Walk or blog? I feel this NEEEEEEEEEEEED to type on a keyboard instead of on my phone. Ahhhhhhhhhh, that feels better.
So my beautiful couch was delivered on Monday evening and I spent a while rearranging furniture (my favorite pasttime as many of you know), and eventually I settled down to watch a movie. I decided that it simply must be Lord of the Rings. Those are usually my sick day movies, but they are just so good and full of relevant advice, like this approximated reconstruction of one such conversation:
Frodo: "I wish the ring had never come to me."
Gandalf: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you can do is decide what to do with the time you have."
Or something like that.
So I was all excited and confident and happy and threw a quiche in the oven. Much later, because the movie was still on (It has to be like a three hour movie! I don't know because I am normally sleeping through most of it.), I decided to make some tea. Sleepytime to ready myself for bed, because I am so on top of things with my new couch and my awesome apartment and my good job and amazingly efficient use of time. I filled up the kettle and turned on the wrong burner, as I am constantly doing. Why are those diagrams so difficult for me? Of course, I didn't KNOW I had turned on the wrong burner because I had carefully paid some attention while turning it on because I know I have this problem. Not enough attention, apparently. Or I am just that stove burner dyslexic. So then I make my second boo-boo and leave the kitchen, which is something I constantly drilled into Ant's head never to do when there's a burner on. Well, I said when you're cooking, but clearly I need to take that advice a little further. I went back to watch my movie because I have this nice new tea kettle that screams bloody murder when it's ready, so there was no way I was going to miss that.
Now let's take a moment to talk about intuition. I have a particularly lovely ability to sense something's wrong and then procrastinate. I can't tell you how many times this skill has helped me... learn a very important lesson for future reference, because I don't respond in time to deal with the immediate problem. I'm sitting there on my awesome couch and I think, "I should go check the kettle."
Maybe there were already chemical fumes in the air that I was smelling and my nose was sending my brain important messages that were deemed much less of a priority than whatever murderous fantasy I was imagining about Chris's tramp or whatever obsessive, repetitive thoughts I was having at the time.
"FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" yelled the smoke detector. "EH EH EH EH EH!!!"
Like a true ding-dong, my first reaction was to get a towel and wave it at the smoke detector instead of finding the location of said fire. Quick, stop the noise! Then I'll be able to think and find the problem! When my towel attempt failed, I struggled with the hanging lamp/ceiling fan cords and corresponding light switch, trying to find the right combination to turn that sucker on. Then I found that I had turned on the wrong burner AGAIN, dammit, and was burning the shit out of the cookie sheet that I had left on the stove to cool. I yanked the pan away and turned off the burner, opened the window, and stood panting in the kitchen. It was freezing outside, but I saw no other option than to free the toxic chemicals that were surely coming from the cookie sheet. I waited until the pan was cool, then took it out to the patio and made a plan as to when I could take it to the dumpster- it needed to be when the least amount of people would see it and recognize how dangerous it is to live near me.
Perhaps it's questionable for me to live on my own. Did I tell you about how I left the oven on all night once? My tub has no grippies and I should probably install a safety bar as well. Sometimes I trip going up the steps while wearing my FUgg boots; sometimes Riley does too, and I'm afraid she'll fall through the steps and we'll end up at the emergency vet with internal bleeding. Sometimes I trip over the bedspread and I narrowly miss cracking my head on the corner of the cubby shelf. At least I have a downstairs neighbor and if he hears a body hit the floor, I'm sure he'll call the paramedics.
It's taken me a couple days to write about this because I'm so embarrassed. I took the pan down to the trash with Riley's sweater strategically placed over the burned part. Oh, this pan that looks perfectly fine? I'm just throwing it out because I have plenty others... yeah... Maybe I need to go back and take Home Ec again. Maybe I was so distracted by our teacher's blue hair that I missed some important parts.
In my defense about the poor reaction to the smoke detector, maybe the chemicals were already affecting my brain. And really, why doesn't my oven have a light on it to remind me that it's on? A light next to each burner switch would help, too. And maybe I should go buy some bathtub grippies and slow down a little. And stay in the stupid kitchen when the burners are on.
Big dummy.
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