Thursday, March 11, 2010

My Kitchen Exploded

It's been a while since I've had the motivation to blog...

Here's the most recent reason why:



It happened last week and almost killed my dog. I was seconds away from having my bare feet sliced into serving sizes.

What happened is I got home and wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water. My faithful mutt always has a sip with me. Her eating and drinking dishes are next to the pantry. Like I've mentioned before, my kitchen is teeny. So, Annie and I are wetting our whistles and then I step out of the kitchen for a second before loading some dishes in the dishwasher. Annie steps out into the front room with me. As we are walking out of the kitchen, the biggest crash I've ever heard in my life happened on the tile floor. The shelves in my poorly constructed pantry came crashing down. Basically, my pantry exploded.

Upgrading your containers to glass is a good idea--if you trust your pantry shelves. Most of my grains and pastas have been housed in gorgeous mason jars. Suddenly my kitchen floor became a swampy combination of vinegars, syrups, and a steady flow of molasses carrying large chunks of glass all throughout my kitchen and seeping into my living room. Walls were splattered with sticky substances. Most of our food became a soupy mix of glass shards and molasses. I freaked out. I grabbed Annie, and ran outside the apartment to call Jeff. I thought the wall had come down.

Fortunately, I have a most incredible husband. As soon as he heard the trembling in my voice, he assured me he was out the door and would take a cab home. I was shocked and thought it unnecessary for him to leave his job (contract position...you don't just leave because your wife has a molasses problem) until 6pm that night when we finally finished cleaning up the mess. It was a nightmare. Our apartment is completely tiled, so glass shards had rolled and spread all throughout the kitchen and the front room. We wore Crocs as we cleaned and then had to clean the glass bits out of the Crocs. Scrubbing molasses and glass off the floor was dangerous and tedious. I got cut. Jeff probably did, too, but didn't say. He had the good attitude, I had an anger management problem: "I could have been killed! Annie was drinking her water just seconds before...if she were standing there when it happened, she could have been killed!"

Jeff lost much of his "junk" food, and I lost all sorts of beans and grains and pasta. But in the end, I realized how lucky I had been. I can't imagine standing there and having a pantry full of glass jars and dishes fall down on me, surrounding me with shards of glass, cutting me into pieces. Annie and I decided that even though it was a strange catastrophe, it was a reminder to be thankful. We avoided the worst of it. And Jeff still has his job.

10 comments:

Leslie Richman said...

Oh my goodness how scary! Glad you and your pup are ok :)

cathryn said...

Holy crap!! How awful :( But relieved that no one was seriously injured (or killed!).

BTW: I probably should've asked you before I went ahead and did it, but I linked to your blog in my latest post. Permission to do so? :)

Chef Amber Shea said...

Wow, that sounds awful! Good thing you emerged relatively unharmed, though I’m sure wasting all that food was not a happy thing. Reminds me of the time I walked away from the stove milliseconds before my giant flourescent kitchen light came crashing down. So strange how things happen sometimes…
PS—Been reading and lurking for awhile, finally commenting, hi :]

Stacey said...

Far out! Glad no one was seriously hurt!

Kim said...

Oh my goodness! I am so happy you weren't hurt. I would be so frustrated if that happened to me :(

'Drea said...

I would have so cried over the spilled milk etc. but, really, that you're okay is what counts the most.

Alisa said...

Oh my horrors, how terrible! So glad to hear that both of you are okay.

Sizzle said...

Scary stuff! I'm glad you and the dog are okay.

My Year Without said...

Thanks for the reassurance, everybody! What a memorable experience that was. I'm still finding dried molasses in places around my kitchen. It's a bear to clean!

Cathryn-Thanks for linking!

Amber-Thanks for saying hi!

Farty Girl said...

So scary. Thank God you and the dog weren't hurt.