Ahh! Fire

so, my weekend wasn't really that eventful...except for last night when i set my kitchen on fire (which isn't as big a deal as you're probably thinking - i'll get to that in a minute). chad talked me into renting saw friday night, even though i had already learned from vanessa that i really didn't want to watch it. my take on the movie when i first saw the preview was that it looked pretty good - as long as no one actually cut his own leg off. i'm totally fine with someone else cutting a guy's leg off. no prob, bob. i just have this thing about self-mutilation. i can't watch. it makes my skin crawl. i can't even watch a guy shave (not even on tv), for fear that he'll cut himself. i had big issues watching the news when that hiker got trapped under a boulder and cut off his arm to save himself. if that had been moi, i'd have died under the boulder. i cannot bring myself to slowly hack of my own arm with a freakin' pocket knife. i would have just fainted and bled to death. i honesetly don't know how that guy didn't bleed to death anyway. back to the movie, now. it was actually pretty good, aside from the hacking off of lawrence's leg (during which i dutifully closed my eyes). but it was absolutely crawling with things that made me shudder...so much self-mutilation in that movie...the guy who crawled through the razor wire...gross.

went to flomaton saturday...ate pizza and watched movies with mom and sammi. saw the renovations on the in-laws' house. it looks really good, even though they went with basically the same color scheme they had before. i think i would've changed it up a bit. they bought new furniture anyway, so it wasn't like it would have been a big deal. oh well. i dig the new kitchen tile, though.

sunday, back in mobile...laundry day. i decided to go with chicken tenders and fries for dinner. no big deal, right? simple, right? yeah, unless you're me. now, i have uneventfully cooked chiken tenders and fries many, many times before. but, this is the girl who once set fire to her grandmother's kitchen while making a grilled cheese sandwich, so with me, anything can happen. before i describe the events of last night's dinner preparation, let me give you some background on my experience with fire. i'm really a pro at dealing with kitchen fires by now. it all started with a 3rd grade science project - demonstrating that fires need oxygen to burn. how did i accomplish this? i lit a papertowel on fire and dropped in a jar with a lid, then put the lid on the jar and watched the fire burn itself out...at least, that's how it was supposed to work. instead, while practicing this feat in my kitchen (with parental supervision, of course), i dropped the flaming paper towel on the kitchen floor...my mom stomped on it and killed the fire. next try, i drop the flaming paper towel in the sink and catch a dish towel on fire. this, we drench with water. crisis averted. third time's the charm - i get it right. fast forward a couple of years. 5th grade - making s'mores in the microwave. i catch the styrofoam plate on fire after less than 30 seconds. let that be a lesson, kids. styrofoam + microwave = bad idea. unfortunately, i did not learn my lesson. i have set many a microwave oven on fire heating various items on styrofoam plates. then there was the grilled cheese incident. to this day, i don't know why that skillet caught fire. i was innocently preparing a grilled cheese sandwich in a skillet on my grandmother's stove when the pan caught fire...so i tossed it in the sink and ran some water on it (after first salvaging the perfectly good grilled cheese sandwich). shortly after my sister was born, i was making some mac and cheese (this was in the house we lived in with the gas stove - bad news for fire-prone kids like me), and when i picked up the pot to drain the noodles, i was using a couple of dish towels to hold the handles (it was quite hot, and i stupidly didn't turn off the gas before moving the pot), and one got too close to the flame - and caught on fire. another incident in which i killed a flaming dish towl in a sink. then, when i was about 14, i was making hamburger helper or something for dinner, and i spilled some on the burner...and on the stove...and of course it burst into flames. it had to, it was me doing the cooking. my mom saw the flames from the living room (they were pretty awesomely reflected in the refrigerator door), came running in and threw some flour on it. we had a huge mess, but i didn't burn down the house. then, i caught some microwave popcorn on fire somewhere around 10th or 11th grade...i set fire to lots of microwaves. and i've had a pretty good track record since then. until yesterday, that is. after frying up some french french fries, i decided that there weren't very many left in the bag, so i'd just go ahead and cook those, too. the oil was set on med-hi like always. the pot was less than half full of oil. the first batch had cooked uneventfully. but as soon as dropped the last handful into the oil, it went nuts. the oil started bubbling rapidly up to the top of the pot, and i knew that it was going to spill over...so i moved the pot before it could spill onto the hot burner. but i was a tad too late. as i picked up the pot, a little spilled over onto the burner and, of course, burst into flames. i set the pot in the sink (having spilled grease all over the floor, since it continued spilling out, even after i removed it from the heat source), and the little bit that had spilled on the burner burned itself out before i had to take any anti-incendiary action. so, my kitchen floor was greasy, and those fries finished cooking in the sink. but i'd turned off the burner, and the grease on the stove was minimal. i was careful to hold the bubbling grease pot away from myself as i moved it the 4 feet to the sink, so nothing got burned, except the burner. and that was that. i cleaned up the grease...chad had come into the kitchen when i went, "ahh" when the pot first started to bubble over, and he helped me clean up the oily mess. then the oven timer buzzed, i removed the spicy chicken tenders, and we ate...we watched desperate housewives and grey's anatomy (at which i laughed my ass off), and had an uneventful remainder of the evening.