The weight of winter is finally lifting off my
shoulders. As Memorial Day and
subsequent summer holidays approach, I find myself being able to breathe
again. While I personally find myself
ridiculously funny, entertaining is not my skill-set. I loved Hostess, not hostessing. And hosting guests in my home during the cold
months sends me into a flurry of frantic anxiety. When I was assigned Easter
this year, my family immediately recognized a potential problem as I had the
preceding seven days off to prepare for the event: lots of time to get
ready. The tops of door jams were
dusted. Heating ducts were purged. Lightbulbs polished. As the big day approached, things really
began to heat up.
I turned my attention to the stove. When it was dropped off at my home six years
ago, the delivery man noticed my pair of cockatiels and warned me that the
fumes resulting from the self-cleaning feature would be deadly to the
birds. As much as I dislike the messy,
ornery creatures, I had no wish to go down in history as a bird murderer so I
nobly refrained from cleaning my oven.
Ever. But with Easter knocking on
the door, all bets were off and it was every bird for himself. Despite her exhaustion from a week’s worth of
extreme cleaning, daughter, Sydney
gamely helped wheel the unhappy birds to a back room and covered them before we
leashed up the dogs to go for a brief walk as the stove initiated stage one of
self-clean. The red light was on.
Attaining the summit of the hill, we turned to take in the
breath-taking view, gasping as we watched black smoke pour out of our little
house. Racing back, we could smell the
noxious fumes well before reaching our front door. The only one with good sense, the dachshund
put on the brakes and refused to go near the deathtrap that was once our
home. Sydney and I…not so smart. We soldier-crawled our way through the thick
gray cloud that had permeated every room.
Sydney
wrestled resisting birds from the cage and carried them like feathery footballs,
tucked beneath each arm for the race to the end zone. After punching the “cancel” button on the
stove, I was busy opening every window before I too, escaped the poisonous
prison.
Husband Brad arrived home two hours later, moderately
surprised to find Syd and I sitting on our garage roof. Cold, the dogs had taken shelter in the van.
As my husband approached us, his nose wrinkled slightly and he asked, “Are they
doing a control burn somewhere?” Naturally,
this insensitive comment caused me to immediately burst into tears. Six hours later, we were able to re-enter our
house without fear of instantaneous death.
The stench, however, would not subside.
We employed a multi-strategy approach to eradicate the odor: windows open in 35 degree weather, multiple
applications of Febreze, a plug-in air freshener in every outlet in the
house. Avoiding the addition of another
chemical to the mix, we applied repeated warm soapy water scrubbings. My house was super shiny but still super
stinky. And now Easter was upon us. As I set the table, I thoughtfully tucked a
clothespin in between the knife and fork.
I discreetly placed an open jar of Vapo-rub next to the butter lamb; one
to spread beneath the nose, one to spread upon the warm, crusty crescent rolls. Good-humored and gracious, my guests insisted
that they could only smell the Easter ham.
I know it looks bad. Some people
will do anything to get out of entertaining for the holidays but that really
wasn't my intent when I inadvertently incinerated my home while preparing for
the celebratory event. This incident
only served to remind me what I had already known: holiday hostessing stinks!
originally published on the on-line edition of "The Warsaw Country Courier"
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