BOOM!

Well, I have had a long love/hate relationship with my stove over the almost 5 years that I have lived in this house. This stove has always been temperamental—not for the faint of heart, but until a few days ago we had a good working relationship. Yes, I have had to turn the propane off at the bottle outside (my to my guests confusion as to why I whip in and out of the kitchen so much) because otherwise it leaks into the kitchen. Yes, most of the knobs have melted to uselessness so I have to keep pliers beside the stove to operate the knobs, but all of those things are work aroundable.

Last Friday I wanted to make pizza for Janette and myself, so I grabbed the pliers to turn on the oven as normal. The knob wouldn’t turn more than just barely on—maximum heat! I fought with it awhile, then exasperatedly managed to produce edible pizza despite the less than ideal conditions. On Monday of this week the fix-it guy comes in, so he took a look at it, did some banging around, and pronounced it good. After he fixed it I deep cleaned it since I realized that was a long overdue chore, and come to think of it I cooked lunch on the stove top on Tuesday. Tuesday evening was when things got interesting…

Jill had just come back from Kalene, so I decided to cook supper for her. I went to light the oven, thought there was more propane smell than usual, but chalked it up to the service. Well, when the propane on the oven ‘poofed’ and the area under the burners lit on fire, I went scurrying out to turn off the propane at the bottle. Not cool! I took the top off the stove, looked around to see if I could find any damage, carefully lit the stove top, and decided it was just the oven. Well, this morning I was doing down some veggies. I had just put the peas into the cold water and had turned away from the stove to grab something when BOOM! there was a big propane explosion! The pot of boiling water was flung across the kitchen as all the burners leapt off the stove top. The closed kitchen door was blown open taking part of the plate with it, (this as after we removed the dangerous bit of loose metal)

pictures flew off the fridge, a plastic bag was partially melted when either the pot or the water hit it, and a window in the dining room that I have never been able to open the whole time I’ve lived here was blown open! Where was I? Right in front of all this! I flew out the door (not noticing that it was open—I was rather shaken), turned off the propane, and shook a little while my gardener gave me a startled look and said, “Eee!” I went back inside and found this:

I don’t know how God worked it out, but even though I was right in front of the blast, I was NOT HURT. The hair on my right arm is a little singed, but with the flame, boiling water, and all the other things flinging about, I was fine! God is so good! When I get to heaven, I want to watch that video replay…

So, it looks like I’ll be needing a new stove… Either that, or the repair guy is trying to kill me! However, it looks like God has that all under control as well—I’ll be sure to post an update later. Right now I’m just so thankful to be alive and unscathed despite being so close to a big explosion!