the perils of having a kind husband
6-14-09 Fire
The great Parker fire of ‘09…
It shocked, it amazed, it smelled…bad.
My sweet, long-suffering, adorable husband kindly offered to make dinner Sunday evening. Actually, he didn’t offer, he just did it while I took a late afternoon nap. So there he was, elbow deep in batter, dipping chicken breast in said batter when the small pot filled with super hot oil (the dial had been set to HI for about ten minutes or more) went up in flames. I was told that it was licking the bottom of the microwave that’s mounted above the stove. In a panic, hubby did the first thing that came to mind…he doused the pot with water. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew this was the wrong thing to do, but in the state of mind he was in, the back was way too far away to access.
The smoke alarm wailed, I awoke, thinking that hubby simply burned some food. I got the shock of my life when teenage son burst into my room and announced, with a wild look, “uh..o..uh…fire!” and ran out.
In the kitchen the drama continued. Hubby ordered teenage son to open the back door. He then grabbed the handle of the flaming pot. In the five long steps it took him to get to the back door, the fire was menacing his arm. He tossed the thing out the door where the oil landed just shy of the porch. Oil and flame are nothing like oil and water. They like each other…very much. Soon after it landed, we were choking on the smell of melting vinyl flooring. I shoved the kids out the front door and yelled instructions from across the house while fanning the front door trying to get rid of the suffocating stench.
The pic above is of the mess after it was cleaned up…scrubbed actually. I cut out the melty pieces of flooring and tossed them along with the bottom of the door that keeps this wretched June Texas heat out. That’s why the lovely blue towel is there, it is a sad substitute. I could not get the black off the door and wall for anything. I even used my emergency only cleaner, goof-0ff and it did almost nothing. This means I get to paint the kitchen as well as redo the floor. And I’m okay with that. A little kitchen redecorating is a small price to pay for an unburnt family. The lesson learned: no napping while cooking with oil is being done.
