Seriously. I want to know what you thought this post was going to be about when you decided to click on it. You sicko.

I’m actually and very innocently referring to the blue flame that shoots out of my microwave oven every time I try to use it. Everything I cook acts like I’ve wrapped it in tinfoil and dipped it in lead before placing it in that magical light-up box.

Unfortunately, the microwave makes up the bulk of my cooking ability, so it’s been pretty lean at the old Lorca house. It was too late to order a pizza when I discovered you cannot actually cook a microwave dinner on the stove top, no matter how well you think you insulated it. That foil on a Hungry Man dinner blows up like a Jiffy Pop, leaving you with a very interesting beef stew-like concoction. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t a beef-flavored Hungry Man.

The real kicker is that the microwave is the latest item on a quickly falling apart list of things that are going wrong with our house. I didn’t mind too much when the washing machine got plugged up because it really just seemed like the excuse I’ve been looking for to stop doing laundry altogether and just buy new clothes each week. That was a win-win, all around. Once the washing machine was fixed and put back into place, the dryer went. I swear I had nothing to do with that one, but the anti-laundry shopping spree did seem like the only solution. Again.

After both of those appliances were finally put back in order, the light bulb in the fridge went out. Now stop it, I know you’re thinking that I could probably just handle that one on my own, but actually I can’t. Our fridge has two light bulbs, so it’s still very scary to open the fridge and see it only half lit up in a hazy, flickering, I’m-gonna-get-you-the-killer-is-right-behind-you kind of way. Plus, I would have to move all of the very frightening out-of-date foods out of the way to get to the light bulb, and then I would be forced to acknowledge what happens to hummus that’s been allowed to ferment and I’m just not strong enough for that.

While it is tempting to think my house is possessed and I should probably just move, I think the more likely culprit is my house is just old and I should probably move. I wonder if the new owners will let me leave the hummus behind.