Wednesday, January 13, 2010

"And then it EXPLODED, Mom!"

It's not my fault. These things happen, just about everyone's done it at some point. The problem is, I happened to slip up whilst my jumpy 5-year-old daughter was sitting right in front of the... incident.

After much debate last night, the girls agreed to PB&J for dinner. I had tried for pizza and salad but it was no dice. The last dregs of the peanut butter were a little too cold and hard for spreading, so I popped the jar into the microwave for 15 seconds to soften it up.

Oops.

Turns out, a bit of the foil seal was still hanging onto the edge on the rim. The whole thing let off a LOUD static-like pop and flames shot up from the jar and filled the microwave. Did I mention it was loud?

I hit the roof in a Matrix-like spin and beat at the off button until everything instantly went back to quiet peanut butter peacefulness, though a tad smokey.

Anna however, started screaming, threw herself out of her chair and ran in blind hysterics out of the room, tripping over chairs and couches on her way to safety. Her terror set off Silvia (who I don't think even saw the event). I spent the next half hour on the couch with the girls velcro-ed to me, shrieking. As soon as I'd get Anna on the verge of calm, she'd say, "I want DAAAAAADDY to come home!!!", and then start wailing again. Kurt's on a business trip so the poor kid had to settle for mom to rescue her from the exploding peanut butter.

In case you feel I have not described this story in enough graphic detail or captured the complete horror that enveloped my daughter... just wait. Anna will be HAPPY to tell you about it. Every few minutes. For the rest of her life. Just in case you didn't understand the first time.

On the bright side, I'm hoping this will replace the story of how I forgot to buckle her car seat THREE YEARS AGO and she fell out and bruised her hips. I don't think I deserve to have both stories trotted out every few days. One example of how much I've failed her is plenty, don't you think?

And the peanut butter is fine. A little singed around the edges, but otherwise still quite tasty.

2 comments:

grandmem said...

probably you were too young to remember your brother michael opening the bottle of very explosive and agitate mead that was in a ginger ale bottle on the refrigerator door...

Alison said...

Well unlike the car seat incident I have a feeling you'll be laughing at this one sooner rather then later.