Fire - again (sigh)

Yup, more fire to report. And this time, it wasn’t at the shore; it was in my kitchen.

I put a large pot of water on to boil & left the room for a moment. When I returned, smoke was billowing from the kitchen. I round the corner & was horrified to see a ball of fire on my stove. Turns out, I lit the wrong burner & the stack of pot holders on the stove was a glorious fire ball. I grabbed the small section that wasn’t on fire & threw the bulk of the burning cloths into the sink & doused them with water. However, being new to fire fighting, I didn’t realize that would increase the already choking level of smoke.

Ever the Ethel to my Lucy, Elyse ran in to help (that's her picture up top).

We managed to get the last of the fireball into the sink & decided that we would perish soon if we didn’t open windows & turn off the air conditioner. I should point out at this time that our house is old, & the windows are heavy. We rush over & begin to lift the beast, when I lost my grip. The heavy window came crashing down, & smashed Elyse’s finger. So now I’m tending to Elyse’s finger, the house is rapidly filling with smoke, I knew I had to open the window & I should turn the a/c off. If this isn’t a recipe for disaster, I don’t know what is.

Finally, we determined that Elyse’s finger wasn’t broken, & had some of the windows & doors open, when Matt comes up the stairs & into the mix. Realizing that this was, in fact, an actual emergency, & not just one of my Lucy moments, he began to help open the other windows. While he’s opening other windows, he’s muttering about the “blankety blank” smoke detector not going off & how we could have all been killed & what was I thinking turning on the burner & leaving the room?

Boy’s friends were over at the time, & like moths to a flame, were anxious to get their front row seat to the screaming woman, injured daughter, smoke filled, man cursing carnival that was playing out before their eyes. I half expected one of them to ask if we had popcorn.

We managed to get the smoke out of the house, yet there’s still a tinge of the odor when I turn on the oven. But, thankfully, we’re all safe & the house didn’t burn down around us. Yet.