You'll burn the house down!

Since both Craig and I work (in some fashion or another), we try and split up household duties. And I think I do a pretty good job most of the time, I am a good cook, do a decent job at keeping the place clean, and there is typically some sort of baked good in our house at least 2 or 3 times a month. But there are two things I am really bad about, and both involve turning things on and off.

The first issue, the lights. I try to remember to turn off the lights when I leave a room, really I do, but at almost any moment, Craig could probably look up and find at least one light I left on (and that really is saying a lot because there are only 4 rooms in our apartment!) It was never a big deal growing up but it drives Craig crazy. Even if I only leave the kitchen for a second to check the recipe on the computer, he will catch me. The "but I am going right back" doesn't seem to make a difference to him. They say it takes 30 days to make a habit but I have been trying to make myself turn off the lights for over a year and a half and I don't think I am any closer to forming a habit than the day after I got married. But, compared to my next fault, that one is nothing.

I also have difficulties turning off the oven and stove. And turning them on. They just give me grief. It's embarrassing but I will admit that I have accidentally left the oven on for a period of time in excess of 12 hours...oops :-) Hey, it hasn't happened again after that (but then again, Craig started checking the oven before we left for work in the morning.)

But it isn't just the oven, the stove top gives me issues as well. I have often complained about how long the water is taking to boil only to have Craig come in and notice that the pot may not be getting warm but the burner next to it is starting to smoke. I thought I'd gotten a lot better lately, no problems in the last couple of months. That is, until last week, when I thought it would be nice to make rolls.

You see, we were only having spaghetti and that's kinda boring but since I was home, jobless, I could make something fancy to go with it. I was trying to be nice so I whipped up a batch of dough, let it rise, shaped it into cute little buns and put them on top of the oven while it was pre-heating so the second rise would go quickly. I then started my water boiling and went back to watch Rachel Ray make something much more exciting than spaghetti (in under 30 minutes of course).

A few minutes later, Craig noticed something beginning to smell, and thank goodness he did because the smoke detector didn't make a peep. I ran into the kitchen just in time to see the cloth covering my rising rolls go up in flames. Oops, I guess I had turned on the burner underneath the rolls instead of the one underneath the pot of water. (And yes, either way I shouldn't have had the pan with a cloth covering on the stove top while it was on, but hindsight is 20/20 people!)

Don't worry though, I was able to quickly whisk the cloth into the sink and a few gallons of water later, we were safe again. Of course, my muffin pan was pretty much toast and we had to air out the apartment for over 30 minutes, which left us eating our spaghetti in a sauna but only about half of the rolls had to be tossed, the rest turned out great. And you know what they say, alls well that ends well. Let's just hope I have really learned my lesson this time.