I haven’t written in a while because I have been sick sick sick, ugh. All I would have written about is how I lost: my voice, my ability to swallow, my ability to breath, my ability to sleep and how I had gained: a fever, a throat that hurt so badly I was sure it was being hacked to pieces from throat gremlins, an upset stomach, a never ending cough and general misery. Double ugh!
It is now day, hmm, let’s see here, day 11 of being sick and all I can say is I think I am vaguely, slowly, bit by bit on the mend. Mostly all that is left to deal with is the inability to breath, talk and swallow…oh! and the cough, can’t forget the evil cough. sigh.
Putting all that aside, today is the first day since getting sick I have used the oven. This may seem shocking but keep in mind I barely cook normally so really, 11 days without using the oven isn’t all that shocking lol. 😛 When I had to go to work the kitchen fed me food I am sure was delicious but I could not taste, not even a little bit, it was depressing and when home I have been too tired to care about cooking so I’ve been living off of toast, banana pudding (soooo soothing on the throat!), I had chicken noodle soup one day (couldn’t taste a thing, sigh), um, and, there must be something else…oh yeah! a couple times I cooked an egg. Oh so exciting huh? See why I haven’t been writing? lol
Today I decided this is it, I actually feel different today! I’m still tiring easily, my throat still hurts, I’m still coughing, I still can’t breath through my nose and I still prefer to not talk buuuuuut something in me shifted. Maybe I am just sick of being sick. Maybe I just reached a level of boredom never before reached. Maybe my body is finally starting to fight back and I can somehow detect that. Personally I like the third option 😉
Because I felt differently today I decided I was going to cook an actual meal for dinner, sort of snub my nose as whatever bug has invaded my body. 🙂 It was a simple meal, some mixed frozen veggies and a turkey breast, easy peasy. I put the chicken in the oven, the veggies in the frying pan (no heat yet) and sat down. Then this smell started getting through even my blocked sinuses. It was the smell of burning. I couldn’t figure it out, there was nothing that could be burning in my apartment, so maybe it was coming from upstairs and working its way through the vents? I checked everything in my apartment that is electric, nothing was smoking, nothing was glitchy, so I opened a window and tried to forget about it. After all, no smoke detectors were going off so whatever was causing that smell couldn’t be all that serious, right? Right!
Ha!
I went to the oven to finally turn the heat on under the veggies and noticed the smell was stronger. On top of the stove lives the kettle and sometimes the toaster. Normally both those items sit on the non-burner part of the stove top buuuut someone (possibly kitchen gremlins?) moved the toaster so it was sitting on top of one of the burners. Unfortunately the toaster was sitting on the back left burner which is where all the heat from the stove comes through, oops!
The result is this:
my poor toaster 😦
The smell was disgusting! Plus, the plastic melted right on to the burner didn’t it? Why yes, yes it did, a nice big glob of melted plastic being all goopy on the burner. Ick.
I unplugged the toaster and moved it over to the sink area (I don’t have a kitchen counter, hence my toaster living on top of the stove) and hoped the plastic would cool quickly enough it wouldn’t goop onto the sink. Then I took a knife and scraped off the melted plastic from the burner. I’m gonna hafta take it off and actually scrub it but it was too hot to handle at that moment so scraping had to do.
I’m not certain if the toaster is safe to use at this point…I think it most likely is, I mean, the plastic at the bottom doesn’t have anything to do with the inside parts that actually toast the bread…right? And really, how important is structural integrity to a toaster? It’s only a toaster!
Personally I think this is further proof I am meant to be rich so I can hire a housekeeper/cook cause someone needs to save me from the various kitchen disasters I get into! lol 😉
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
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