Ella and the Microwave

I was upstairs on a conference call when I smelled smoke. I ran downstairs to make sure that Ren had things under control. The living room was semi filled with smoke. The kitchen was almost black. I could barely see Ren, who was standing in front of the microwave. We opened doors and windows and frantically searched for the fire extinguisher – which had disappeared after our “almost burned the house down while grilling steaks incident”. I asked Ren what had happened as we fanned the clouds of smoke out to our back deck. “Evidently, Ella decided to warm up her Lunchables pizza in the microwave and set it for about 65 minutes. When Ren walked into the kitchen, the microwave was smoking and the timer was at 60 minutes. He opened the door and flames shot out at him. Thinking on his feet (Ren is excellent in high stress situations) he shut the door and allowed the flaming pizza to burn out. Ella was hiding in our bedroom waiting for us to appear. One interesting note about the situation is that while early on, we were hoping that the fire alarm didn’t go off, because it is connected to our security system and would have resulted in an immediate visit by the members of the Westlake fire department, after a while, we both became a bit concerned that the alarm hadn't gone off. With enough smoke to clearly indicate that the first floor was on fire, the alarm probably should have called for back up. Anyway, no one was harmed (other than the pizza) so we are grateful. Our house totally reeks of burned cheese, which sucks. And Ella has learned a valuable lesson -- Mommy and Daddy are idiots for allowing the microwave to be located at toddler level.