One of those mornings....

Well, the story I'm about to tell is probably mostly my fault. I stayed up WAY too late last night watching the Olympics, which is really dumb since we have a DVR and were recording it anyway. I wanted to see if Michael Phelps won 2 more golds and then the women's gymnastics was close and I wanted to see if they would end up with the gold or silver. Anyway, I didn't make it to bed until 12:00. Always a mistake on a school night.

Well, this morning my alarm went off and I hit snooze. This happened a few times. I figured the kids weren't up yet and I'd just shower after they left for school since I was just going to stay home and clean today. Well, I finally got up and was getting dressed when Jacob started knocking on the door talking frantically about something. I hurried out only to find smoke coming up the stairs and to hear Jacob say that Maddy burned something in the microwave and she was outside!! So, here's what happened.

I had bought some of these breakfast cookies to eat in the car when were traveling a few weeks ago. Not our normal breakfast, but we still had several left over and that was what Maddy chose for breakfast this morning. "How could that burn in the microwave?" you might ask ...

...Well, here are the instructions for having a nice warm breakfast cookie that would taste like it had just been baked. Notice that you are supposed to heat it up for 10 seconds, in the "microwavable wrapper" no less.
Well, Maddy first pushed the 1 on the microwave, which automatically started it cooking for 1 min. She realized that she forgot to push the "time cook" button first and cancelled immediately. If only that was the only mistake. This time she pressed "time cook" and then proceeded to type in 10 min. instead of 10 sec. Those extra two "0s" make a HUGE difference! One minute would probably have burned the cookie, but 10 mins burned it AND the PLASTIC "microwavable wrapper" to a crisp. (I think it's the burned plastic that smells the worst!) I'm not sure exactly how long it cooked for because she finally realized it had been more than a mere 10 sec. and turned around to find smoke coming out of the microwave and stopped it. Then she was afraid she'd started a fire so she ran outside to safety w/o thinking to warn anyone else of "FIRE" on her way. At least I know if there was a fire she'd make it out, who knows about the rest of us. ;-) Jacob opened up the microwave when Maddy turned it off releasing much more of the smoke. Anyway, that was when Jacob ran upstairs to inform me.

I didn't think to take a picture of the smoke filled kitchen or the cookie and wrapper melted to the microwave turntable (pictures for the blog were not the highest priority at the moment), but here is a picture of the burned cookie. The gold and red stuff is the wrapper. Not very appetizing is it?!?

Well, after opening EVERY window in the house, turning on EVERY fan (including running the fans on the AC units even though I turned the AC off), and spraying Oust repeatedly around the house, I decided that I'd need more of an arsenal to get the smell out. So, as soon as the kids left for school, off to Wal-Mart I went (mind you I skipped my morning shower to sleep those extra few mins.) to get what I needed. They were out of those baking soda boxes w/ the fabric sides that soak up odor, but they had everything else I needed.

I left the windows open and the fans on the AC units running while I went to Wal-Mart. When I got back, the house was 86 degrees and it's quite humid today, which is making it more uncomfortable in the house. Now I've had to close the windows and turn the AC on. Maybe at least having the AC run so much will really circulate the air and trap the smoke in the filters. Tonight or tomorrow we'll need to replace the filters to prevent the smoke smell from being re-circulated thoughout the house from there. I'm glad I thought to get new ones while I was out.
The bad thing with all these products is that no one makes stuff that takes out smell w/o adding a "delightful" fragrance of their own. I tried to get complimentary scents, but now I just smell smoke and various fragrances trying to mask it. YUCK! To make matters worse, I had a migraine yesterday and it doesn't look like even the Excedrine Migraine that I took this morning is going to prevent another one today with all these smells and having to do extra cleaning today in a hot, humid house. What can you do?

At least I didn't have anything pressing that I needed to do today. This has taught me not to sleep in, because the extra work is not worth the 5 or 10 extra mins. of sleep that I got. We also established a new rule that Maddy only use the microwave when a grown up is in the room. Usually she does fine. She can do Easy Mac and can reheat frozen pancakes, but this was something new and I'd rather be in the room to see if something is wrong. I think I would have noticed the burning smell before smoke was billowing out of the microwave. I have also learned to go to bed at a reasonable hour so I'm not tempted to sleep in.

Well, I'm off to do another round of Oust and Febreeze. I don't think that it is supposed to rain tonight. I'm keeping my fingers crossed so that I can leave the windows open all night. Wish me luck!