I hate to even write this because my mother-in-law reads my blog and she’s going to overreact when she finds out what I did and then call her son and he’s going to flip and stop at Lowe’s on his way home from work and buy five more smoke detectors and three more fire extinguishers and mount them all in the kitchen. Above the stove.
I was multi-tasking. Not multi-tasking as in chewing gum, listening to music and dusting a bookshelf. But Ultra Multi-Tasking. I had something going in Three Different Rooms. And if you know anything about me, you know this spells disaster.
I was running the tub, watching 30 Rock in my bedroom and cooking slices of organic chicken and roasted red pepper sausages in the wrong pan with too little olive oil and too much heat. I walked away from the pan, sat on the bed in front of the TV and thought, “Oh, wait. I have something on the stove….ah….I’ll get it in a minute.” But a minute in front of the TV is ten minutes in real time.
I don’t know what happened to me. Just as quickly as I remembered, I forgot. Completely forgot. There wasn’t a cell in my body that was still in charge, keeping watch, staying vigilant, not watching Tina Fey and counting down from 60.
I know me. I know how I am. When I walk away from something and then remember, “Oh, wait!” followed by, “Ah, later,” I know that means “Not later!! Now!” It took me decades to rewire my “Ah, later,” thinking to “Uh, now!” but after burning enough pans on the stove or missing enough appointments, I learned that “Ah, later,” Is The Red Flag. It’s the signal for “NOW!”
I have trained myself that when I’m about to leave the house and suddenly I remember that I should bring a bottle of water, followed by the thought, “Ah, I’ll be fine,” I know that means go back inside and get the water. “I’ll be fine” is my red flag to go back inside and get the water bottle. It will take one minute. I’ll be very glad for it later.
Ninety-nine percent of the time that retraining works. But there are those rare occasions, like yesterday, when I was still a little under the weather and not quite myself. I hear, “Ah, later,” or “I’ll be fine,” and the red flag doesn’t pop up. Nothing. I don’t have a back-up plan for nothing.
Instead of remembering the pan on the stove, I’m listening for the water in the bathtub. I’m watching Tina Fey and thinking about how far up the water should be by now… It always sounds fuller than it really is. I wouldn’t want to go in there and check it only to find out I got up for nothing.
And then suddenly I remember!! AH!! The sausage on medium!! AH! AH! AH!
I run out to the smoke-filled kitchen. More smokey than any previous stove disaster. It smells nasty. NAS-TYYYY! I race through the house in a zigzag of priorities that I’ve obviously become very good at. I grab the active volcano by the handle, put it out in the garage and slam the door, then turn on the exhaust fan, then shut all the doors to the bedrooms and open all the windows in the front of the house. Turn off the burner. Turn off the tub.
It was so smoky and smelly, that the neighbor who stands outside my living room window smoking a cigarette, moved to the other side of his house. True story.
I thought, “What would the fire department do?”
And with that I ran down to the basement and got two fans — the ones I use when I dust my living room with the leaf blower. But it was too late for the fans. Even after they cleared the smoke, the smell clung to every surface of every item in the house. It was even in my pores. When I finally got a chance to take a bath, I could smell the smoke on my complexion before ducking my head underwater.
Just before the kids came home from school, I closed all the windows, turned on the heat and sprayed the entire contents of all-natural orange scented room deodorizer throughout the house. It masked the smell for one minute. Luckily, I had a full back-up can of all-natural lime scented room deodorizer, and made my rounds with that.
I lay in bed last night, unable to get to sleep because my pillow smelled like that stuff people spray to cover up the smell of smoke. Maybe it is time for that microwave Skye has been pestering me about. I hate them but I hate the smell of burnt home more.
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