So, not to pull a Gwyneth Paltrow or anything, but I'm just not used to housework. I relayed this to my co-worker, who then put on a British accent (it sounded kind of Swedish) and said, "Oh, did you used to have servants do that for you?" And so I responded, "Um, yes." He was a little surprised, but you know, in Lebanon, many people do have housekeepers - it's not uncommon. Anyway, of course, in the past I have had to scrub toilets and do laundry and sweep floors, etc, but it's been a while. I have been doing just fine since I moved, though. There was hick-up with a blanket I put in the dryer that got a thick layer of lint stuck to my new sheets. But other than that, I have been managing.
That Sunday, after the blanket debacle, I decided to take care of an old cast iron skillet my parents had in storage and gave to me. It's been sitting on my kitchen counter top for weeks, waiting to be 'seasoned' to remove the rust. I looked up the instructions online and followed the steps: 1. put layer of cooking oil, 2. line bottom of oven with aluminum foil, 3. heat oven to 325 degrees, 4. place pan in oven upside down and leave for an hour. Fine, done.
One hour later, I go retrieve my DIY work and see that even though I used the aluminum foil, the oil had seeped through and now black gunk was super-glued to the bottom. I tried scrubbing it, but nothing came off except for my manicure (which I'm beginning to think are a waste money with all the manual labor I'm doing). I spied a self-clean button on the oven and thought, Great perfect. This should be easy. I pressed the button and went up to get ready for brunch. Five minutes later a loud, deafening noise goes off. I was a little stunned at first, but then realized, Oh, burglar alarm. And although I should have been panicking that there may be an intruder in my home, I was more concerned with the noise bothering my ancient neighbors.
I checked the alarm and it was fine, but I still had no clue what the sound was. Daylight Savings Brain. After a minute, it clicked: smoke alarm. So I rushed downstairs and saw that the self-clean had totally stunk up my entire living area and caused the smoke alarm to go insane. How do I stop this? I asked myself. Believe it or not, some random movie scene popped in my mind of a broom being waved in front of a smoke alarm. See, you do learn stuff from movies!
So, I'm standing in my living room after opening the windows, waving this broom and gagging on the stench, and finally, finally, the ear-piercing alarm stops. Two minutes later, it goes off again. Back with the broom waving, and so I just turned off the self-clean. I looked again at the microwave clock with broom in hand and thought, Hmm, I still have an hour, so let's sweep the kitchen floor. I swept the floor and then mopped and felt very domestic and proud of myself. Then I picked up my phone to check my messages. I saw the time (which had switched automatically) and freaked out.
WHAT? I have 15 minutes to get ready and arrive at the restaurant for brunch! I immediately called NSS and said I was going to be 15 (Lebanese) minutes late (i.e. 30 minutes in real time). I explained the whole smoke alarm and problem with the clocks and told her that I'm sure the power must've gone out to explain the missing hour. She then says, "Anissa, it's daylight savings, how could you not know." OMG.
To say I felt stupid was an understatement. I was starving, my 'clean' sheets were covered in fur, the house stank, and my oven looked like something from the Walking Dead died in there. But hey, at least my kitchen floor was clean.
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