Timing is everything

My kitchen is from the 1970s. It’s old. It’s blah. It almost burned down the house today.

When I bought the house five years ago the only picture on the REColorado website was one of the stove. An ancient cornflower yellow color and filthy to boot. The range hood matched it.

Two days ago I hit my head on the side of the range hood when I thought I heard a cat peeing on the floor and I knocked the hood loose. It hung lopsided on one side and I couldn’t push it back into place. That next morning I went off to work and later came home and went to bed.

I got up this morning and went through my usual routine of making tea, catching up on the internet and feeding my cats. Through all this the hood just hung there.

A friend held a garage sale this morning and posted some pictures one Facebook in the hope of luring potential customers to her mountain retreat. In one of the pictures I saw a crock pot, something I’ve wanted to pick up for work, a crock pot to leave there in the cabinets for people to use. A few texts later we settled on a price and she said she’d hold it for me. The sale was over at 2 p.m. The crock pot was $3.

I got up and got ready, got dressed and began to head out the door when I noticed the pile of dishes in the sink. I hate coming home to dirty dishes so I put my purse down and started washing the plastic and ceramic randomness.

I was finishing up and all of a sudden the range hood fell onto the black ceramic-top stove I bought three years ago and on its way down, it turned on ALL the burners. Click, click, click click.

Scared shitless I reached over the range hood dangling there by a thick electrical cable and tried to shut off the burners as fast as I could seeing as how the hood had some grease on it and a grease fire was a real threat.

I got lucky; the hood landed on my cast-iron skillet breaking the impact on the ceramic-top and no burners were damaged but I immediately got rattled because if I’d left when I’d planned to, the house would have been toast by the time I got back with my $3 crock pot.

After taking a closer look at my cornflower yellow range hood I decided it was time for a new hood and headed out to Home Deport only after my son, Paul came up and temporarily/permanently secured the hood to the wall with heavy anchors rather than the four inadequate screws driven into the splintered wood of the 1970s cabinets.

Paul laughed at me when I asked him if the hood was secure until the next day when I could go buy a new hood. He just laughed and demonstrated that the hood wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, that is at least until tomorrow when my new range hood is installed and this time, it’s installed right.

The Universe is a funny thing though I don’t believe in the power of angels I believe that we are protected, guided and saved from our own stupid mistakes.

This time I got lucky. Real lucky.