~ October 06, 2003 - 4:29 p.m. ~
FIRE!
OK, so Elwen wrote in my guestbook:"sushi??? i was suggesting to the Sisters that maybe you set fire to your kitchen again ^-^ now i think they want to know how it happened the first two times... how DID it happen anyway????"
Well, Elwen, I kind of forget what the sushi thing was, aside from the fact that sushi is probably my second favorite food category, first being cholocate anything. Also, I think I went out for sushi one night and left my AIM on without an away message and got fifty-billion IMs, despite the fact that no one is ever there when I am :(
Anyhow, right the kitchens. OK, when I was a freshman in high school, I was really into making candles. I had up for a candle dipping kit, which was all fine and well and good, but I had also just bought a set of candle molds, which I liked even more because I was terribly into instant gratification, and dipping the candles and rolling them smooth and shit took the patience of a saint, which I didn't have. Anyway, you would melt these wax pellets (or any kind of wax shavings or drippings that you were reusing) by putting them into a special kind of plastic bag that was then submerged in boiling water. You'd then cut the corner off the bag and pour the hot wax into a mold with a wick already fastened to it. Very simple.
I had been making these things all day, and now I wanted to make one of those candles in a glass that I was always seeing at craft fairs. My parents and brother and Nona were all out at one of Frone's baseball games, and while Mom never had a problem with me cooking while she wasn't there, she didn't want me pouring hot wax and potentially burning myself without her around. She was also super paranoid that I would start a wax fire, because we had one of those glass-topped stoves, and since it was one of the early models, if you turned on one of the "burners" the whole damn thing got hot. She had been pestering me to read this article she'd clipped about fire safety for about a week, but I'd been ignoring her.
So I'm sitting at home, bored, nothing on TV, already had dinner, already called all my friends, blarg. And I get to thinking, Well, the reason mom doesn't want me to make candles while she's out is because she doesn't want me to burn myself on the wax or let the wax get on the stove when I pour it. Why don't I just put the shavings into the glass, put the glass on the stove, and then when it's all melted, drop a weighted wick into it? That would work, and I wouldn't be doing anything Mom wouldn't want me to do.
Mmmmm. Rationalization. Tasty rationalization . . .
So I get the wax and put it in the glass (it was an old cut-glass whiskey tumbler that had a small chip in it, which had been given to me for my candles), set it on the burner, and turn it on high. I'm sitting at the counter rereading the comics when I suddenly see that dumb fire-safety article my Mom had been waving in my face all week. I'm bored, "Marmaduke" is just as dumb as when I read it earlier that day, so I pick up the clipping.
I'm reading this thing, which must have been designed to freak you into never lighting your fireplace or turning on a gas burner it was so hysterically written, when I think, Jeez, I've been at this a while. Isn't my frickin' candle done yet? So I go over to the stove, and as I get closer, I notice that the whiskey tumbler seems to be vibrating ever so slightly. I come even closer and I notice that the wax is starting . . . to . . . is it boiling? Oh shit!
Fortunately, I hadn't come that close, because I that moment, the tumbler explodes, sending shards of hot glass all over the kitchen and the boiling wax all over the hot glass-top stove, where it promptly ignites. As the wax spreads off the stove and onto the counter-tops, so do the flames. I am freaking, freaking out.
It is pure serendipity that I was reading that fire safety thing, because only two minutes earlier I would have poured water on the fire, which would have been the wrong thing to do. The counter was not on fire, the wax was, and wax can float on water, and water beads up on wax, so I might have only succeeded in spreading the damn thing around. As it happened I now new that I should beat out the fire with a cookie sheet, and as luck would have it, there was a dry one sitting propped up in the drying rack. I grabbed the cookie sheet with one hand and a metal pot top with the other and went crazy, beating the flames out and smothering them as best I could. Unfortunately, the smoke alarm went off, and it was getting a little hard to breathe. I turned the exhaust fan on, and that helped.
When I was finished, the smoke alarm had shut up, but the kitchen was a wreck. Plus, our smoke alarm was hooked up to the house alarm, so the Brinks people called to ask if I needed a fire truck or ambulance, so I had to deal with them, and when they heard I was a minor, they wanted to send a cop over to check things out, but I dissuaded them by saying that I had just burned my dinner, nothing major, PLEASE don�t tell my folks or put this call on our record, and they seemed to comply.
Now I had to deal with the kitchen, which was all shit-up. There was scorched wax all over the stove and the counter, wax dripping down the cabinets, wax stuck in charred clumps to the cookie sheet and pot top, and smoke smudges on the upper cabinets, the wall, and the fridge. Worst of all, the stench of burnt wax hung in the air. My parents would be home in an hour. I was so fucked.
But I was industrious, and I wasn't simply going down without a fight. I opened the window to let out the stink, and since it was around the holidays, I dredged out the electric "holiday-scented" potpourri thingy my mother always brought out in late November. I cranked the exhaust fan as far up as it would go, and lit some incense for good measure in the hall.
While the wax dried on the counter and stove, I scrubbed the smoke smudges off the walls and cabinets. Then the minute the wax was cool, I chipped it off the counter and stove with a razor blade. I was less than half way done when I got a call from my dad saying that Frone's game had gone into overtime, and they were going out for pizza with the team, and would it be ok if I was home alone for another hour? Yes! Fine! Bring me some garlic knots, whatever, just stay the fuck out the house!
When all the wax was chipped off, I scoured the countertops with steel wool to erase any traces of wax left over. I vacuumed up all the stray pieces of the tumbler and took out the trash. I did everything I possibly could, and I finished just ten minutes before they got home. When my parents walked through the door, I was curled up on the couch with a book, looking as innocent as humanly possible.
"Ooh!" said my mother. "You got out the potpourri burner. It's a little early, but it smells so good, doesn't it?"
"Yup. You don't mind?"
"No, of course not." She paused sniffing the air. "Ugh. What's that other smell?"
"Umm, what do you mean?"
"It's like . . . it's almost a . . . Gina Marie!"
"Eeep!"
"Did you leave a stick of incense burning the hall?!"
"What? Oh, uh yeah."
"What did I tell you about that? You know I don't like the way that stuff smells. Isn't the potpourri pot enough?"
"Oh, yeah ma. Sorry. I guess I got a little carried away."
"Well, think next time. And don't leave something burning when you're not around to mind it, ok?"
Wow. I mean, wow, I was so close to getting caught, but I got away with it. Which is a total miracle, because I never got away with jack growing up. My parents were just too damn perceptive.
Anyway, the second time I set fire to my kitchen was a couple of weeks ago. You can read all about that here if you missed it the first go-round. It's all a little embarrassing, you know, the repetitive accident thing? But I seem to specialize in those . . .
