Cool Beans... or not

So at about 8:45 last night I heard Maggie from the bottom of the stairs calmly calling my name saying, "Mom... come here." I yelled down to her asking what she needed (seeing how the "mom come here" thing happens a good 37 times each day) to which she replied "I just need you to come here." We went back and forth like that about 4 times until I finally gave in and decided to just go down stairs and see what it was that was important enough to "NEED" me to get out of bed. I heaved a big sigh, then headed toward the stairs. A strange odor began to fill my nose with each step down the stairs. At first it smelled rather tasty/toasty, but it quickly became overwhelmingly smokey. As I turned the corner to enter the kitchen, I could see a gray haze wafting through the upper 1/3 of the room. The microwave door was open, but I could see nothing inside. Looking around for the culprit and seeing none, I asked Maggie what had happened. She replied "I think I cooked the beans a little bit too long." That's when I noticed on the floor in front of me a small white and black spotted sock sitting in a rather odd "puddle" shape with dark grey smoke pouring from its every fiber.

It seems that Maggie (ever the nurse) used the microwave to try to heat up some dry split peas that she had placed in a sock so I could put it around my neck as I was going to bed. It is usually about a 30 sec warm-up thing. She put them in for 4 min. Taking the sock out of the microwave, she found that it was quite hot and "steaming" (which in this case really meant "smoking"), and promptly dropped the blackened sock on the linoleum. Well, I suppose "she dropped" is really not accurate - the sock actually dropped itself by a self-inflicted decapitation. As it was in the microwave heating up, the internal smoldering of the beans caused the neck of the sock to burn to the point of disintegration. Picking it up by the knotted neck part, Maggie (and gravity) aided the separation of the upper and lower part of the sock. It was quite lucky that the beans didn't spill out of the sock and land on her feet. THAT would have been horrible!!

So, now I have a nice round yellowish brown spot right in the middle of my kitchen floor.

Did I mention that melting linoleum and blacked split peas make a less than appetizing stench?