First of all, let me preface this by saying how much I love my pembantu, Ibu Sri. I could wrote an entire post dedicated to how amazing she is and how I hope I never have to have a pembantu besides her. My house is always clean and in order because of her. There is always DELICIOUS food on the table because of her. I love when I come home a little early and get to talk to her because we have such great conversations. I just love her to pieces.
But she made a mistake today. It is the first major mistake she has ever made in her 4 years in my employ. And it was a pretty big one.
She left the gas in the oven on. It's a tricky oven. If you don't turn the knob ALL the way, it's low enough to extinguish the fire, but not far enough to shut off the gas flow. But it's easy to not notice that it's not all the way turned off.
Easy enough to not notice that I didn't notice either... And then I tried to light the stove to heat up dinner when I got home. It's an electric lighter, so when you push the button, all the burners spark.
Imagine my surprise when I tried to light one small burner, and instead my oven EXPLODED with a loud BANG and fire shot out the bottom of the oven and blew the door open. Unfortunately, I was wearing shorts. My thighs are feeling a little like they maybe spent too long in the sun. And my oven, of course, is pretty toasted (literally!). But thankfully, that's the worst of the damage. The LPG tank sits RIGHT beside the oven, so I'm super relieved THAT didn't ignite.
It took me quite awhile to get my heart rate back to normal and for the shaking of the knees to stop.
Thinking back over events of the day though, I realize how much God protected me. The gas knob for the oven was turned almost all the way off, so the leak was pretty minimal. I don't think there was TOO much built up in there, or the explosion would have been much worse. Also, lunch at school was yucky today, and I didn't eat. So when I got home at 3:30, I was pretty hungry and decided to eat right away - three hours earlier than normal. Had I eaten lunch at school, I wouldn't have had dinner until much later, and there probably would have been much more gas built up in the oven by then.
I've always been wary of gas stoves (I grew up in a house with an electric stove, which I'm much more comfortable with). But today was a good reminder to always be vigilant when combining flammable substances with fire...
And the moral of the story is: always check the knobs before attempting to light anything.
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