So, 2021 will go down in history (infamy?) as the year I almost burned down the house.
Mark’s son and his fiance brought us a centerpiece for Thanksgiving, with dried flowers and candles, something like this:
I should have thrown it out, probably after it sat on top of the bookcase drying out since Thanksgiving, but it still looked pretty, so I lit it for Christmas dinner.
We ate our roast beef & Yorkshire pudding, with creamed spinach and roasted vegetables.
After dinner, after I cleaned up, I took a picture and left all the candles burning, including the centerpiece even though you can’t see it in this picture, took a shower, got into PJs, and went upstairs where I got there in time for the last half of the Christmas “Call the Midwife”.
While the credits were rolling, Mark said, “did you leave the oven on?” – I had cooked the roast in the upstairs kitchen – and when that oven wasn’t on when I checked, I went downstairs to find the centerpiece blazing away. The flames were just starting to lick up the wall towards John’s photo of Pabst. I smothered the fire with a couple of dishtowels, and Mark took the remains outside on a metal tray. The whole first floor was full of smoke, so I turned on the exhaust fan behind the stove, and Mark got fans from upstairs. and we opened windows and doors. I scrubbed the top of the bookcase where the centerpiece had been, and scraped off the melted remains of the florists brick, that green spongy stuff, that I had no idea was so flammable.
I turned the heat off and we left windows open and fans on to try to clear things out, and went back upstairs.
I also have no idea why our multiple smoke alarms did not alert us as the first floor filled with smoke. Mark says he thinks he can replace them with better ones that can be controlled by an app. He says that kind of smoke alarm is more expensive than the traditional ones, but if they work, it’s way less expensive than everything that could’ve happened if we had not smelled the smoke when we did.
Eeessh.
Then this morning, Boxing Day, I came down and it had gotten pretty smelly again. Bitter chemical burnt plastic. Not to mention waking up in the night with that taste in my mouth. I opened windows and turned on fans again, but decided that I had to ditch the bookcase or the smell wouldn’t go away.
I removed all my cooking mags; they’re now all stacked on the dining table and one positive side effect is that I will go sort them and recycle the ones that I’ll never use again. There were a lot of Gourmets in that bookcase – I’ll keep all of those because they’re not published anymore. But there are a lot of Bon Appetits and other random mags I think I can get rid of.
When Mark came down, before we went for our Sunday walk, we carried the burned bookcase to the curb.
So the bookcase is still on the curb, no one has grabbed it yet. I can replace it for $20 from SWAP (UW’s Surplus With A Purpose) which is where the now burned one came from in the first place.
And I went to Target and got one of those disgusting Febreze plugin air freshener dealies, and now all we can smell is Febreze bamboo, instead of burnt paint and plastic. And what a racket BTW. I had to do two trips to Target because I don’t know much about buying air freshener. The first trip I only bought the dispenser, which is about $2. I thought it was a little cheap, and there was no indication on the package of what flavor it was. Because the actual air freshener bottles of liquid are sold separately. And they cost $6.99 for a single pack – and the only single was lavender and it was way too strong – or $9.99 for a two-pack. I mean, my mom’s P&G stock put both of us through graduate school, but jeez. Thanks, P&G marketing geniuses.
OK, guess I better go sort magazines.