March 06th, 2026

As I'm sure I've mentioned before (at least a hundred times no doubt), Tim and I live a fairly quiet, calm, uneventful life.  It's peaceful and very happy.  Some folks may even refer to it as dull and boring (we don't but other's might). At the very least it could probably be considered relatively predictable. We are good with this by the way.

In an ordinary week, on a normal day the most interesting thing that might happen is noticing that a neighbor's tree was cut down or they repainted their front door a different colour.  When I call something exciting I usually mean the grocery store has exceptional BOGO's that week or maybe we got an unexpected refund in the  mail. Woohoo!

But this past Wednesday began with a different sort of excitement and this is the story of that:

The day began as most of our days do with Tim jumping in the shower to get ready for work and me staggering sleepily around, feeding hungry kitties and making Tim's coffee and peering around through squinted eyes waiting for both vision and brain function to stop being muzzy.  I went to throw something (don't recall what) away in the kitchen garbage can and that's when I saw it. Ants.  Not just one or two frightened tiny little specks running for their lives when they saw the Giant coming their way but a veritable Conga Line of Ants calmly and steadily marching forward. What the what?

Suddenly I was a lot more wide awake. I followed the line of dancing ants under the kitchen door, to the utility room and then down the entire freakin' length of the utility room, under the exterior door and outside.  Dang it!  I got to work immediately irradicating the little varmints.  I use a pet and human safe spray in the house which works, but smells so strongly of peppermint that it put me off candy canes for life.  I sprayed with determination and prejudice down that entire line, massacring ants with no mercy.  Once I got to the outside of the exterior doors I switched over to an outside spray that reeks of chemicals and is probably cacinogenic. (this was all done while I was still wearing pajamas by the way thus presenting myself at my very best to anyone passing by. Oh well)   

Once I completed my killing spree of course, I immediately showered to get that nastiness off of me. Hum dilly hum. I relaxed and took my time and reflected on the odd start to the day.  While I was pampering myself with shampoos and conditioners Tim was in the kitchen.  He had "slept funny" and woke up with a sore neck. In my family's lexicon that means you have  "crick" in your neck.  Best solution for that is a warm compress and perhaps a little Advil.

Now we have a number of different heat source products in the house from electric heating pads to full sized hydrocollators. But the best one for this particular issue and is in fact why we have it, is a bean/grain filled long tube with plastic loops on each end that fits perfectly around the neck. Just thinking about it makes me sigh with relief.  A quick 2 minutes in the microwave and the sufferer is quickly on their way to relief. 

We keep all of these items in a hall closet on the same shelf. Each one wrapped first in a towel and then in a bag.  Generally speaking, we take the item OUT of the bag but leave it in the towel (to keep it clean) to microwave.  Now the last time the neck warmer heater thinger was used, it was by me.  And I "cleverly" used to twisty tie threaded through both plastic loops and then twisted closed to keep the neckwrap in place while I continued working around the house. When I was done with it I intentionally put the twisty tie IN the bag so that whoever used it next didn't have to scrounge up another twistytie.  You probably see where this is going, right?

When I finally got out of the shower and was combing, lotioning and powdering and so forth I kept thinking......"that's  a funny smell, I wonder what that is?"  After a second or two I recognized it as burnt plastic. Oh no!  Did I leave a bread bag leaning on the toaster oven?  I mean, I didn't make any toast that morning, but perhaps Tim did?  I was prepared to spend some time later attempting to scrub melted plastic off the toaster oven but for that moment, I just wrapped myself in a towel and stepped out of the bathroom then wandered down to the kitchen where the smell was noticeably stronger.

There was Tim in the kitchen and not his office in front of the microwave with the door open. Odd.  I asked him if he noticed a funny smell.  And that's when I heard the story.

Now first you have to keep in mind that Tim never panics. Ever. He calmly assesses a situation and then addresses it equally calmly and correctly.  So, again, bothersome neck issue.  Obvious solution is the neck warmer thingie.  He finds it in it's usual spot, pops it into the microwave and returns very briefly to his office as he will hear the little Ding when the mircrowave it done.  Instead, right away he smelled the same odd burning smell that I did.  So, immediately, he returned to the kitchen and when he looked at the microwave, instead of seeing the neckwarmer circling endlessly, he saw flames.  Wait, not flames... FLAMES!    That's not normal!

He immediately opened the door (which automatically turns it off), pulled out the flaming object and dropped it on the stove top. He patted out the flames on what was left of the neck warmer and then again inside the microwave, got yet another towel, scooped the entire burned mess up and put it outside in the courtyard to think about what it had done!  By the time I stepped into the kitchen all of that was done and Tim as trying to clean up the mess left behind.  (despite putting out the flames with his bare hands, he did not get burned by the way thank goodness)

He told me what happened and both of us were agog at the idea that those bean/grain filled warmers could catch on fire!!!  Bizarre!  I told him that I would finish the clean up and he gratefully returned to his desk and back to work.  I got dressed and then began attacking the melted/burnt/yucky remains.  As I worked, I was thinking the entire thing through and then, as I was scrubbing a particularly resistant bit of melted something, I remembered the twisty tie.  Dang.  This was my fault.  I did leave the twisty tie, not still attached to the actual neck warmer, but definitely in the bag it was kept in.  Ratz.

I trudged, head down, into Tim's office and confessed.  He was very understanding about the whole thing.  As long as we are both safe and the kitties are fine and the house is still standing, it's no problem are his thought on the matter.

To my great surprise, once I got it cleaned up and did a trial cook with a bag of microwave popcorn, the microwave itself still works~!  So really, we are only down one microwaveable neck warmer and two towels (and one twisty tie)

And there ends the tale.  It was an exciting morning for sure.  And now I'm good on the excitement meter for awhile. Life can resume it's usual serene, lovely, levels.  Please.