I love to watch those “How Clean is Your House?”, “Clean Sweep”, “Clean House” shows. Partly because they make me feel better about the condition of my house and partly because they have some really good tips about how to clean and/or organize. I had just finished watching one of those shows and started thinking about the state of my oven. I am queen of the curled frozen pizza dinners. I burn things on a regular basis. I had never cleaned my oven. The odor that comes from my oven when I pre-heat it is just a reminder of what we had last from there. I decided it was time to tackle the oven. Not just because of the show, I guess, but because I had recently noticed a setting on there that said “Clean oven”. How cool. I could just turn the setting to “Clean oven” and slide the lock on the door and after oh, I had no clue how long, my oven would be cleaned. How easy is that? So I turned it to “clean oven” and locked it. 4 hours came up on the time area. Hmmm. That seemed like a long time to clean an oven but who was I to question it. I hadn’t done it at all before and maybe it had a sensor in there that said..omg, this is an oven begging to be cleaned and is going to be a long job. So, I went ahead and went into town to get some groceries and do some other errands. I came back about 4 hours later. I entered the house and I immediately noticed that the house was really warm. And smoky. Hmmm. I was beginning to have some reservations about having done this. I went over to the oven and unlocked the door expecting to see a gleaming, slick walled oven. Nope. The charred remains of food were on the bottom and the dark colors on the window and the walls were still there. Well, that didn’t work. Guess I would have to get some of that Easy Off to do the job.
About 4 days later, I was telling this story of how disappointed I was that my self cleaning oven lied. My friends looked at me oddly. Finally one of them said, “Did you notice that everything was charred?” “Well, yes, I did but it was still there in the oven.” “Um, that is because you have to wipe out the charred pieces. Cleaning the oven simply burns all the gunk down to ashes which you have to then get rid of.” Ah. That made sense I guess. I felt a bit sheepish that I had no clue that was what a self cleaning oven did but at least for the next time, I would know what to do.

Great snow for sledding was to be had this Christmas. So my two brothers, Jeff and Scott, and their children, Becca, Katie, Nic and Emily, and my children, Urania and Josh, went over to Lincoln Park to do some serious sledding. We were all bundled up and armed with an arsenal of sleds. Jeff was the designated videographer (the man with the camera) and Scott was the designated pusher. Me, well, I guess I was the designated cheerleader. We started out on one hill and had to change over to another as we were being encroached upon by other families looking for fun. We wanted to keep our fun to ourselves. So we began the task of priming the hill which required us to send the kids down on the sleds several times to get a good slick area. There was a small wet crick area at the bottom of the hill but at first it wasn’t a concern as the sleds barely got halfway to the bottom. But after thousands of runs down the hill, it became apparent that we were not only going to reach the wet area, but cross it, and cross the road. So as the kids would get near the bottoms we would yell, roll off!!! Roll off!!! which of course was ignored by the kids who thought it was fun to splash across crick with their sleds. I attempted sledding and was able to go down the hill by myself at a modest clip. On one of my bounce/slide/bounce/slide times, I felt this push on my back then suddenly i was sailing down the hill, my life passing through my eyes,my mouth open with screams emitting and my videographer brother capturing it all. Now I am not a svelte 47 year old woman. I have had 5 children. 5. This puts certain physical strains on a person. So I did what I inadvertently do when scared, or laughing, or maybe even sneezing. I peed my pants. Great. What a wonderful memory for my nieces and nephew and my children. I can hear them on the talk show now, “Yes, I remember the time my Uncle pushed my mom down the hill and she wet her pants so we all had to go home…”.