I hesitate to share this story. I don't want anyone to think that I'm absent minded (ha!) irresponsible (ha!) or any of those things. Well, I suppose that because this happened, I am those things so here is goes!
Last night I was getting some things done around the house before Andrew got home (he got in around midnight). I needed to make more baby food, bake a few things, clean up, etc. So, I had my baking in the oven, my steamer going on the stove top to steam Abigail's carrots, and I decided to take a break. I was watching a bit of TV while those things cooked for a while.
I jumped out of my skin when our smoke alarm started to go off after a few minutes.
*I must explain that our smoke alarm has NEVER gone off before and I have burned things. Since we live in a newer house, to have the house pass inspection, we had to have a series of smoke alarms (in all the bedrooms, etc) and they had to all be hardwired. Therefore, if one goes off, they all go off.*
I jumped up and ran into the kitchen, thinking that something in the oven was smoking. Nope! I had left a kitchen towel on the stove top and it had caught fire! We have an electric stove top and I didn't think it was anywhere close to the one burner that was on for the steamer. Guess I was wrong.
Anyway, I was able to quickly put the fire out but the smoke alarm was blaring and shreaking this whole time. Very loud. Dewey (the dog) was going nuts and following me everywhere. Finally, I got another towel and started to fan the smoke away from the smoke detector and it finally quit blaring. I opened some windows and doors, even though it didn't seem terribly smoky in there (like I said, there have been other things that have smoked worse from the oven and the detectors didn't pick it up).
I was thinking that Abigail must be a wreck. She was asleep in bed and was probably scared senseless by the very loud noise. Remember, she has one of the hardwired smoke detectors in her bedroom! I quickly ran up the stairs and burst into her room to bring her my motherly comfort and . . . THE GIRL WAS STILL ASLEEP!
The alarm had probably been ringing for anywhere between 2-5 minutes and she just either didn't wake up at all or just laid in bed and fell back asleep after the alarm quit sounding, since it had taken me a few minutes to get upstairs to her.
Our house is all wired together, due to code, so the smoke alarm then shut off the heating system (I guess it does that in case the fire started there) and so it got rather cold for a while, until I figured it out and turned it back on.
Ok, that's my story for the day. All is well and I didn't burn the house down (really . . . it was thanks to the smoke detectors for detecting the fire).
I'm glad Andrew is home!
4 comments:
Always enjoy reading what's going on with you guys...the mouse in the car story was a hoot! I told Chuck and Jodi about it too. have a great Christmas!
I saw a Dateline (or some such show) on smoke detectors one time--kids were rarely awakened by the loud noise! I just saw a little bit of it, so I don't know the whole story, but I was surprised. they had a night-vision camera in the kids' room (and these were older kids, too) and the alarm was blaring, a red light was flashing, and the kid was sound asleep. Crazy.
I'm glad you didn't burn your house down! That sounds like something I would do!!!
FYI: The smoke detectors are not connected to the HVAC, there must be another reason if it wasn't working properly. I'll have to look into that.
Isn't it funny how kids can wake up to the smallest thing... but don't even stir when they SHOULD wake up?
Glad you guys are all safe!
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