Kitchen Privileges

I may lose my kitchen privileges soon. I had another fire in the kitchen this morning. Amazing as it sounds, I don't panic nearly as much as I used to when these things happen. I stood there for a minute thinking . . is this bad enough to call the fire department? Then I decided that the first thing I should do is grab the camera so I could get a picture for the blog. By the time I got the memory stick out of the computer, the fire was out. No picture for the blog, no fire department call . . just a stinky house! I was cleaning the oven. Yes, it was long overdue but I have an excuse! We bought this oven a little over a year ago and the first time I cleaned it, the oven wouldn't open again. No way . . it was stuck shut! After about 10 days of having no oven, Whirlpool finally got someone out here to fix it. Warranty work apparently doesn't rate real high on Whirlpool's schedule. Some kind of switch (or something technical) was bent. The repairman ordered a new one but just bent the old one back so it worked. He told Vince he could just keep the new one and if the old one ever stopped working, showed him how to change it. Every time I thought about cleaning the oven, I'd decide to wait because there was always something coming up and I needed the oven and had no idea how long it would take for Vince to fix the switch if the oven door didn't open. I promised myself I'd clean it after getting Vince's birthday cake made. So, I waited way too long and there were just a few too many splatters in the oven and when it heated up to clean . . well, the splatters all caught fire inside the oven. I couldn't open the door because it was latched during the cleaning process. I figured the fire would stay inside the oven and even if the firemen came, they couldn't open the oven door either. Anyway, fire is out, house stinks! I turned off the cleaning cycle, let it all cool down, got in there with Softscrub and cleaned as much as I could, and now the cleaning cycle is on again. And, this weekend there was a family of six that died in an house fire in southern Indiana. Vince and I were talking about why people don't have smoke alarms and I told him . . hmmmm, I don't think we've changed the batteries in the smoke alarms in this house since we've been here(four years!). He was going to check them because he thinks they don't take batteries. Not sure about that but there was a tremendous amount of smoke in the house this morning and no alarms went off. Not good! The good news is . . the roofers got out to the other house today and were able to get the roof patched to keep the rain out. The estimate for repairs to the roof and a new roof were even more than we had thought but . . it has to be done so it's scheduled for right after we get back from Spring Break. Hopefully Vince can do the repairs inside, depending on how much damage is done to the ceiling. I think we have a $7,500 deductible now on wind damage and by the time they pro-rate the cost of the new roof, it probably isn't worth turning in to insurance. It surely costs a lot to live these days! Judy L.