And Another One Bites the Dust

We have older appliances in our house. (With the exception of our coffeepot which was a replacement this past year for his comrade who passed away. R.I.P. Mr. Coffee. Gone but never forgotten.) So we pretty much live on a hope and a prayer that they'll  keep functioning so we don't have to replace them. (We praise them loud enough for them to hear with such statements like, "They sure don't make appliances as good as they used to. Look at how awesome ours are!")

But then, a few days ago, the oven dies. Actually, that's not completely true. It committed suicide. I was preparing to make a pineapple upside down cake. I had never made one but it sounds really good, right? (I wish salad sounded as good to me as cake seems to.) The baby was crying and it took 3 times as long to make the cake. I was frizzy and frazzled and apparently, the oven couldn't take it. I no sooner get the cake in, breathe a sigh of relief, and close the door and bam! The oven starts shooting sparks.

If you're looking for a way to take a good five years off your life, this is the way to do it. I had turned at the sound the oven had started making (and that wasn't a good sound to begin with) to see that there are fireworks going on. (I didn't even know that we were celebrating anything!) Or perhaps there was a little man in there with a big soldering iron. Either way, it never bodes well to have your oven spark and catch fire.

 Of course, my first thought is, "Crap! How do I get the cake out of there without catching the oven mitt on fire?" This would be funnier if you were here and saw the candle sized flame all the way in the back right corner of the oven. Then again, I suppose it's hard to be rational when you're worried about NOT burning your house down.

Luckily, the oven isn't that bright and didn't find a way to the big appliance store in the sky. It's just the element that's dead. Which means we now have the super awesome task of seeing if we can find the part to replace on this very old oven. (I immediately delegated that task to my husband.) He finds one, goes and gets it, and comes home. It's bigger than the original. Not like a "smidge" bigger, but "I don't think it's going to fit" bigger. But I'm desperate to have the oven working again. Not only because I'm supposed to have my parents over for dinner that night and I need a working oven, but also because I'm like a junkie without a fix. "Wh-what will I b-bake in without an oven? Fix it, fix it now!"

So hubby installs it and sure enough, it's bigger. It still fits inside the oven and we can close the door, but it's not laying flat. I instantly worry that this means I will have unevenly cooked food and hope that the big guy in the sky would not make me suffer through an improperly working oven. He wouldn't be that cruel, would he? I guess we'll see.

In the meantime, I foiled the evil terrorist plot that my oven had cooked up. (Pun!) I'm crossing my fingers and searching for good luck charms (Does a box of Lucky Charms count? That seems to be all I can find.) to help aid Operation "The Oven Better Work Because It Cost 60 Damn Dollars To Replace The Part And That's Almost A Quarter Of What It Would Cost For A New One Nowadays So It Better Just Damn Work Dammit". Yeah, you should probably wish me luck.

I put water on electrical fires, right? Or is that gasoline?