In Which The Author Starts A Small Kitchen Fire, Easily Contained

I am not a morning person.  I never have been.  All during my middle school and high school years, the constant refrain to my mom every morning was, "Just five more minutes."

I'm still the same.  I just plain hate hauling my ass out of bed.

Until I have my first cup of tea, I am pretty much a zombie.  Being a creature of habit, I always put a cup of water in a small saucepan and heat it on the stove to expedite that first cup.  The kettle takes a good ten minutes to heat up.

Last night, I had cleaned my kitchen to Martha's standards.  Since my teapot doesn't rest comfortably in the dish drainer, I parked in on a towel on the counter next to the stove.

Apparently a little too close to my gas stove.

You see where this is going you, don't you dear and gentle readers?

I can't see my stove from the dining room table and was sitting yawning at the table when the smoke alarms started going off.  What the hell?  I thought.  Why are the smoke alarms going off?  I stared at the smoke alarm for a minute then smelled something well, burning.  I finally got up and went over to the stove and HOLY SHIT!  The dish towel was on fire.

I used the tongs to throw it in the sink and put out the fire.

This is not to be compared to the time I hid the empty pizza box in the oven then preheated the oven the next day without taking the pizza box out first and had to run in my sock feet out into the snow covered back yard with a flaming pizza box yelling OH SHITTTTTT!

Comments

[Martin]

I awoke to the smell of a fire! "Lisa! What's burning?". Although I must admit I also have done the pizza box caper in the past. Running to the door with a flaming pizza box was when I realized how trully afraid of fire my wolf dog really was.

- Martin

[Angela]

Oh God. I actually did the pizza-box-thing, too. Except I lived on the second floor and had to toss it out a window (so it'd put itself out in the snow). My best freind was coming up the walkway when it happened. She still teases me about the flying,flaming pizzabox fiasco.

[vero]

I once threw an iron pan that had grease burning in it out into the snow. It cracked cleanly down the middle. Who knew?

[MrsJoseGoldbloom]

That's hilarious, and soooo me. Once when my oldest daughter was a baby I started a grease fire in the kitchen at 4am. I thought I would save some time by sterilizing my breast pump and bottles while I fed the baby, but I accidentally turned the burner on under a pan of bacon grease instead. Needless to say I ran through the apartment with a baby stuck to my chest Yelling "OH SHIT...FIRE". We managed to put the fire out without any damage being done, and my husband made sure I got more rest after that.

[Michelle]

LOVE the visual I'm getting...

[Nadine]

Well, I can't compete with the flaming pizza box, but I have left a PLASTIC dishpan full o dirty dishes in the oven. Yep, that was interesting!

[dragonlady474]

I've left pans in the oven before and turned it on, nothing smells worse ughhh.
From the responses I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's done this lol.