TheFurFiles

The offending appliance.

There is always something exciting – read: weird, crazy, or very loud – going on around our house. This is what is currently happening…

About a month ago, I was downstairs in the kitchen with the kids. It was pretty late – about eleven o’clock – and everyone was getting ready for bed. The boys had been arguing – what else is new? – so I’d stayed in the room to act as a go-between in case tensions ran high again. You know how mothers are.

Anyway, as I was standing on the stairs waiting for my three lovelies to gather their things, I looked over to make sure that the stove and oven had been turned off. They had.

It was at this point that the kids left the room. I then turned to see where the cats were – in their respective spots on the couch. When I looked back, just about ready to flick off the light, I noticed that the front right burner on the stove was glowing red. Someone – or as I would soon learn, something – had turned it on. Thinking this very strange, I walked over and turned the knob to the “off” position. Shaking my head, I wondered if I’d missed something, and went to bed. Whatever.

Fast forward three weeks. I was home alone. It was the middle of the day, around lunch. I was in the kitchen getting a drink and something to eat. I often eat toast and fruit, or leftovers for lunch. I rarely, if ever, cook anything. That day, I certainly hadn’t.

One minute I was looking out the window, and the next, I’d turned around to get something out of the fridge. Guess what? The stove was on – high. Glowing red. Again. The front right burner. WTF? I thought to myself. I must be losing my mind.

Now you may think, she must’ve brushed past it and accidentally turned it on. Impossible. The stove is new. You have to actually push the knob in, and turn it, to get it to go on.

A short circuit in the element perhaps? Nope. The knob was turned. A short circuit couldn’t do that.

And then the final straw occurred – the thing to make me really wonder. A few days before going on our trip, my daughter got up one morning to make herself some Cream of Wheat. It’s all she eats these days. That, and melons. When she came into the kitchen, she noticed that the stove had been turned on again. Here’s the kicker – I’d been shutting off the breaker in the basement for weeks by then whenever we went to bed or left the house. There was no power to the stove. When she told me about this, I freaked.

Now, you can call me crazy. The people at the Kitchenaid warranty company do. The service repair guy from Home Appliance does. And so does my husband.

They’ve replaced the part, “just in case lady”. Thanks repair guy.

All this has me stumped, and spooked. It’s sent me into a frenzy of internet research. Thankfully, after a bit of digging, I think I may have come up with an explanation.

A blogger friend of mine named Donna Highfill – someone who is part of a wonderful Facebook group called #GenFab – also says she experiences this type of stuff. It has to do with hormones, apparently.

Paul Walker. Source: fanpop.com.

Furthermore, according to About.com, telekinesis – also known as psychokinesis (PK) – is the ability to move things or otherwise affect the property of things with the power of the mind. Some researchers contend that the most common form of psychokinesis is one that is not consciously intended. Poltergeist activity, they suggest, might be caused by the subconscious of people under stress, emotional turmoil or even hormonal peaks. Without conscious effort, these people cause china to fly off shelves, objects to break or loud rappings to emanate from their houses’ walls, among other effects.

Yeah, or stoves to turn on all by themselves.

If anyone would be able to perform feats of telekenisis then, it would be me.

I’m almost always under stress.

Emotional turmoil – yup, I have teenagers.

Hormonal peaks – perimenopausal rat bastard.

In fact, most women my age should be able to do the same.

Conclusion: I am the culprit. I just didn’t know it.

Question: But why am I always tinkering with the stove? I mean, I don’t even like to cook. And why the right front burner every single time? Am I really that anal? And why couldn’t I make Paul Walker come over to my house instead? I could totally think of something fun to do with him. And you can call me a cougar if you want. I don’t care. Besides, Paul isn’t that much younger than me anyway. He just looks like a hot young stud. So what if my son says he’s cross-eyed and has duck feet.