I thought that my post from yesterday was just about the clumsiest post I have ever written, all that crap about Asperger’s, which I don’t really know anything about. Today started out as a very drab day and I was going to try to clarify some of that. But that will have to wait. Because in the middle of the afternoon, I received a rather alarming text message that the front right burner on my stove had “blown up”. Now. I have had a few experiences with various stove burners “blowing up” and your mileage can vary on that kind of thing. It sounded like things were basically okay at the Landfill. There was nothing about “fire engines are here” or anything. So, with some trepidation, I phoned home. Yiiy! My Mouse was heating water to make a cup of coffee with her French press. She was standing at the sink, which is a couple feet to the right of the right front burner on the stove. The burner started making a buzzing noise and then began shooting sparks. Lots of sparks. Bright sparks. My Mouse snaked her arm over from where she was standing at the sink and managed to turn the burner off. That turned off the whole mess. Fortunately none of this started a fire. So. Was it just that burner or was it the whole blasted stove? She called the GG, aka Mr. Fix-it. He thought burner. She turned on the back left burner (same size as the front right). There was a little waft of smoke. She *thought* it was from food residue on the burner pan. *I* thought it was from food residue on the burner pan. She was spooked. I wasn’t there. I was spooked. Was my stove dead or not? I didn’t know. After I got off the phone, my cube neighbors, who were on tenterhooks hearing me talk about sparks and burners and smoke very tentatively asked, “Okay, we don’t want to be nosy, but…?” I totally cracked up.

My stove was not new when we bought the Landfill and that was 25 years ago. But I have always liked my stove. It’s predictable (until today!) and I get along with it. I think we have replaced burners before but we have never had a big spectacular blowout like this. I am pretty sure that my Mouse was calmer about dealing with it than I would’ve been but I know it was scary. My immediate thought was something like, “oh crap, yesterday I pre-cooked a whole bunch of stuff for this week and now I don’t have a stove and I’ll end up having to throw it all out”. Like CPP (chicken pot pie) for tonight.

And another thought… We are about to remodel our kitchen. I know I keep talking about that and, no, we haven’t made a lot of progress lately. But we will and when we do, we will buy a new stove. As much as I like this one, it is time. And after today, it is really time. I know that during the remodeling process there will be a period of time when I don’t have a stove or much of anything else in the space formerly known as the Landfill Chitchen. I do *not* think I will have a good time with that. I *know* I will argue and fight with the GG about that. We are married, after all. Just saying. What I don’t want to have to deal with is being without a stove from *now* until we manage to get the remodeling prodject (intentionally misspelled) going.

It’s all okay. For now. The back left burner did indeed waft up some smoke because there was food residue on the burner pan below it. It works and so do all of the other burners. Including the oven burner. (Er, knock on wood for all of this.) And we are going to try to get a new burner for the front right from Mastertech. With luck, we’ll make it with this loverly old stove until the Landfill Chitchen gets sledgehammered.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.