Who Knew?

Monday, I was home sick with a cold. I felt awful, didn't want to leave the house. Was too sick to go see my 88 year old mother in law on her birthday. I know what you're thinking, and stop it. She's a Saint and I love her. I didn't want to make her sick.

So I roll out of bed around noon and decide I should eat so I put a Mare Callander's frozen chicken pot pie in the microwave. Three minutes, half a turn, three more minutes, let it sit for five minutes. Lunch. I've done it a hundred times.

For some reason, this time, six minutes is too much. WAY too much. There is smoke coming out of the vent in the top of the microwave, and it doesn't smell good. It smells like a pile of burning hockey gloves. To paraphrase the great George Carlin, it's a smell that could, "knock a buzzard off a shit wagon!" It is, unpleasant. To say the least.

I take the pie and the box you cook it in right out to the garbage. I settle for an apple, a left over roll from last nights dinner and a slice of cheese for lunch, and crawl onto the couch read a magazine the rest of the afternoon.

But the smell persists. I light a small scented candle. Not enough. I light a big assed candle with THREE wicks. It's supposed to be a tropical scent. Now the house smells like someone farted suntan oil.

I clean the microwave with soap and water, and resign myself to the fact that the house is going to smell bad all day, and I'm just going to have to live with it. I'm so miserable from the cold, that it's not really a big deal.

It's still there on Tuesday. I clean the microwave with Fabreeze. No help. Time will heal all wounds, so I think it will be gone by tomorrow.

Wednesday dawns with the smell still in the air. This CAN'T last any longer can it? It's JUST a burned up chicken pot pie! How much staying power can this thing have? I've been in meth labs that didn't smell this bad! There has to be another reason for this. I'll fix it tomorrow.

Today, I'm gone all day. Running errands, getting my son's Passport renewed, and this afternoon, I figure, what the hell, it's a great day so I talk Danny into going to the Iceberg for a milk shake in the, "Bitchin' Camaro" with the windows down and the radio blasting. Spend a little time with my son. Talking about cars and college and girls, and anything he wants to talk about. Went to the car wash. It was a nice afternoon.

By this evening, I've had all the awful smell I can take. I'm thinking that maybe it's stuck in my nose, and I should use the gun cleaning kit to clean THAT out!

I got up on a stool, as this thing is mounted above the stove, and start checking it out. I see the vents, and two little screws holding the cover on. This needs to come out. So I take off the grill, and start washing it in the sink, and washing everything that looks like a vent with sudsy water. When I think I'm done I go get a flashlight just to be sure.

In front of a couple of plastic, cylindrical fans, is a metallic looking filter, about the size of the box top to a pair of children's shoes, placed in the space at an angle so both fans blow through it. I pull it out, and it's dirty, and heavy. And when I put it in soapy water to clean it, it's filter part only LOOKS like metal. It's some kind of paper product coated in silver, and it starts to fall apart right away.

I'm starting to suspect, that THIS might be my problem.

After I clean it off, I start looking for any kind of instructions, information on the metal frame where I can see that there is writing, I just can't make it out. So I get the flashlight. One of these four D cell, Maglight's that I used to carry when I was working in law enforcement. Before they AUTHORIZED collapsible batons, if you had one of these... Well, I've said too much. Let's just say it's bright.

"For optimum performance replace every six to twelve months". Really?

This is our first, "built in" microwave. I've carried the one I bought the year we got married, when it was still new technology, through our apartment and our first two houses, and it's still going strong down here in the basement for the kids to, "nuke" popcorn and has fed countless cold, wet, hungry soccer players frozen burritos. IT doesn't have a filter!

Six to twelve months? Who knew? We've been in this house almost 10 years now, and I didn't even know the sucker was IN there. Let alone that I should replace it once in a while!

So, tomorrow, I'm off to Lowe's to see if anyone still makes such and animal, and if I can get one to put in the old microwave. And this is a cautionary tale for anyone else. If you're microwave is built into your kitchen, take the vent grill off once in a while and see whats back there. If you don't want your cooking mistakes to make your house smell like old hockey equipment for days at a time.