Fire and Ice

Living here has definately increased my learning curve. All my life I have cooked with electric stoves but was excited about using gas since its so much more immediate...faster heat, faster cooling once its off. What I learned yesterday is that its a good idea to check to see if the flame is actually lit. There is a little clicking sound that means the starter is working, so I set a pan on the stove, clicked it, not checking for flame, and put my sandwhich in to toast. After a few minutes I wondered why it was not heating....clicked the thingy off and back on and WOOSH, I got a gas ball of flame about two feet high. Wow. Good thing I had leaned back to see underneath the pan...otherwise about now I would have no eyelashes or brows. It was definately exciting. I have to wonder if I almost blew up the house.....Live and learn, right??

Later in the day I decided to start a fire in the fireplace....better than one in the kitchen and how hard could it be ? It too has a gas starter....oh joy. Stacked the wood just so, put some paper underneath so the gas would have something to catch easily, struck the match and voila...fire. Also smoke...lots and lots of smoke. Thinks me to myself "this probably isnt right" and sure enough, the flue was shut. Fortunately I found the little ring thing that opens it and by this morning the house is a bit less pungent than it was last night. Still learning.....

The ice part was not nearly as exciting. A few posts back I extolled the virtues of cold poo. As a mother who has dealt with bodily excretions most of her life I am excited by the little things like ease of dealing with said poo. However I have found that if you actually step in it and squish it onto a surface, it becomes super glue. You cannot scrape it off no matter what. Ok, so I will spray it off with the hose.

Let me take a short break to explain something I did not know about hoses when it is below freezing. Although I had disconnected it from the house, I had not drained it. What you end up with is 20ft of frozen water inside the hose. Not knowing this, when I hooked the lil' sucker back up (no easy feat when hands and hose are both frozen) and turned on the water, what I got was sprayed in the face by the hookup and not a drop out of the hose. Several hours later, after hanging it off the deck, it did drain and I got to repeat the hook up fun and games. Then the real fun started. It was above freezing ( mostly ) so I sprayed the super-glued-poo off and did the rest of the deck for good measure. It immediately turned into an ice skating rink...and I admit it is rather amusing to see all the dogs legs heading in different directions. I also learned that when wearing slippers with leather bottoms my legs head in different directions too. Not nearly as amusing.

One of my daughters has suggested that I need adult supervision. It is a distinct possibility that she is correct but it wouldnt be nearly as entertaining.