Bigger than I realized...

I'm just sitting on my bed, munching on the delightful winter treat White Fudge Oreos (read: waist-killer), reminiscing about this past Wednesday night when I made taco soup for dinner. I was stirring a huge pot of kidney beans, chili beans, corn, ground beef, onions, diced tomatoes, and some choice seasonings when I started to smell something...off. It didn't smell like food, so I immediately looked at the stove burner. Sometimes food gets dropped underneath the electric burner and it can start to scorch if we don't catch it. Sure enough, there were a couple of french fries underneath there (how on earth?!), so I moved the cooking pot to a back burner, turned off the front burner, and grabbed a couple of hot pads. Carefully, I lifted the still-hot burner and grabbed those burnt fries and chucked them in the garbage. Problem solved, I figured. The weird burnt smell had dissipated so I didn't think anything more of it as I finished making dinner.

Later that night as Josh and I were doing our schoolwork on the couch, I happened to smooth out my shirt and feel something scratchy. Looking down at the hemline of my shirt I realized what I had smelled earlier: the plastic-y, melted smell of burning cloth. I had burned my own shirt at the hemline! There were a couple of holes and two sections of material that had literally just melted upward. The material of this business professional maternity blouse happens to be a little water-resistant, so it's got the texture of quasi-plastic, but when exposed to extreme heat it just looks like plain old melted plastic.

Naturally, I was pretty appalled at myself. Two facts stuck out pretty vividly to me: One, that I could have lit myself on fire if I had been working with a gas stove instead of an electric one; and Two, that I am much bigger than I realized. Normal pre-pregnant me would never have gotten that close to the stove top, but pregnant me is wearing a lot of layers these days, doesn't notice extra heat because she's always hot, and is sticking her belly into things that aren't safe (things like burning metal coils).

Ten more weeks of this crazy. In the meantime, I have White Fudge Oreos to comfort me...