I Done Her In

Last week I was merrily cooking dinner using the broiler on my oven.

I had decided to make hot dogs split down the middle, filled with mashed potatoes and covered in cheese.

It is a Casselman delicacy I learned from my mother.

Don't knock it till you try it.

Anyway, for some unearthly reason, I shut the oven door while the broiler was on.

For those of you who haven't tried this....don't.

I suddenly heard my oven beeping wildly at me.

As I looked at the control panel there was an F1 in the display. F1 means fault code.

I hurried and pushed cancel to turn off the oven and sat down to eat dinner.

After dinner was finished I got up and walked past the oven. It still felt really hot. That was kind of weird. I looked inside and the broiler was still on.

"Hmm," I thought to myself, "maybe I had better push cancel again."

The broiler stayed on.

I looked at the owner's manual which told me to unplug the oven.

The only way to unplug the oven is to pull it away from the wall. What a mess I found! I discovered all sorts of nasty, unpleasant things hiding behind that oven. Three years of muck and guck had built up underneath there.

I had to clean it up, despite the awfulness of it all.

After the unscheduled cleaning, I plugged the range back in only to discover that I had killed the oven.

It was dead. Dead as a doornail.

When Boyd came home from work, I confessed my misdeed.

He said, "Oh good. I've been looking for a reason to replace that oven. Go buy a new one tomorrow."

I didn't have to be told twice. I went to the appliance store and found this beauty.


Two ovens, self-cleaning, smooth stovetop...can life get any better than this?

Now almost all of our appliances match each other. All we have left to replace is the dishwasher.

Hmmm.