The Flaming Iron, Part II

For those of you who have been asking about my little adventure with ironing and flames, here is the update.

The day after the incident, the maintenance guys came by while I was away and laughed themselves silly. Then they removed two burners and replaced them with new ones.

Why did they replace two burners? Because my iron had melted firmly to both, creating the odd object seen in the picture above. The guys had no choice but to take it all out at once.

I wish the pictures I've taken with my iPhone better depicted how fascinating this blob really is. It's been sitting on my countertop for a few days now, because I can't yet part with it.

You can see its innards!

With one of the trays that was also destroyed... but not bonded to with dripping plastic.

That nob used to move... but no longer.

Even friends have come by to take pictures of this mess. I'm not the only crazy (though I guess I'm the crazy who created it... oops). But now you all know... the REST of the story.

No More Ironing

I am far too pretty to be ironing shirts, anyway.

That is what I've tearfully concluded while sitting in my hazy apartment that still smells of burnt plastic.

As anyone who's been reading for a few days knows, I've been sick. And while I'm no longer contagious, I'm definitely still tired after fighting off that stupid flu. So when I looked at my range to heat up a burner, I was certain I chose the one that my pot of water was sitting on.

Looks like I chose wrong.

I got a whiff of burning plastic as my only clue. I looked over just in time to see huge flames burst from my iron. How could that be? My water wasn't even boiling!

I ran to my bathroom for a towel to beat out the fire, and threw open the front door on my way back to the kitchen. Smoke billowed straight for the fire alarm (are smoke particles magnetized?!) and set it off, so I had a soundtrack for my battle against the blaze. My internal voice-over sounded more like: should I be putting out the flames? Should I be calling 911? How am I going to tell this tale to maximum effect?

After I finally got the fire put out, the smoke detector continued to ring out its embarrassing story to my neighbors, and I called down to the office to ask them to come turn it off.

Then I called my mom because it is her job to make me feel better when I do stupid things. She told me about how she once took an ice pick to a refrigerator to help it defrost but killed it instead. That did the trick. The image of my mother attacking a fridge with a miner's pick is really what I envisioned, and I think that will be the image I use from now on when I need to not feel sad.

But the upside to this whole situation is that I will not have to iron anything for awhile. In fact, I might actually take this as a sign from the heavens that I really have no business handling irons at all.

Yep, that's how I'm going to spin this one.