Firestarters

Last night, for the first time since we moved, we went grocery shopping. Which means that for the past two weeks, we've had no food in the house. So at some point last week, when I wanted to fry some chip-like things and discovered that we had no oil, I decided to improvise by baking them instead. I mean, it's healthier, it's less guilt-inducing--I had nothing to lose. Or so I thought. As it turned good, some cookie batter had dripped into the oven during my baking frenzy of the day before and as a result, we had a fire in the oven. A small fire. But a fire nonetheless. And I walked around for a week feeling very foolish because seriously. Who over the age of 8 starts a fire in the oven?

But today, for about 10 minutes, I stopped feeling so bad about myself. Because today? My office mate nearly started a fire in the microwave. Apparently the container that her lunch was sitting in wasn't so much microwave safe and as a result, about 20 seconds after she turned the microwave on, a sickeningly sweet smell began wafting into the office. By the time she got to it and turned it off, the container looked like something that belongs in the Museum of Modern art and the crab cake? Let's just say it looked...well done. Very well done. So I walked around feeling mightily cocky--until I remembered the time a few years ago when I started a fire in my microwave by burning a bag of popcorn. A fire that was so bad that the interior of the microwave was turned permanently brown.

So now, my office smells like burned plastic AND I feel foolish again.