I obviously cannot multi-task.
“I can’t talk right now,” I said to my younger daughter when she called Sunday night. “Apparently I’m having a fire.”
Of course, she completely understood as I explained to her that the roll of paper towels I’d put on the dining-room chandelier to dry out had started to glow and smell like a campfire when I forgot it was there and turned on the lights. It was on the chandelier because it had gotten damp under the kitchen sink and I wanted a safe place to dry it out because I am too frugal (cheap?) to throw away a perfectly good roll of paper towels. The paper towels were under the kitchen sink instead of out on the counter where normal people keep their paper towels because if a roll of paper towels is left out in our house the cats immediately attack it and reduce it to shreds since obviously paper towels are a Major Threat in Cat World. The roll had gotten damp because I had over-enthusiastically washed dishes and water dripped down the cabinets and into the under-sink area. Ironically, of course, I had to douse the smoldering paper-towel roll in the very same sink and throw it away after all. So there you go. And luckily my husband was watching TV (football, of course) and didn’t notice — or I would have had some explaining to do.
Naturally, the thing that really disturbs me about this whole episode is not that I’d forgotten the paper-towel roll was on the chandelier when I turned the lights on or that my husband was so engrossed in TV he didn’t notice smoke but that my daughter was not surprised any of this happened. To me.
Coffee with Cathy 