Broken Oven...

At work, we have what's called "PTO Time", which is personal time off that you use for vacations, holidays, sick days, etc. We earn so many hours per pay period, but once you reach a certain "cap" (in my case, 240 hours) then you need to start using more of it or else you lose some. You can earn any more hours until you have used some up!!! Since I was getting close to this "cap", my boss suggested I take a few days off... just to get me by until I took my vacation time in June!!! Do you think he heard me complaining???? Nope, just the sound of the door slamming as I ran out of the place before he could change his mind!!! HAHAHA!!!

Since I had three days off and the kids were still in school, I decided I would make a list and get all of these "spring cleaning" tasks out of the way. First thing on the list was to spray sealer on the deck, since I have been anxious to get our patio furniture out and use it! Then I wanted to paint the porch area -- the paint has been coming up over the years from scraping it with the shovel in the winter. The list also included such tasks as: plant flowers around the deck steps; patch holes in bathroom wall; clean out Brianna's room and make room for her summer clothes in her dresser; clean out the kitchen; clean the oven... the list was actually quite long!

I got up early the first morning of my three day "hiatus" from work! I wanted to get the deck done before the sun got too far up in the sky and it was too hot! I took the broom out to sweep these seed/pod thingies off the deck -- I also had to use a screwdriver to get them out from the cracks of the floor boards. It took me about 30 minutes to work my way from one end of the deck to the other... and when I turned to look back at my work, what do you think I saw??? More of these seed/pod thingies!!! AAGH!!!! I then realized that the wind was blowing these things out of the neighbor's tree faster than I could keep them off the deck... which meant I wasn't gonna get to seal the deck until these things were done falling from the tree... ( and I was mad, because I had just got done waiting for the other neighbor's "cotton" from his cottonwood to quit snowing all over our yard!!) About this same time, I am realizing that I can't paint the porch either for the same reason, and I can't plant the flowers until the deck has been sealed... seems my list is growing shorter right before my eyes!! Since I couldn't do any outdoor stuff, I went and started on the indoor things. I patched the holes in the bathroom walls -- only took about three layers of spackle!! I also decided to start cleaning the oven to get that out of the way so I could enjoy my other days off!

While I am wiping the oven cleaner from the top and sides of the oven, my rag somehow gets stuck on the top heating element. I am trying to get it off and end up giving it a good yank -- the rag comes off, but I also hear a popping sound and when I look up at the digital display on my oven, it is blank -- not a good thing. Not sure what to do next, I went ahead and unplugged the oven from the wall and finished cleaning it out. Once I was done, I plugged it back in to see if it would start working... nothing... dang it!!! By this time, CJ has come home from work and I have told him about it. We check the breaker box in the basement and see that one of them is off - when we turn it back on, the digital display on the oven starts working!! My stove top also starts working, but the oven still won't work. CJ calls several appliance repair places and they all said that we would probably need to replace some electronic control board located in the back of the oven. They also told us that some boards can cost more than what the oven did when it was purchased 4 years ago... YIKES!! Since we were planning on going on vacation in less than a week, we decided to wait until we got back to deal with the problem. We still had the stove top, a microwave, and a toaster oven to use so we could manage.

About two days later, I went to use the timer on the oven and accidentally hit the BAKE button... and the oven came on!! So I put a roast in and watched it cook the whole two hours it was in the oven -- no problems!! And no problems ever since! Not sure what the problem was or why it started working again on its own, but glad it did before we shelled out the money for something we obviously didn't really need!!!

As for the rest of the things on the list, they didn't get done!! That first day was such a bad one when nothing went right, that I just decided to spend the next two days getting therapy... retail therapy!!! Shopping is way better than cleaning any day!!!