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Burning talent on display

When it comes to disasters, I’m talented. No one can equal my ability to turn the ordinary into a catastrophe.

Last week, I almost set the house on fire not once, but twice.

All I wanted was a clean oven.

I’ve been trying to tackle one serious cleaning project a week – washing all the curtains, scrubbing down the walls, cleaning a bathroom – and progressed to the point where I could no longer ignore the oven. In the past, I waited until things turned to charcoal and then vacuumed them out with a hose attachment. That attachment is for cleaning out hard-to-reach spaces. However, I had set a couple dinners on fire, and the vacuum isn’t much good when it comes to smoke stains on the inside of the oven.

So I had to actually clean the oven. The Long-Suffering Husband fetched some oven cleaner. The instructions were simple: Spray the oven down when it was cold, wait a few hours – or overnight – and wipe it down.

Even I could follow those directions. Of course, there was the problem in trying to avoid spraying the heating elements with oven cleaner. If anyone has figured out how to avoid them, when they take up two whole sides, let me know.

“I’ll spray it down tonight, and I’ll wipe it down when I get home from work tomorrow,” I told the LSH Thursday. “Easy peasy.”

I didn’t wipe it down Friday. Or Saturday. Or Sunday. By Monday, I had forgotten I even sprayed it down in the first place.

By Monday, I had a busy week planned and was preparing several days’ worth of dinners so they could be cooked quickly.

By Monday, I was trying to fix four dinners at once … and I turned the oven on to pre-heat it in preparation of cooking that night’s dinner. It didn’t take long for the oven to begin belching noxious white smoke that smelled like a horrible cross of scorched lemons and chemicals.

There’s a reason the oven is supposed to be cold when you clean it. The reason is that your entire house will be filled with clouds of chemical smoke, forcing you to open every single window and door and drag all the fans into the kitchen in the hopes that you can rid the house of the smell, while fearing you’ve exposed your entire family to carcinogens, right down to the Stupid Dog.

Since I couldn’t do anything with the oven until it was cold, I decided to move outside and use the grill. Besides, I didn’t want the kids or the dog in the house. For some reason, I’ve always had a problem getting the grill to light. I hit the ignition button and nothing happens. I can hit that thing 20 times in a row and get nothing, but let the LSH stroll out there and hit it once, and it lights.

It’s not fair.

The LSH had not yet arrived home (giving me more time to air out the house). I was on my own when it came time to light the grill, so of course the ignition button didn’t work. So I got a fireplace lighter – with the long extension for safety’s sake – and I lit the grill. The grill did light … after it belched up a fireball.

Told you I was talented.

(Wallace-Minger, a resident of Weirton, is community editor of The Weirton Daily Times.)

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