I am, at last, cookin’

Yes, it’s true! Finally I am Baking Enabled! Baking and broiling and whatever else you do with ovens. It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten. And it’s even more exciting because I was starting to have my doubts about whether we were going to end up with a working stove or not before it was over. My father also installed our dishwasher for us several years ago, and as he was struggling with the whole stove thing today, it started coming back to me through the haze of repressed memory  how we said then that no matter what we had to pay someone else, we weren’t going to get him to do any more appliance installations. I guess it’s kind of like childbirth, though. Not that I know anything about that, but I hear that after a few years you forget what a horrible excruciating nightmare it was, and how you swore you’d never even do anything that would result in producing babies again, let alone actually willingly have one. And you find yourself right back in that same predicament.

So, yeah. It was a long and grueling day. Lowes called me at 8:30 and said they’d be here between 11 and 1. The parents got here at around 9:30. Daddy said, first thing, "You haven’t gotten the old stove out yet??"

Well, NO, because we, ummmm.. didn’t really know how. And we kind of needed it. And we didn’t see much point in dragging it out and sitting it in the front yard before we had to. I thought we had to pry the wood off the bottom first – well, here’s a visual in case you missed the last one:

See that strip there between the bottom of the oven and the floor? Kind of where the cats are staring? I thought that had to be pried off. I asked Baker B last night if he thought maybe we should pry it off just to get a head start on things, and he said "NO". So we had made no preparations other than moving all the assorted countertop crap out of the way.

Well, as it turns out, we didn’t have to pry that off first. Daddy said, "Well, it just lifts out!" So he and I just lifted it out. That took about ten seconds. And then the sawing commenced.

And he sawed. And sawed. And measured. And sawed. And expressed disbelief at how crooked our house is. Even after the twelve million gazillion dollars worth of house leveling measures we underwent last summer. He measured and measured and everything was crooked and he measured and he cut and doubted this was going to work at all and he cut with one cutty tool and another cutty tool and this wouldn’t work and that wouldn’t work and he expressed disbelief at how HOT it in in our house, and cut and measured and cut…

Baker B and I held flashlights and plugged things in and unplugged things and handed him pencils to mark with and held the level and turned on fans and agreed that our house sure is a great big crazy mess. And watched him try to get up and down because he’s eighty years old and stiff and can’t get around like he used to and has shaky hands.

And much to my surprise, Lowes arrives at ten till 11 with the new stove. So they bring in the new one and carry off the old one and we’re back to sawing and measuring and sawing and switching saws and blades and measuring some more.

OH and my mother is saying, "What time are we going home? We need to get back before dark! We better go soon! The cats may run out of food! Were Simon and Maddy inside when we left? We need to get back before dark! We better leave soon!"

All. Day. Long.

And naturally although Lowes does bring the cord that the new stove needs, they do not bring the new thing to plug it into. Which I did not specifically order because when I went to the store and put in the order for  the stove and the guy told me that it needs a cord and that has to have a different plug than the original stove has, and even showed me on a demo stove how the new one differs from the old one, I assumed that by saying "Okay, just add whatever we need" that meant that he would, in fact, send the cord and send the extra plugs and send, oh, WHATEVER WE NEEDED. No, they sent the cord, but that was it. So that meant a trip to Lowes. Which was not so bad since we had to go get some lunch anyhow. Or at least it would not have been so bad if the guy who waited on us at Lowes actually knew something about electricity and hooking up stoves and what you need when you are hooking up stoves to electricity.

Because of course we ended up with the completely wrong hooking-up-thing.

And of course that meant I had to go BACK to Lowes with the wrong hooking-up-thing and get the right hooking-up-thing. Which involved finding someone to actually help me at Lowes, and that is always an adventure.  I do manage to find a couple of guys standing around and I show them the cord (which we removed from the stove this time so as to have a visual aid) and I show them the wrong plug and I tell them I need someone who knows something about electricity and hooking up ranges and I need the right hooking-up-thing to go with the plug. And one guy says, "Oh, yeah, that’s the wrong one!"

No kidding! Well, we go look at several other wrong ones and the Helpful Guy starts showing me things that might work for washing machines and I say, "Ummmm.. this is for a range," so he says, "OH, I don’t know anything about ranges! Maybe I better call someone from that area!"

SO he calls someone from that area. Who turns out to be the same guy who sold us the wrong one to begin with. But now I have the actual cord, so he can look at that and he does this time manage to find the right plug-in-thing.

And back I go to the house with it. And now it’s storming and pouring rain and now my mother gets to add "We need to go home before the weather gets worse!" to her list of reasons to go home. RIght now.

AAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Well, Daddy does finally get the wires hooked up and everything is finally sawed out and we drag the new stove into the kitchen and slide it in…. and it fits perfectly. It fits as well as it could possibly fit, considering how crooked our house is. And I run downstairs and cut on the breaker, and run back up and we start turning on burners….

And the big burners work, but the small burners don’t.

Daddy says, "Well, you may have to hire an electrician!!!"

I’m thinking, okay, I know I’m no expert, but if it was wired up wrong, wouldn’t the whole thing either work, or, like, burst into flames????? Not big burners work and small burners not work???

I do some more running up and down turning the breaker on and off, and we finally figure out that, DUH, the little burners aren’t plugged into the stove. SO, it’s okay. It works. It ALL WORKS!!!!

The parents leave at 5:30. My father’s parting words are, "Next time we’ll put you in a new garbage disposal!"

I swear I did not pose the cats. As soon as I started to take a picture, there they appeared in practically  the same spot as the previous picture. I have NO idea what they’re investigating.

Tonight I made a Blueberry Crisp. And it was WONDERFUL.