I think most of us like to believe we’re clean people. We keep clean homes (for the most part), we take care of our bodies, practicing good hygiene, and we wash our cars regularly to dissuade the neighborhood kids from swiping the words WASH ME on our rear windows. For the most part, to usurp an idea from Stephen King and Peter Straub’s Black House, we try to prevent “slippage.”
However, every now and again, we come upon a corner in our lives that shows us we’re not as clean as we thought. We may even, dare I say, be a little disgusting and are not just practicing slippage but fostering it.
In last edition’s Happy Trails, I briefly commented on the territories of dust and other grime that lurked beneath our ovens and refrigerators. Between then and now, I ventured into that territory when I undertook the monumental task of cleaning my stove (inside and out and underneath) only to return a changed man.
I’ll spare you the ugly and dirty details of my experiences Under the Oven and narrate you to caverns beneath the burner plates, where there was so much carbon you’d think I was farming diamonds in there.
Literally chiseling out the carbon from God knows how many meals (that seemed good at the time, but will never be eaten again), I couldn’t help but think, “How did I let this happen? I’m a dirty person.”
A strong vacuum, plenty of water, a strong cleaning solvent, and a few sponges into my task, I started cleaning under the burner plates as if I lived down there. I chiseled, shoveled, vacuumed, sprayed, scrubbed, and rinsed my way down to the speckled-blue aluminum interior casing, amazing my wife, myself, and even my dog, who had been eyeing the process in a way I shouldn’t have liked but was too wrapped up in my own filth to notice. But isn’t that just the way it is?
Finally, under the burners was like brand new, barring a few spots I couldn’t reach with my hands. But then again, there are always places we can’t reach.
Pleased with my work, I took a short break before heading inside the oven’s main bulk, where I once again found a crust of carbon caking the oven bottom and door. Opposed to under the burner plates, the carbon inside the oven came off rather easy. Furthermore, since I had already cleaned under the oven and wanted that area to stay as clean as I could make it stay through the rest of the cleaning process, I lined newspaper (which I have plenty of, you can imagine) under the gap between the open door and oven bottom, which both kept the floor clean and would make for easy cleanup when I scraped out the carbon. After depositing a small mound of carbon on the newspaper liner,
I tackled the oven’s interior with vigor, again working the grime down to the clean finish until it was spotless or almost spotless.
The carbon mound on the newspaper had turned into both a dry mound and a soupy puddle of silt due to the water and cleaning solvents. I left the mess on the newspaper to retrieve a few rags from our linen closet to mop up the dredges that poured off the newspaper. I was gone for only a minute. Then, with my hand poised on a pile of rags, I heard a noise I didn’t like. A slapping, scuffing, licking noise. I thought to myself with all the horror in the world, “She [my dog] can’t be stupid enough to eat the carbon, can she?” I dropped the rags on the floor and dashed for the kitchen to find my 25-pound corgi/Chihuahua’s butt poking out from under the oven door, tail wagging. She was eating the carbon, and by doing so, eating soap and cleaning solvents (which there wasn’t much of, but enough to be alarming)!
It’s one of the moments that only happens with your children or pets when they scare you so much (because you care so much), you actually want to kill them. Besides myself, I grabbed her by the butt and pulled her out, her growling all the way. Well, why wouldn’t she? Carbon, turns out, makes a great dog snack!
I quickly ushered/pulled her out of the kitchen and hustled her over to my wife to keep her out, then returned to the kitchen, swept up the newspaper and what was left of its mess. Before, I was even that far, my dog had escaped my wife’s grasp and was headed back into the kitchen for seconds. I shooed her away, which didn’t work, so I picked her up and brought her back to my wife.
“Stay,” I demanded. This time, she did.
As I calmed down, I began wondering if there was a poison control for dogs. I could tell she didn’t eat much, and I didn’t need to use a lot of cleaning solvent, most of which I sponged off, so I doubted there was any real alarm. I’ve seen my dog eat worse things. Moreover, my wife and I figured carbon would be one of the “best things” you could pair with poison, as carbon will absorb most toxins in your body, either from an accidental overdose of medication or poisoning.
My wife and I kept a close eye on her, and she turned out to be fine. But I still considered it a close call, and I guess one mess always leads to another, if you don’t keep a clean house.
