The cleaning of the oven!

Last Friday I had no motivation to get out of bed. This is otherwise known as dread of cleaning an oven full of exploded casserole. (You can read that catastrophic story here). So I stayed snuggled in bed for as long as possible. And then I finally got up to face the worst.

The cleaning of the oven. Stupid casserole dish exploding. If only that hadn’t happened, I would never have had to clean the oven. (Alright, maybe I would have sometime. But there wouldn’t have been glass and casserole blasted to smithereens all over it!)

I got myself all organised and went to town to get oven cleaner. Half of them had to stay on for 12 hours or some such ridiculousness – too long! I wanted a clean oven! I wanted it right then! I finally found one that said to leave it on for at least a minute, or up to 4 hours. Perfect! So I bought it and numerous tubs of icecream. This was to help relieve oven-cleaning stress of course.

After several hours and much procrastination, the oven was finally clean. Well, relatively. When I say clean I mean that all the glass and casserole was removed and the oven somewhat cleansed. There is still grime on the oven, but I am pretty sure it is verging on prehistoric and may never come off! Anyway, it is clean enough for now. (Drumroll please!) Time to eat icecream!

While I was in the middle of cleaning and/or procrastinating, a couple of parcels turned up. My early morning online orders when I couldn’t sleep. Both presents for my husband. He has been dying to get golf clubs for some time. He even picked out which ones he wanted. But he decided we probably couldn’t afford them just yet. He has also suggested getting a guitar several times. So I got him both and gave them to him on Friday when he got home. (It’s the first time I’ve managed a surprise this big – usually he guesses or I have to tell him when he goes to buy something I already have for him! So I was rather proud of myself.) He was so excited that he started playing golf in our lounge room then and there! (I was a little concerned for the furniture – and my head!) And over Friday evening and Sabbath we had a great time together with the piano and guitar.

Sunday went by fairly uneventfully, except that we finally managed to clear the garden of weeds. We can now actually see plants!

On Monday I had a minor meltdown. I woke up at some ridiculous hour of the morning with abdominal pain. Consequently, by the time it was actually a reasonable hour to get up I was still dreadfully tired. Somehow I got the washing on the line, wrote a shopping list, and gathered everything for going to town.  When I got there, it started pouring rain. It never rains here. But it was too late to go back and save my washing. After finally getting most things done, I went to one last store. As I was going through the self serve checkout, I paid with my card and decided to get $20 cash out. Halfway home I realised that I had left the cash there! I rang the store and they had a look for me. The money was gone. (Some lucky person is now $20 richer!) I got home and got all my shopping in and then had a meltdown. My washing was soaking wet and I had lost $20 and I was tired and it was all too much.

By the time my husband got home, I had managed to pull it together. My washing was spinning in the machine and dinner was cooking and the shopping was unpacked. I was kind of dreading telling him about the money so I decided to get it out of the way as soon as possible. I nearly cried again telling him. But his response was just, ‘Oh well, its only $20’, followed by a hug.

And he’s right. It is only $20. We will not starve. And who knows, someone else may have needed it more!

Strange things 3 (More aptly, ‘The Great Catastrophe!’)

My last few posts about strange things centred mostly on things I have found in my house. Lately I haven’t found many weird things in my house but I am starting to see and hear strange things. I think I’m slowly going insane. Maybe tiredness is starting to make me see things. I don’t know. But anyway, this morning I saw the postie go past. And then he came past again and stopped at the house across the road. (He hadn’t stopped at all the first time around.) And then he came back again. And again. Three times he came back and put something else in their letterbox! And this was all in the space of about 10 minutes. Either he’s loosing it or I am.

Then this afternoon as the neighbour kids were walking home from school I noticed one of them was wearing a paper bag on her head. Don’t panic people, she wasn’t suffocating. She was wearing it kind of like a chef’s hat. But it wasn’t a hat at all. It was just a regular paper bag. It looked ridiculous and I think if I had been her mother I would have died of shame to find out my daughter was walking around looking like that. Thankfully, I am not her mother.

I’ve also being hearing strange noises coming from the direction of the laundry. Upon closer inspection I discovered that this at least was not a figment of my imagination. It happened to be one disturbed budgie attempting to chew through her cage bars in order to access the outside world.

But all of this was nothing compared to what happened as I was cooking dinner tonight. My husband rang to tell me what time he would be home and so I decided I had time to make a casserole. I chopped vegies and herbs, turned the oven on, mixed everything all up, put it into a pyrex dish, and popped it in the oven. It was all going marvellously! After a quick scan of Facebook I went to water the pot plants. I filled up the watering can and as I did so I heard an alarming smash. At first I couldn’t work out what it was. Then it hit me and I ran to the oven. Glass and casserole everywhere. I turned the oven off and then in a panic I texted my mum – mums always know what to do! Her only suggestion was to leave the door closed in case it smashed further and sent glass all over the floor.

In a rather frazzled state I have managed to quickly chop vegies and defrost patties. It’s certainly not as exciting as casserole was going to be, but it is food nonetheless. All is not lost!

My poor exploded casserole!

My poor exploded casserole!

Except for maybe my oven. But hey, I had been wondering what to do tomorrow!