When we arrived at our cute little condo for the weekend, before the Mount Baker Quest, we were happily unloading the car, grateful to finally be there. Northwestern Washington is FAR from Moscow. Keith was getting the heavy stuff. (I love being married.) And I was unloading smaller things and putting them here and there. Our first task had been to turn on the heat. So it didn't even register when I smelled something funny. "Oh, that must be the heat kicking in," I thought. And so, though Keith or I wouldn't normally have put the cooler, or anything on the stove top, I didn't think anything of it because it wasn't turned on... right? After all, the kitchen was rather tiny. The next thing I new, as I was returning from the car with another load, Keith was running out of the condo with the cooler, saying "Honey, we have a fire. I need you help, NOW!" A fire? What?!?! But we just got here! I hurried inside and sure enough, flames on the stove and Keith throwing water on it. I remembered seeing baking soda when I opened the fridge earlier, so I grabbed it and tossed a whole bunch on the flames. (I'm not sure the baking soda really did any good, it wasn't a grease fire, but its the only thing I could think to do...) The fire died but the beautiful ceramic stove top was a plasticky, baking soda-ie, wet mess. Oh dear. Also, the kitchen was carpeted. And Keith, in his haste to remove the cooler from the hot stove, placed it on the floor and burnt a hole in it!
To make things worse, we happened to be staying at the condo of a man that neither of us had ever met in person. He'd done some business with Keith long distance and sort of owed Keith a favor. We both felt a little, well, a lot horrified at the fact that we'd nearly burnt down not only his condo, but eight or ten more that were connected to it.
While Keith called the owner, I set to work trying to srape off "cooler plastic" from the stove before it hardened into a permanent fixture. You can be sure, I felt a little anxious that it couldn't be done. Graciously, the owner didn't care about the carpet, (it was ancient and hideous, thank goodness) and he was more concerned about our comfort and liking of the condo than the little fire that did almost no damage (except to our nerves) and said little about it. Eventually, by keeping the stove warm, we managed to scrape off the plastic and amazingly, the ceramic top looked as good as new! God was very gracious to us!
When we had settled down a litte, we reinacted the whole thing to see just how it had happened. Either someone had left the burner on or else Keith had accidentally turned the knobs when he put the cooler on top of the stove. Unforunately, it was the latter. The fire was our fault. Oops. Our only consolation is that now the owner has more incentive to get rid of that ugly carpet in his kitchen.
