The Phone Call You Don’t Want

Tonight as I was driving Jack into town for 6-9pm band practice (to prepare for end of July band camp, oy!), I made the comment that for all the trips I am making delivering everyone around these days, I’m glad it’s not like it would have been a couple of years ago where I had to strap everyone in for every single trip.  Now the younger two kids are at an age that I can leave them at home with one of the older boys and I don’t worry too much and that is nice!

So I had just said that, of course, jinx!, my cell phone rings.  Jack looks at the phone and says it’s from home and answers for me.  He listens for just a second and passes it to me right away and says “The kitchen is full of smoke!”  I grab the phone and exclaim into the phone, “Who is this?!”and now I don’t even know why I asked that but I did, and it was Grant and he says, “The kitchen is full of smoke and I don’t know where it’s coming from!”  My mind goes immediately to the stove, thinking something was set atop a burner and caught fire.  I asked him if he could go to the stove and see if there was something burning and he said no, there’s nothing.  The stove is not on.  I asked, “Is it from the microwave?”  He says the microwave isn’t on, but yeah, he opened the door and there’s charred black chicken tenders.

Whew.  Sigh of relief and memories of this pop right in my head with an internal “Caroliiine!”  I tell Grant not to yell at her or anything, just go outside for fresh air and I’ll be right home. 

Turns out she tried to heat up her chicken and read the instructions as 5 tenders = 5 minutes when it was actually 5 tenders = 1 minute. 

A lesson learned, and she’s gonna wait to microwave again until she’s ten.