Saturday

I had a terrible Saturday. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day as Alexander might say.

When my kids came downstairs at 6:15 on Saturday and wanted me to make breakfast RIGHT NOW (please, mom? I’m really hungry…insert puppy dog eyes and cute 4 year old smile) I grudgingly got out of bed and made my way to the kitchen.

I’m kind of abstract-random in my everyday life, so it isn’t really surprising that getting milk into the cereal bowls turned into noticing that someone spilled on the shelf in the fridge. Which turned into noticing that what they spilled was dripping down from the shelf above. Which turned into noticing that someone had shoved a bowl into the shelf so far that several open containers had overturned, creating a sticky puddle of congealed mystery liquids in the back. Which turned into deciding right then and there at 6:30am that I needed to clean out the fridge.

So while the kids argued over who got to use what cereal bowl, and who had more cereal, and who got to use the “zipper spoon,” (please don’t ask…that’s a whole other post) I was methodically removing items from the fridge and stacking them on the counter. Which turned into realizing I can’t take out shelves and drawers for cleaning without moving the whole fridge away from the wall. Which turned into getting my husband to move it for me.

Still with me? By now the fire was lit, and I was gonna clean that fridge, gol’ darn it. (That’s the clean version because you never know who’s reading this and I don’t want to call into question my upbringing.)

So. Fridge is moved. Stuff is out. Things are clean. Enter the husband, who has stopped back in the house to get the egg basket for the chicken coop. He says, “Are you going to vacuum under the fridge before I move it back?”

Um. Well, I guess I am now.

I took off the front grill and was shocked and appalled and horrified at how much yuck accumulates under your fridge. No, I have never in all the years I’ve been on my own pulled off the grill of a refrigerator and vacuumed under it. Don’t judge me.

I must have looked really disgusted, because he took pity on me and crouched down to vacuum it out for me. Which turned into a really big job, because Aaron never does anything half-way. He started mumbling about how all that dirt makes it hard for the motor to work, blah blah blah, and how we should really do this a few times a year, blah blah blah and how we don’t want to have to buy a new refrigerator just because I was too grossed out to do this blah blah blah. I swear he would have used a toothbrush to make it sparkle, except in all his cleaning fervor he bumped the water line that runs to the ice maker. And suddenly the compression fitting broke and water began spraying all over the kitchen.

Fabulous. To make this long story a whole lot shorter, I ended up spending the next hour and a half driving to hardware stores looking for parts. I preferred the hunt for parts to staying home alone with a potential flood problem in my kitchen. The local hardware store had no compression fittings. The hardware department at the Wal-Mart had no compression fittings. Neither did the other two stores I visited.

By now I was pretty worked up and sick of driving all over the county. Did I mention it was pouring rain? Well, it was. And all the in-and-out of the car was getting me soggier by the minute. That’s when it occurred to Aaron to have me call Culligan, who supplies our water filters. Quick promo for the Fairmont Culligan people: one phone call to the on-call guy resulted in me getting parts and pieces replaced almost instantly. They were super wonderful, and I sure wish I would have called them right away.

It is 11:30am when I finally get home, and I discover that all my fridge contents are warm and barely salvageable. (No, Aaron did not put anything back in the fridge while I was gone, thank you very much.)

And now I have three kids clamoring for lunch. And my kitchen is pretty much trashed. *sigh*

But it’s not over, folks!

After throwing together chicken noodle soup and sandwiches and letting the kids eat in the living room in front of the TV, (don’t judge me, I said) I got my kitchen put back together. I will say my refrigerator rocks. Sometimes I like to open it just to look at how clean and sparkly it is right now.

If you read my previous post about straining lard, you’ll better understand Round Two. If not, please go read it right now. Thank you.

So I have a bag of lard to render. It is a simple thing to do, but the one part that is a little time-consuming is the straining process itself. It’s sometimes hard to strain it quickly, and I was feeling like finding a new solution to that problem. I have a great stainless steel kettle with a spaghetti strainer in it. I put the lard in the strainer, and turned the burner on low.

Now, in my mind, this is a great idea. The lard will drip slowly through the strainer into the kettle below, making it a really simple way to separate the lard from the crackling. Right? That sounds reasonable, right? Right away I could hear the hiss of a drop of lard hitting the pan. Perfect. I’ll just come back and check on that in a few minutes.

About 10 minutes later, I can smell a rather unpleasant smell. When I looked over at the stove, tiny tendrils of white smoke are emerging from the sides of the pot, and the smell of burning lard (it is horrible, just so you know) begins to fill the kitchen. When I get closer to the pot, I can see that there is a fire (a FIRE!) in the bottom of the pot. Fabulous.

I picked up the pot to carry it outside. When I jiggled the pot, the strainer wiggled loose and now smoke is POURING out of the pot. The fire alarms are going off, the kids come barreling down the stairs into the kitchen, I am trying to hold my breath as I stagger toward the front door with the pot. I didn’t even put on my shoes, I just managed somehow to get outside and set my very expensive stainless spaghetti cooker outside on the ground in the pouring rain, hoping to put out the fire.

When I return to the house, it is smoky and horrible, and the kids are coughing, and I made them go outside too. In the pouring rain. Barefoot.

I am a great mom, I will have you know.

My husband comes out of the shop and sees his wife and three kids huddled in the garage with a pot of smoking something planted in the yard and smoke alarms still going off in the house.

But it’s not over, folks!

Believe it or not, right at that exact moment, the tornado sirens in town go off. We live about 4 miles from Sherburn, but we can hear the sirens plain as day. I absolutely could not believe it. The rain stopped, it got very still, and off to the north you could see the black clouds rolling eastward. I herded the family out to the shop where we could listen to the radio. (I got their shoes and jackets for them, first, don’t worry.) I was honestly thinking, you have GOT to be kidding me. This day just keeps getting better. Fortunately, the storm continued eastward, and despite a quick smattering of hail, we remained unscathed in the storm.

Many hours later, I was able to take care of the mess in my house, get the kids fed and bathed and read and in bed, and I even managed to clean my scorched kettle thanks to my mom. (Vinegar and baking soda, in case you were wondering.) I thought I would try to get a last load of laundry done before I went to bed. I went upstairs to get a laundry basket, and I missed a step coming back down.

I’m sure it was a sight to see. I landed hard on my bottom and I think I actually felt my spine compress as I subsequently hit the next three as well. I slid the rest of the way and bounced off the wall on the landing at the bottom. Swell. I kind of laid there for a minute or two. Once I established that though I was certainly sore, I was more or less intact. I promptly went to bed before I had a chance to wreck anything else.

Yes, Alexander, it really was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Here’s hoping tomorrow is a little less exciting.