My microwave has died. Sometime this afternoon it went kaputz. It happened after two bags of microwave popcorn but before I went to use it for dinner. To make matters worse, it was the primary plan for dinner.
You see this morning I had given the oldest kid the choice of what to make for dinner with the understanding that he would make it with my assistance. So he chose his favorite, which is baked potatoes. Now you also have to understand that today is the first hot day we have had all year. The first day to really go over 90. The first day that I flipped on the air conditioner. It was not a day that I would normally make baked potatoes. But I wanted him to be excited about learning how to cook. And I had let him choose. And I actually had all the important ingredients even though it is two days before payday; and I was pretty sure that any other thing he would want to eat I would not have the ingredients for. So I thought about it and decided that we could pretty much cook the potatoes in the microwave and just crisp up the outsides for a few minutes in the oven. That way I would not have to have the oven on for a long time and heat up the house. Yeah, that was a good idea.
Now it would have been a brilliant plan. And I would have had plenty of time for making dinner. I showed him how to scrub the potatoes, how to pierce them, how to check for bad spots, etc. And then we stuck them in the microwave for 8 minutes. After 8 minutes were over I went to check them to gauge how much longer they needed to cook. And they were still cold. But the microwave was hot. Smoking in fact. With that acrid burnt plastic smell.
Of course, this was the moment that hubby walked in from work. What had been until precisely that moment a calm, controlled, cheerful cooking tutorial went to everything spinning out of control. Child #1 proclaimed that the microwave was broken. Not to be left out, child #2 announces that the rabbit got under the porch and that we can't get her out (this was true, but nobody had seemed worried about it until this precise moment when it suddenly became a crisis which needed immediate attention in his eyes). Back to child #1 who is holding up the broken rubber band gun and asking if dad can glue it back together. Sheesh, you would think that I was some incompetent ninny who was just sitting there waiting all day for hubby to come home and fix everything. Let's just say that "bombarded" was how hubby felt.
But we moved on and dealt with the "disasters" according to importance. First of which was to get the baked potatoes in the oven to cook them the old-fashioned way while hubby investigated the microwave. We pretty much concluded that it is dead. Done-for. And it is only about 3 years old! Of course long enough to no longer be under warranty. Where is that Maytag repair man when you need him? And why do those ugly behemoth microwaves from 20 years ago still work?
We also concluded that baked potatoes take a long time to cook in the oven when you were not planning to cook them in an oven. And using your oven for such a long time makes your already hot house even hotter.
We finally ate dinner. I stuck with my tutorial and had him cook the bacon and prepare everything else. But can I just say that you never realize how much you use a microwave until you don't have one! I even grew up without a microwave so I should have no problem with this; but I am already wondering how I am going to survive until I can get to the store and get a new one purchased and installed. I might even have to drink my coffee while it is still hot! No re-zapping it to heat it up for me.
We did also get the bunny out. Hubby just sprayed down the deck with water and out she hopped! The rubber band gun will soon be glued. So all around we survived.
But to add insult to injury, I went to take pictures to go with this post and discovered that I had left my camera at my sister's house this weekend......
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