Common Sense

 I am sick. I awoke from my nap yesterday feeling worse than when I lay down. Throat hurts, intermittent cough, ears hurt and I am light headed. I decided I was not fit for the camping public. 

This means that HeWho shall be in charge. Before I set off on my nap adventure, I carefully made note of all pending reservations and where to put them. I handed the phone to him and gathered my faithful doxies and scurried to my bedroom. I left him with a notepad and two dogs. All he had to do was answer the phone and check in campers. And let the dogs in his charge in and out.

I woke feeling awful and thought food would help. This prompted him to order a pizza from Dominoes. Forbidden food for cardiac patients, but sometimes you just have to give in. He picked the pizza up and was back with it very quickly. I saw him lift the first slice and I knew right away it was not cooked all the way. The stringy mass falling was not cheese, it was dough!

This seems to be a problem with this particular Dominoes. Maybe they need to have their oven temperature checked or the timing is off. At any rate, I gagged at the thought of trying to actually eat it. HeWho was happy to be eating something he shouldn't, ate that slice and put the rest in the kitchen, saying he was going to finish cooking it "later". I decided I wasn't hungry after all, and positioned my sick self on the sofa with more dogs than pillows. I think I dozed on and off, answering the phone and taking reservations in between.

I smelled the oven at one point. I could smell the pizza cooking ...... then burning. I was presented with a plate of hot from the oven pizza, really crisp on the bottom. Why do I smell something burning?

"Oh, yea, I made a big mess in the oven." says HeWho "cooked" my dinner. "I will clean it up later." Same thing he told me after he knocked over this rack and bin contraption he bought to sort his various parts and tools in. It takes up a lot of real estate in my laundry room and although it is on wheels, if you attempt to move it, the bins will come loose and a domino effect will happen, taking out at least 1/4 of the bins, spilling their various contents on the floor.

Just like the bins incident, "later" never came. When I first got up from my nap, I was freezing. Then, when I made my way to the kitchen to make dinner for Mr. Bo Jangles, I was too hot. That's when I saw the mess and I was really hot! HeWho is apparently inept at anything kitchen related had put the already sliced pizza on the oven rack WITH NOTHING UNDER IT. Use your imagination and you still won't know the magnitude of the mess in my kitchen.

So, now I am hot and mad. There were dishes in the sink, covering the dish cloth that he had attempted to wipe up some of the 400 degree mess. This burned through the cloth, of course and I threw it away. Cheesy masses hung from all the racks and formed masses of burnt blobs in the bottom of the oven. But, wait, there's more! It was all over the door and falling through to the drawer under the stove. 

Just like the pan of chocolate chip cookies I asked him to take from the oven last week while I was taking care of a customer. The cookies were on parchment paper on a flat cookie sheet. Instead of pulling the sheet straight out of the oven, he tilted it and all the cookies slid off and burned in the bottom of the oven. He didn't clean that mess up either. 

I made a lot of noise as I cleaned up the mess last night. This is a self cleaning oven. Not really, though. You still have to remove the food from the bottom before you turn that function on. It will eventually "clean" it, but it will catch on fire and burn it. 

The instructions are pretty clear about removing any blobs of food BEFORE you set the oven to clean. Common sense would dictate that you do so. Just like common sense would tell you not to stand on a glass top stove. I knew someone who did just that. The glass is not made to hold the weight of canning pot full of water, much less an adult who should be able to reason this out in her head. She ended up with stitches in her feet and got a brand new stove by telling them she dropped a frozen turkey on it. 

I just knew that he would opt for the "self cleaning" mode on the oven if left to his own devices. Not to worry, though, I doubt he could figure out how to turn it on. Was that mean? I don't care!

So, here I am, feeling awful. In the back of my mind I am comparing my symptoms with those of Covid symptoms. Can't help it. Mainly I wonder if I should muster up the energy to write a book of instructions for HeWho would be on his own if I were to be hospitalized for any length of time. Can he survive on his own? Will he burn the house down? Will he remember to feed the dogs? Will he mush up Bo's food the way he likes it?

Easier to just hire a sitter! One with a little common sense, which seems to be in short supply here!