thing to think? I think it whenever the oven seems a little smoky - I have no idea why, and it is probably utter nonsense.
Anyhow...back to the action. I finally figured out where all the smoke was coming from. A pan we (brilliantly!) had stored underneath the oven had been dislodged in a way that its handle was in contact with the flame. The rubber of the handle was on fire. I couldn't pull out the drawer it was stored in because the pan was keeping the door stuck. So there I was. Oven burning. Baby bathing.
My calm, collected self was juggling my limited options:
Death by water or death by fire.
Thankfully in our funky house, the kitchen is right next to the bathroom, so I forced myself into a more creative solution and grabbed a glass of water from the sink and literally began flicking the water through the crack I'd managed to make in the drawer while running back and forth from the bathroom whenever a second lapsed without some baby chortle.
Eventually after a few carefully aimed water flicks, I was brave enough to jostle the drawer, open it, and liberate the offending pan. A couple splashes of water didn't get the flame out completely, so after a split second decision against dunking the burning handle in the toilet, I ran outside with it and doused it. By this time I was very nervous about all the whoknowswhatsinit smoke we'd been inhaling, so I wrapped my naked baby in a towel, flung open every window I passed, and went out onto the porch to wait for Jacob who was almost home from work.
We sat for five minutes or so and watched the smoke trickling out of the house and the crows waddling on the roof of the apartment building next to us. The quiet after the averted crisis settled on me. Jake yelled at the birds.
Jacob got home and was very encouraging about how I'd handled the situation, made me feel less stupid for storing our supposedly oven proof pan under the oven, and even finished making dinner. It was all very sweet until he said he was STILL going to work on the boat!! Despite my emotionally tender state and all the subconscious extremes I went through to get him to stay home, he still went to work on the boat. Have I ever mentioned how much I don't like this boat? Oh, yes, I wrote an entire post about it...
So, Jacob left, and I convinced myself not to open and drink an entire bottle of wine by myself. Instead I watched a TED talk with lots of pictures of little children with smallpox.
A delightful evening if ever there was one.
Oh, and here is Jake, engaged in his newest favoritest activity.
Sucking on the mirror, Narcissus-style.
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