08-20-2001 - 2:33 p.m.
It's going to be one of those weeks.
This morning, I loaded the dishwasher and took Zack upstairs with me to send our friend Susie an ecard. Zack likes to play with the knobs on the dishwasher if he's anywhere near it and that really mucks up the wash cycle.
We came back downstairs after a little while - long enough for the rinse cycle to finish - and I head over to the counter for another cup of coffee. And that's when I notice the smell... like candles. Only in the kitchen.
Now, I've heard gas described as several things, but never as burning candles. And I haven't lit any candles recently. Then it occurs to me that a waxy smell could be melting plastic...
I open the dishwasher and the smell just gets worse. The lid to my favorite FoxNews commuter coffee mug had slipped from the top rack and landed on the heating element, which it was now draped over in a nice impression of a Salvador Dali painting.
Damn.
I pulled off what I could and left the rest to cool while I took Zack back upstairs and got him dressed. The smell was just getting worse by the minute, creeping around the house. I turned on the fans and opened the back door, but it didn't seem to help much. The storm windows are still up and, since I haven't lived in a house with storm windows since I was 12, I couldn't remember how to take them down. And it's difficult to experiment and watch a toddler at the same time.
Well, we needed to go out and pick up more diapers anyway. For lack of anything better, I turned on the bathroom vents, took out the trash (with the remains of the lid), and we left for a while. When we came back an hour and a half later, the smell had dissipated.
But I have no idea how to get a new lid.
Air dry. From now on, air dry.
