The Irony of It All
My life is full of ironies it seems. Is that what helps us not take ourselves so seriously? I don't know. But when one giant irony occurs in my life, I have to stop and consider just what was I wishing for?
Last night, several years ago, while beginning supper plans I limped downstairs because my knee and I are not friends right now, (tendonitis had my left knee inflamed and it refused to let me put much weight on it) to find some frozen vegetables in the freezer.
Now, before I go further I need to let you know I am known in our household as "The Nose." If you are not sure about a food going bad, ask Mom. I sniff out mold before it even thinks about growing. Not sure if your shirt is clean? Ask Mom's nose. I could have worked as a canary in a mine, but I digress.
With that being said though for the last month I've had allergies attacking my usually sensitive olfactory receptors and some smells have been escaping me so I've been worried I am not keeping up with keeping with the unpleasant smells that come from having a shaggy part hound dog and two cats inside the house.
So when I descended the basement stairs, in spite of my stuffy nose, the smell of the litter box slapped me in the face. Oh, gross, that needs to be changed and the whole basement needs to be deodorized before my daughter's fiancé comes over tonight. This is gross, how long has this been a problem? Has it been like this since my allergies plugged up my olfactory detecting skills?
I hobbled back up the stairs and asked my husband to change the litter box. Ever since we've had a cat or rather, two cats, this has always been my job, mostly because I was the one who wanted a cat. So I figured that was only fair that I clean up after them. He cleans up after the dog outside (as well as does the vacuuming, dusting, and so much more so I can do laundry and the books for our business, so it all works.) But lately, I've been getting behind on my cat duties and my very supportive and uncomplaining husband has been picking up my slack. So when I asked him to do it, he replied that he had just changed it out just a day or two ago, to which I replied, "but it smells awful down there."
So instead of arguing he went downstairs to change it. Then I asked my daughter to go deodorize the basement. I wasn't going to have my home all stinky just because I couldn't breath properly. Goodness knows how long things have been smelling this way since my allergies have been raging!
I turned on the stovetop for the vegetables and turned to get out a saucepan to put them in. I placed the pan of veggies on the stovetop and turned to the refrigerator to get out more ingredients for the sloppy Joes I was making. I began notice an awful smell; that smell you get when something gets on the burner or inside the oven. Goodness, how did something burn that fast? I checked on the hamburger which was fine, I even checked in the oven which had frozen fries crisping but that was fine too. What was making that smell? I finally looked down on the stovetop at the veggies which were just sitting there, still frozen, in the saucepan on the back burner with no heat on. It was only then I noticed that the hot pad I placed on the front burner, the one I had actually turned on, was smoking...I mean really smoking!
I grabbed my towel and grabbed the hot pad and threw it in the sink, it was then I noticed it was actually on fire. I turned on the water faucet, the thought racing through my mind, is it okay to douse this fire with water? What is it about stove top fires you're not supposed to drown with water? Oh, yeah, grease fires, no this is not a grease fire it's an actual piece of something burning!
Yes, all those thoughts went through my head, it's like when they say everything slows down and you are seeing everything in slow motion. That was exactly how this went down and I did it all so calmly. Of course then I realized the smoke billowing all around my head and the stove top and quickly switched on the fan. I started coughing and at that moment Caitlin popped up from deodorizing the basement a puzzled look on her face.
"Quick, take this towel and fan the smoke alarm before it starts shrieking!" I said. I threw open the kitchen window, then hurried to the dining room window and the family room and opened up the patio door and the windows. I didn't care if was only 40 degrees outside, I had to get that smoke out.
By this time Cait was also coughing and I began to worry about smoke inhalation which I'm sure as I'm looking back on it now wasn't really the problem, but I had watched too many episodes of "Emergency!" in my childhood to take any chances.
"Keep fanning, don't breathe!" I told her. Biting my lip to keep from yelling bad words at the pain in my knee, I hurried downstairs to find the box fan, but it is usually in the cat's room where my dear husband was cleaning out the litter box. Apparently he hadn't heard any of the commotion upstairs yet because he didn't even turn around. But the fan wasn't there, and I remembered we had taken it over to our martial arts center.
Argh! I hobbled back upstairs which was really painful to do because my knee was still refusing to cooperate with me in this emergency and grabbed another towel and tried fanning the fumes and smoke out the open window. I suddenly realized I needed to check to see if the bedroom doors were open because the smoke would head back there and Cait's wedding dress was in one of those rooms. Oh Mylanta, it can't make her dress smell like smoke!! The door to that room thankfully was already closed. I rushed back to towel fanning duty.
As things calmed down, my husband appeared at the head of the basement stairs. Not saying a word he headed back to the bedrooms. I looked at Cait who was still fanning the smoke alarm and she looked at me and shrugged. Finally with everything under control, I continued cooking supper, Cait went back to working on her wedding decorations and my husband came back out. "You okay?" he asked. I looked at him and burst into tears. He hugged me. "I know I should ask what happened, but really, I know you were worried about the cat box smell?" he laughed. "Kinda went to some drastic measures to cover up that smell now didn't you?"
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