Self-Cleaning Oven Anxiety

Let me set the scene...

It was the eve of Thanksgiving 2006 and I was getting ready to make some pies for the next day. I decide that I should clean my oven before all of the baking begins for good measure. I lock the oven and turn the dial to "CLEAN" and walk into the living room to make a call to my Mom. As I am sitting in my very comfy shabby chic chair and gossiping away with my Mom, the most terrible noise happens and as I look at my stove, smoke is shooting out the front! It's like backdraft. After telling my Mom I would call her back, I run over to the oven and shut it off and try to unlock it to put out the flames that are inside the oven while screaming FIRE, FIRE, FIRE to my roommates who are clearly not understanding the enormity of panic in my voice. So I run down the hall still screaming FIRE and bang on both of their doors and then they finally come to my rescue. (Side note, boys are dumb, don't live with 2 of them if you have a choice in the matter.) They are both trying to get the oven to open and in the process break the oven. But the fire is out so it seems as if we can calm down a bit. I then call my ex-boyfriend who is a firefighter to ask if I should call 911 or not. He advises that this is not a good suggestion as they will take an axe to the oven and it will be rendered useless for my Thanksgiving prep, and that I just need to stick it out because the oven has locked itself from the temperature that it reached and in a couple of hours it will be cool enough and unlock itself. Thanks ex-bf, Happy Thanksgiving, have a great night! (PS- he thought that this phone call was hilarious and was sad he didn't live in Vegas so that he could take the axe to the oven himself.)

A few hours goes by and the oven is still locked, so I decide to go to the store to get oven cleaner for when it finally does open, and then come home and take a nap. 8 hours later, at about 5am the oven has finally cooled down enough to unlock itself. But since my roommates broke the lock I have to lift up the hood of the stove and reach in to manually unlock the oven to get it open. So as I open the oven door I see it, the blackest soot I have ever encountered in my life. Is there a hole in the bottom of the oven? Did I really do that? How is that possible? So 4 cans of oven cleaner and 8 sponges and 2 pairs of rubber gloves later, I finally get the oven clean so I can start baking.

Yay!

I get my pies in ASAP and start to prep for the rest of the meal. Everything worked out great, dinner was a success and all of my friends thought that this was completely something that would happen to me. They tell me they love me and that they are glad that everything worked out well but are very sad that they didn't get to witness the event.

The following year as I am getting pies ready the night before to save time the next day, my new roommate (yes I moved out and got different roommates) comes walking in with a fire extinguisher with an enormous bow on it. Just in case he says, anything is possible with you.

You are probably wondering while in the middle of September I am talking about something that happened nearly 3 years ago on Thanksgiving? Well, now that I am living in my fabulous house, roommate free, I have finally gotten the courage to use the self-clean function on the oven as opposed to cleaning it myself. So this just brought up some fun memories of years past that I thought you would all enjoy.

So far so good though, we are about 30 minutes in without any sign of a fire. Wish me luck!