To clean the oven

I have an overactive imagination. If you are at all curious if this is true please see this post and you will get a clear picture of my imagination and how it gets the better of me.

I baked cupcakes for my brother's birthday the other night and the smoke that was coming out of the oven had me worried that they would end up tasting more like smoked bacon than key lime delights. This led me to try the 'self cleaning' button on my oven. This is the first time I have ever done this. I blame my mom for this delay.

When we were young anytime that we would even go near the self cleaning option of our oven my mom would yell and freak out. It was (and is, she still has it) a very old oven but I think she thought we would burn ourselves, or worse, ruin her kitchen and oven. My mom was also the one that told us that if we were doing anything remotely dangerous, such as walking from the kitchen table to the sink with a butter knife that one would poke your eye out. I should also mention that her American accent would show up while she spoke this truth. I don't know why that's important, maybe her mother said it to her in that way, but it definitely adds to the folklore of danger. I should also inform you that we are all full grown and we all have both eyes. In fact 7/8 of us wear glasses, conceivably this was just a ploy by her to get us to wear goggles at all times. I'll have to ask her.

Perhaps this is where this unnecessary anxiety stems from?

Moving along... I lost the manual for our oven. What am I saying, I threw it out like anyone else would do because who needs a manual for an oven? Temperature, select, preheat, set time. I think anyone could manage that. Anyway, I don't have a manual so I googled how to use the self clean option on my frigidaire oven. You can make fun of me now (mostly because I can't hear you), since the instructions were to push the button. It does all the work. But the funnier thing is, I had to download a 30 page pdf on my phone in order to get to that tidbit of information.

It was pretty automatic. It locks on its own and sets a timer. I wouldn't recommend leaving the house but it's fairly foolproof. That said, while it was cleaning I wondered what would happen if it began smoking mercilessly. Thankfully (sorry mom, maybe don't read this post), we didn't have a smoke detector set up in our house yet. I also wondered if it would melt the laminate countertop if it got too hot. The whole thing was a mess, even the outside, and I was going to wipe down the front, but got scared that the glass would blow up if I touched it with a wet cloth. Since I was thinking about things blowing up I didn't use the microwave because you just never know what will happen when you're letting your oven clean itself. Ever since I read some stupid chain email about how water can blow up in the microwave I get a little jumpy anytime that thing is turned on. Put it beside an oven that's 1000 degrees and it's basically a nuclear warhead in my mind.

Alas, the oven did it's job. It stunk up the house and my hair in the process, but it's clean and with no melting, explosions, fires, or major smoke.

That's all.