Last weekend Niall decided to make meatloaf. The
concept had previously not appealed to him, which makes sense given its
name. Meat... loaf. However, he realized that he likes all the
ingredients that typically go into a meatloaf, so he thought
he’d give it a go. I found him the Pioneer Woman’s recipe online and he
modified it in an apparent effort to include as many animals as
possible (ground beef, ground lamb, bacon strips over the top).
The baconey drippings from the meatloaf got a bit scorched in the oven while it was baking, which meant that our fire
alarm went off and we subsequently learned that our fire alarm is the
least alarmed sounding alarm in the world. It makes a pitiful little
meep noise and also says the words “Fire. Fire.”
I don’t feel like our fire alarm takes its job very seriously. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it a fire alarm. It’s more of a fire calmly announce.
By contrast, my old building’s fire alarm system
was absolutely MILITANT about its job. Whenever I cooked pretty much
anything it would start shrieking at me and I’d have to open the window
and fan the alarm unit with a towel until it shut
the hell up. If there was fire detected or an alarm pulled in any of
the common areas of the building, there was a speaker inside every
apartment that would make siren noises and ALSO shout at you:
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.
YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE.
AN ALARM HAS BEEN ACTIVATED.
WE ARE INVESTIGATING THE CAUSE.
PLEASE REMAIN CALM AND STANDBY NEAR THE SPEAKER FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTION.
[short pause]
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.
YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE…. Etc.
This would repeat on a loop over and over until
whatever happened was figured out, at which point we would usually get
an announcement like “Thank you for your attention, this has been a
false alarm” or whatever. The longest it ever went
on while I lived there was probably only about 15 minutes, but that
FEELS LIKE ETERNITY when, say, you’re woken up from a sound sleep in the
middle of the night.
Last night I made brownies and I went to bed right
after I took them out of the oven. I woke up this morning feeling
unusually warm. The whole apartment felt unusually warm. And then I
found out that I had accidentally LEFT THE OVEN ON
ALL NIGHT.
I think I may have mentioned this previously,
my cousin once used her blow dryer and then put it away under the sink
in her bathroom and then left for work. When she came home that
afternoon she found that HER HOUSE HAD BURNED DOWN.
(She’s fine, her family is all fine, but house = gone.)
Burning the house down is one of my nightmares. And I left the oven on! All night!
What if something had caught fire? What if the house had burned
down? If I left the oven on, what if this means I might leave OTHER things on
and forget about them also? OHMYGOD I’m going to burn our house down,
or not put the emergency brake on my car when I park it on a hill and
have it roll down and hit someone, or turn on the garbage disposal when
somebody is fishing out a spoon, or leave a vulnerable person or animal
in a hot car, or SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS OBVIOUSLY
GOING TO HAPPEN AND IT WILL BE ALL MY FAULLLLLLLLLT.
