How To Asphyxiate Yourself Without Trying

This story can probably be filed in the "Perhaps, my father was right, I am too stupid to live alone" file.

Last night, I arrived home late from work, and tiredly placed a frozen dinner* into the oven**. I noticed something smelled kind of funny, but figured damn, I guess this will be the first and last time I try the Roasted Chicken Ravioli, and continued the project of opening my mail. The smell only got worse. What the hell? Did I forget to remove the frozen meal from the paper box? Was the plastic tray melting? I opened the oven to check and thick, black smoke came billowing out. Wha???

Having never used this feature before, I looked to see if my oven had a fan. It did, and I quickly turned it to high. But I didn't crack the oven, because I still wanted my dinner to cook. I also switched my Air Conditioner from A/C to fan. I tried to go back to my mail. Let's see what colors Land's End is pimping this fall. The smell of burning continued. My eyes were watering and when I looked up, a thick black cloud of smoke was hovering in my apartment. Oh Christ.

I turned off the oven and opened the door. I could just barely make out something brown on the bottom of my oven that was burning, then I was overcome, gasping for breath. I ran to the front room to open the windows, which meant that first I had to unlock the gated bars that go across my windows. Afterall, I live on the ground floor in the city, it was only the second time I've ever opened these bars and my windows. I turned on my little fan. I now had three fans going but none of them we exhaust fans, so essentially all I was doing was blowing the smoke around. Then I ran to the back of my apartment to the bathroom, through the kitchen, coughing through my shirt pulled over my face. My eyes were red and burning. I opened the window in the bathroom and tried splashing cool water on my face which did absolutely nothing.

What the hell was burning in my oven? There was no spilled cake batter or anything I could think of from the day before. I ran back to the front room to take in big gulps of fresh air from the open windows. Where had I seen this behavior before? Oh yes. I was reminding myself of a gigantic cockroach, right as I would spray the hell out of it with Raid it would get all confused and run around in circles. Roach, know thyself! I started having an internal monologue with myself that went something like this, "okay Nancy, you had better pull it together otherwise you are about to die in a really stupid way".

I realized I should probably evacuate my apartment, but then I had just opened the windows and unlocked the gates and as I said, I live on the ground floor. I know that there is nothing worth stealing in my place, but I kind of prefer that people take my word for it and not hop in to see for themselves. So the thought of me going to the bar a few block down the street while appealing, made me nervous. I could go outside and sit on the stoop, but part of me expected something in my apartment to burst into flames next, and I kind of wanted to be around to see that when it happened.

While I was standing there, mulling over my options, in the back of my head I kept thinking, Isn't something supposed to happen when your apartment fills with smoke like, like, like a smoke detector sounding? Hey, why the hell isn't my smoke detector going off? I remember in the days before I moved into my apartment going over final things that needed to be done with my Broker. I remember specifically listing the smoker detector and the Carbon Monoxide Detector. I looked at my smoke detector. Yep there it was. Hmm. Shouldn't the little red light be blinking? You know, just to let me know that it is active? Wait, was I supposed to put the batteries in that myself? Oh shit.

One hour later, most of the smoke had cleared out. My dinner was ruined and went right into the trash. There was a sticky brown substance on the bottom of my oven that had started all this. What was it? I'm telling you, it wasn't anything I can think of from project Bake Sale and it gave off kind of a toxic odor as it burned. "Buy batteries for smoke detector" is on my to-do list. Dinner was Chex-Mix and Ice Cream. What the hell. I couldn't afford anything in Land's End anyways.

*Don't judge me.
**Because I don't own a microwave.