While I was replying to a PM, I also was apparently trying to burn the house down.
My mind loses track of stuff sometimes, always has, sometimes trivial stuff, sometimes really really important stuff, and somtiems I remember it and somtimes I completley forget forever, evne though other people don't understand how that could be possible. But that's just how my brain (doesn't) works.
My biggest problem is I keep forgetting stuff I'm doing when I go off doing something else (because I have to severely multitask to accomplish enough of the things I need to do, not even including things I *want* to do).
Tonight (while typing up the PM, including doing some researching and searching) I forgot I was boiling tea on the stove. Hachi TRIED SO HARD to tell me I left it on, by coming back to me over and over and then leaving and sitting by the door to the kitchen, isntead of laying at my side like usual. But i ignored her cuz i was thinking and writing and searching, until I smelled something like hot metal, which suddenly made my brain tell me OHHHH FUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!
I keep doorways curtained off so if I could smell the smoke in here, it went thru both my bedroom/frontroom curtain and the frontroom/kitchen curtain. That must be a LOT of smoke...so...I held my breath and went from bedroom to frontroom, and it was vaguely misty, which is a fair bit of smoke. My heart began to race as I imagined possible flames in the kitchen, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and peeked behind the blanket over the doorway--almost totally dark (I leave lights off in rooms I'm not in) so no fire...but the pan on teh stove is glowing a little on the bottom (aluminum pot) and looks like I'm seeing it thru fog. Possible that the glow was just the electric burner glow diffused in fog, but I'm fairly sure it was actually the bottom fo the pan itself. Flipped on light and could barely see thru the smoke, which was beginning to burn my eyes. Turned off burner, moved pan off of it, and the lid shattered (tempered glass lid with stainless rim and some sort of dense plastic knob for the top that had no sign of melting).
Couldn't hold my breath any longer so I pulled down the curtain/blanket between kitchen/backroom, opened the back door, and went outside for air. Back inside, got a boxfan and set it up in the doorway of kitchen, reset the blanket so it covers the doorway except for the boxfan, and set it to high, blowing out to the backroom. Back into front room pulling blanket up from floor a bit there, and opening front door and window, then my bedroom window too, so fresh air can be pulled in from outside (cold or not, it's better than breathing the fumes.
It's been a while now, an hour or so, and I can still smell the hot metal smell, evne in teh bedroom, so I'm still letting it air out, even though it's cold outside and I woudl rather not lose all the heat--it might be sunny tomorrow and I can get some of it back then. Just ahve to bundle up tonight.
The real problem at this minute, though, is that the pad of my pointer and middle finger must've touched a too-hot part of the plastic handle of the pan when I moved it off the burner, and while I dind't notice then, it's begun to throb, and there is a blister under the skin on the pointer finger, and a red area around that, and a small red area on the middle finger's side of pad towards pointer finger. It's not bad enough to keep me from typing cuz it's not right on the areas I press keys with, but I"m nto fast at it, and it does hurt. I put aloevera on it but it hasnt' helped yet. Probably need to just make a "finger glove" out of a leaf section and see if that helps. (it has before).
The pan used to be that "kitchen yellow"; you'd never know that now.
Long ago the teflon coating wore off the bottom of it, and some of the sides, so it's been bare aluminum for years. I used to have a better pan for my tea, but my crazy sister disappeared it along with a bunch of other kitchen stuff a few years ago, and this is the only other one I had that holds just the right amount of water and fits on teh burner and has (had) a good-fitting lid with a relief hole for steam pressure.
Now I don't have a good lid for it or any other the right size, so I will need to go hunting for one at the thrift stores. I will also have to thoroughly scrub out the pan, and re-"stain" it with junk tea that I won't be drinking (because bare aluminum makes for horrible tea; it has to be "seasoned" with old teastain first). I do still have an old thin aluminum lid, but I can't see thru that, so it has to be pulled off to check the state of the water/tea/etc., and makes it more likley I will accidentally burn myself with steam by forgetting to tilt it the correct way. (because I never truly learn...even though I know better.)
The pan is even pretty distorted from the heat--it's no longer round as you can see in the bottom pic (it already hd some dents here and there, but nothing like this). And I didn't notice until I took the pic, but when I moved it off the burner and to the middle of the stove, I must've set it on the plastic spoon I had been going to use for putting sugar in, because the spoon is missing and there's melted plastic all over the bottom and the side/bottomedge.
