Domestically Challenged

Well yesterday was just an average day of getting Jasmine off to preschool and picking her back up and lunch and naps, but then dinner time came. Let me just get it out now; I am what I like to call Domestically Challenged. Some people may be great at doing things that are part of the stay at home mom job description. For example, vacuuming, dishes, laundry, cooking, and other cleaning and household activities. For me, these things have become a big drag. I actually like doing laundry, so laundry is not as daunting as some of the other things.  I do like to keep things organized and roughly where they are supposed to be.  Well since I have two little girls I would rather be with then do many things, top on my list of course is cleaning the house.  I grew up in a house that was clean almost all the time, but I also grew up dreading doing my chores most of the time.  Well, unless I was in the mood with Cyndi or Madonna, blasting.  Maybe that’s why I am so careless about my apartment now, unless my husband is frustrated with the look of the house, or people are coming over it deep cleaning just doesn’t get done period.  In my mind I see my house looking fantastic, so when people are coming over I tend to, big surprise, panic the day before and become a cleaning freak. I know I am not the only one!  I have never been able to make my place look the way I want it to in my mind, but I have come to terms with that at this point in my life in small children.  I do love to clean and clean out when I am mad though, I may throw a fit, but if not I keep it inside and run around throwing things out and scrubbing down the stove.

Dusting and cleaning my kitchen are the worst things I don’t do often enough, so last night as I am making dinner. I am using the stove and I begin to notice a burning smell, just like when your toaster starts needed to be cleaned out. After seeing nothing in my pasta boiling, I look at the toaster I am not using, that I actually just clean out yesterday to make sure it’s not on, nope, not on. The kids distract me from the faint smell and I am with them a few minutes, and then I smell it again, getting stronger. Gosh what is it, I just can’t let it go, and I am searching the kitchen and stove high and low. I bend down to get eye level with the stove to see maybe something is on the stove top that is burning in the flame, no nothing! Now I am really curious so then I look up from underneath the pot I am using and I see it. The underside of the handle of the pot is burning. BURNING?! What the heck, how does that happen, now that is not SAFE!  Just then smoke is coming from the handle, and part the black plastic handle is now glowing red and white like an ember. I turn off the stove, make sure the kids are out of the kitchen, and warn them to stay out until I say it is ok to come in. I transfer the pasta to a new pot to continue cooking, on a different burner just to be safe.  Then as I put the pot in the sink to run it under water, the handle makes a hissing sound as the plastic goes out.  All I can think is how in the heck does the handle of a kitchen pot burn? How old is this pot?! I know this pot is one I inherited when my husband and I married; it has no brand or markings on it what so ever. Are you kidding me, this has got to be one of the weirdest things to happen that just never occurred to me could ever happen.

Luckily my super sensitive smoke alarms did not go off, since I turned on the stove vent before I even found the problem. All I need now is the fire department to come and see that I have a pot so cheep and so old it catches on fire!  Now as you can see then pot looks like your average pot, and it has a good inch of metal connecting the pot to the plastic handle. My burner was not even as large as the bottom of the pot, weird. I guess when its time for a pot to go, it goes. I do like my other pans better that have glass lids so you can see in away and they have a little air hole too. So in the trash it goes, but I sure didn’t think I would be dealing with these kinds of problems when I pictured my perfect life as a gourmet chef mom in L.A.!

Love to all,

Bonnie