It’s been another nutty day…

Been a while since you’ve all been subjected to an epic post in which we all get to giggle at the lunacy that is me. Today has been one of those nutty days, where things rapidly got out of control.
Tomorrow night we’re having a get together with BIL, SIL and MIL for the joint celebration of SIL’s Birthday and mine. (We share the same birth date.)
So in my wisdom, because I’ve gradually been getting back into baking, I decided to forgo ‘Plan A’, which was to go out to dinner, and replaced it with ‘Plan B’, in which I decided we would have a range of yummy finger foods… of which I would do some of the creating. As with all my brilliant ideas… it seemed like a good idea at the time.
This morning, I set out with purpose to create some of the finger food-style dishes we’d planned. First step, make up some Bolognaise Sauce in preparation for a batch of savory muffins.
Naturally, being a cluster, I managed to make quite a mess while cooking the meat, and had red pasta sauce all over the stove top. With the muffins finished and in the oven, while I had started on Recipe Number Two, I suddenly decided I’d better tackle clearing up the stove before I continued with recipe two.
While cleaning the top of the stove… the power went off. Didn’t take long to realize I’d tripped the safety switch, because Gizmo the Vacuum cleaner set of autonomously on his merry way – a sure sign that we’ve lost some power, not all.
Leave the messy stove, and the baking muffins, and head out the front of the house to reset the safety switch.
Hmmm.
Said safety switch refuses to reset, just keeps bouncing up and saying it’s been triggered by a safety issue.
Hmmm.
Head back into the house, and over the next 45 minutes, climb around furniture, behind cupboards, under beds and effectively twist myself into a decorative piece of macrame, while trying to single out the electricity culprit which is causing the problem. (Fortunately, I do remember to take the muffins out of the oven, which is still working perfectly.)
To no avail.
Clearly, this isn’t working for me… I still don’t have a clue of what is causing the safety switch to trip… and I’m getting a tad frustrated. I leave a text message with the Darling Husband, asking if he can ring me when he finishes work, so that I can pick his brain as to how I fix my current predicament. Go and stand out the front and study the meter box for a while, and realize that the safety switch controls four different areas of power, with four different switches. Through process of elimination, I manage to figure out that the ‘Zone 2’ is the issue. Back into the house, to try and figure out what area of the house that might relate to and discover it’s Adam’s bedroom, and the back wall of the kitchen.
With another 30 minutes of pfaffing about, I narrow down the problem to the kitchen… either the fridge/freezer… or the stove.
Hmmm.
Muck around with the fridge, giving myself a new hernia by pulling it out to get to the power point, unplug it, make the fiftieth trip out the front to try and reset the safety switch… and power stays on!
Progress!
Come back in, and discover something rather odd. Now that I’ve located the general area of the problem, and the power is back on… the stove top is acting a bit hinky.
As if possessed by a recently arrived poltergeist… the automatic ticky-ticky ignite-the-burner-things are all ticky-tickying of their own accord.
That doesn’t seem right. Study the stove top for a minute or two, trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and then it occurs to me. Perhaps, during my very industrious cleaning of the stove top, I’ve managed to short-circuit the ticky-ticky igniter things.
Hmmm.
Discover quickly that I can’t stop the ticky-ticky things, which is going to get very old, very fast. Aggravating noises tend to… well… severely aggravate me. I need to find a way to turn of the ticky-ticky things. And soon.
Turning off the power won’t work, because, as we’ve already discovered, the stove top and refrigerator/freezer are on the same ‘Zone’. Can’t leave the fridge/freezer not working, so now I need to figure out a solution. I don’t particularly want to ring DHA and tell them what I’ve managed to do, so I decide on a solution.
I’m going to fix it myself!
Investigate the top of the stove top and see some likely looking screws possibly holding it all together, so go off in search of a screwdriver. Wrong size screwdriver, so go off in search of another one. Finally get the stove top undone and lo and behold! I can lift the hotplates section up and off, so that I can see underneath to all the ‘worky stuff’.
Except that I don’t have a clue of how the ‘worky stuff’ works. And in the meantime, those ticky-ticky igniters are still driving me to within an inch of losing my mind. (Yes, I’ve done all that, with the power still on.) But I do discover that now, when I turn the gas knobs and push down on what’s left of the buttons… water is dripping out of them. I believe I’ve found the problem!
Attempt to pull out a wire that seems to be attached to the ticky-ticky things, which is about the same time as I discover that I probably shouldn’t be pulling at wires when the power is still on.
Yikes.
Go back outside (for the millionth time), and turn off the power again. Come back in, and pull out a couple of plugs which appear as if they could be the likely suspects. Go back outside, turn the power back on, come back in…
And the ticky-ticky things are still ticky-tickying.
Hmmm.
Touch another wire, get another mild shock, go back outside and turn off the power. Come back in, and pull out every single wire which looks like it could be involved with the ticky-ticky things. Go back out (feeling like I’ve run a marathon), turn the power back on and…
Success!
The ticky-ticky things, thankfully, have shut the hell up. A quick check confirms that I can light the hotplates with a match, and I decide this is the best option until the ticky-ticky things have had a chance to dry out thoroughly.
As I was partway through prepping the second recipe, I decide that I’ll put the butter in the microwave that needs to melt, and while that’s happening, I can put the stove top back together and move on with my day.
You just know it went wrong, don’t you?
Yep, in my wisdom, I put my 50gms of butter in the microwave… not for 20 seconds, which would be a sensible period of time for melting, but for TWO MINUTES and TWENTY SECONDS.
I realized my mistake, right about the time that the little bowl of butter explodes all over the inside of the microwave, covering every single surface in melted, buttery goodness.
Which is precisely the moment when the DH calls me, to find out what’s wrong… and proceeds to listen to the long, torturous disaster that has been my day in the kitchen. (And I can actually HEAR him grinning, over the phone, as I explain everything that has happened so far in my very ‘technologically precise’ manner).
While he’s not thrilled that I’ve been playing with live power, he is pleased to hear that I’ve found a solution. Kind of.
And that, my friends, is another day in the life of me 🙂