...
I have lived here for twelve years. It was only supposed to be for two, three at the outside, but I have been in this wreckage for twelve years. The entire time I have gaped at the disgusting "filter" for the stove hood fan in utter disbelief that there was no way to take it out and get the shit off it.
Rain has come down through there. Frying pan smoke has gone up through there. Countless invasions by sugar ants. And I have been left with having to wipe the sucker down whenever it looks to be threatening to drip... for twelve years.
Some months ago, the little plastic covering for the stove light finally gave out completely. Just crumbled and left me with bare bulb action there under the hood. Fine. Fine. Easier to change the bulb when it burns out now. Tough shit. Just use low wattage, milky bulbs.
Well. Yesterday afternoon, while wiping up spatters on my stove, I noticed something odd behind the bulb. It was a greasy plastic swivel latch like on the back of some picture frames, only greasy. I could twist it and the "filter" came out, like, so easily it is shameful to report how easily.
So I washed that sucker to within an inch of its molecules and replaced it as easily as I removed it.
The little hood for the lightbulb had been hiding it from me. I don't even know if I had been a person who could crane her neck like normal people if it would have done any good... maybe.... Never have been big on dealing with that shit, feeling that sort of thing is men's work or something, or a mere disinclination to open cans of worms... whatever.
I'm sixty-four and have performed many feats of wonderment to all who survey them, but I have been until yesterday dirt ignorant of the ways of stove hood fans. We could halve my IQ and it would have been as easy.
I am mortified. Mortified.
pipe up any time....
