Step, step, step... Day#26 - and holding! It's going great!
It was Saturday, January 17th, 2009. Before I went shopping that morning, Harry decided to empty our oven of the frying pans we store inside it so he could launch the self-cleaning cycle on the stove. When I came home, I was sitting at the kitchen table writing out a 16th birthday card for my talented and amazing friend, Amanda Pell, when I yelled for Harry because I thought I smelled smoke in the house. He ran upstairs to inspect - a tad annoyed actually - and then he assured me that what alarmed me was just steam coming from our dishwasher. Okay - he had a point. I could see for myself that there was steam barreling out from the top of our dishwasher, so I went back to writing out my card. I also noticed that my red Valentine's Day dish towels looked lovely against our white stove as they shielded my view of the oven window.
About five minutes later, the smoke in the kitchen seemed to get heavier and all of a sudden I found myself coughing. Oh my gosh - What was going on here? Then I jumped up, pushed aside my decorative dish towels to get a clear view of that window and there was a ball of flames engulfing our oven!
Did I call 911? No. Did I try to put the fire out right away? No. What I did was run like hell from the kitchen while screaming in flight; With my arms flailing, I ran up and down the hallway between the bedrooms and our living room at least ten times at lightening speed yelling at the top of my lungs for everyone to get out of the house. It was not pretty.
Then I proceeded to the laundry room to grab the fire extinguisher I had consciously put there in December of 2008 after the Pt. Pleasant Fire Department had to extinguish a fire that started in the lint duct and vent of our dryer. As they hauled the dryer to the curb that day, I was very upset when I realized I didn't even have an extinguisher on hand in the house to mitigate damage in such a situation. I'd buy two to be ready if there was ever a next time. If you live with Tish and Harry, it seems like there is always a next time...
I made my way back to the kitchen and tried to open the oven door with my bare hands, so I could put the fire out myself with my shiny new fire extinguisher. Harry went looking for a crow-bar to assist. The fire was contained inside the oven, so we were hopeful about avoiding another Fire Truck Scene in the neighborhood. The over door appeared to be broken. Oh my gosh - It had locked itself shut! In our frustration, we finally figured out that there was nothing left to do except to call 911!
The Herbertsville Fire Department arrived and put our fire out; they removed the stove from the house as fast as possible to limit smoke damage; and they left it on the front lawn so Uncle Wally could remove any scrap metal that could be salvaged the very next day. The cause of the fire was a plastic spatula that Harry accidentally left in the oven before he started his self-cleaning adventure. A half hour after the crisis passed, I went to Palumbo's Appliance Store to purchase a new stove. I was still pretty shook up, but I felt putting the kitchen back together as fast as possible would help us put this scare behind us.
At the store, I ran into retired Police Chief, Bob Cooper and his wife. When I told him what happened, he shook his head back-and-forth and told me that luck rained on Harry and me today when that oven door did "what it was it was supposed to do" - NOT open! If we had gotten it open, there was a high probability - in his view - that the flames embraced by the soaring temperatures of the cleaning cycle would have exploded outward towards Harry and I as soon as they made contact with the air. We both could have been seriously burned. He also believed such actions would probably have given the flames the opportunity to set a much bigger fire in our home.
When Chief Cooper asked, "Tish, what were you thinking?" I actually cried. I told him I had worked 60 hours that week at my job; that I was still regrouping from the wide range of emotions I experienced after I ran with the masses to the Hudson River to get a rubber-necker's view of Captain Sully's Plane and the Miracle-on-the-Hudson a mere two days before this fire; and then I advised the Chief that we needed to add 20 more hours to all these excuses to account for my commute to New York and Jersey City.
"My God," I said, "I was simply too tired to think." I can assert from experience that no health and wellness journey can prevail without proper rest. Perhaps someone like me should plan rest periods the same way I plan other important activities in my life.
The life lesson here which will follow TishTrek - my 51/51 Challenge for the remainder of this year is that constant activity without sleep is a danger for anyone. On January 17th, my energy was completely depleted and I ignored it - which left me very ill-prepared for my fire emergency or much else for that matter...
Lack of sleep can turn quickly into a cousin of death, so I now work harder to manage it with all my might.
Best regards,
Everybody's Cousin Tish
Score: 10/51
Quote of the Day: “Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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