I think we all knew that wouldn't last.

It was on Sunday that I decided to make myself some brown rice. What I failed to take into account was that I had never made rice by myself before. Ian had been making the rice. My job, as regards the rice, was to take the lid off and fluff the rice with a fork. This job made me feel important, and it also accidentally made me feel as if I could cook rice.

I read the instructions on the package, which said to put the rice in water (one part rice to two parts water) and bring it to a boil. I wasn't sure what constituted "a boil" in terms of rice; I settled for a slight bounciness on the part of one or two grains. Wouldn't want to boil the life out of the rice, after all! See what expertise I have?

The next step was to put the heat on low, cover the rice, and let it sit for forty-five minutes. No problem. I set my timer and picked up my book, but that didn't stop me from staring at the clock every two minutes, getting more and more hungry, astonished that time was not passing more quickly, thinking "I really should have gotten some instant rice."

When the timer finally, finally went off, I got up and opened the lid, fork poised to do the fluffing thing that I do so well. And there was the rice, uncooked, still sitting in the water. Because instead of turning the heat to "low" I had turned it to "off."

At this point, the smart thing to do would have been to get in the car, drive to the store, buy some damn instant rice and be done with it. But no. I had something to "prove" or maybe I was just feeling too "lazy" to get in the car. So I tried again. Bring the rice to a boil (bouncy grains) and then turn the heat to low and then wait.

Forty-five minutes pass, with excruciating slowness. I wait. I wait. I wait. I fucking wait. And the timer goes off. And I get up, fork ready for fluffing. I open the pot. And the rice? Black. Crispy. Burnt. Fuck.

The best part? I picked up the pot, scraped some black rice into a bowl, poured soy sauce over it and ate it anyway. Because I was that hungry. I had been waiting an hour and a half for rice, and I was going to eat some crunchy rice! I entertained myself by thinking of gourmet-type names to call it. "Rice Con Charcoal" or "Black Sea Pirate Rice" or "Crispy Ricelets."

So, yeah. The moral of the story is that I should not be left to my own devices. Clearly I need instant rice, or a rice cooker, or a domestically-inclined man to cook the rice for me. Fluffing the rice with a fork is the most complicated rice-related task I should be allowed to do. Duly noted.

The really hilarious (by which I mean tragic) part of the story is that a few hours later I was hungry again and decided to have some popcorn. I couldn't possibly screw up popcorn! But I mixed up the popcorn-cooking time with the oatmeal-cooking time, and made the cardinal mistake of wandering across the house while the popcorn was popping.

Soon enough, the smell wafted three rooms over. Burnt to a crisp, of course. And too burnt to name it "Parisian Blackcorn" and eat it anyway. So today, three days and two cans of Lysol later, my house still reeks of burnt popcorn. Ugh.

Other things I did this weekend included vacuuming, straightening up and cleaning the bathroom floor. Those things I seem to be reasonably competent at, probably because they do not involve fire.

You know, I realized something this weekend, which is that I do not own a fire extinguisher. I stood around at one point and thought "what would I do if my hot plate, which cost five bucks at a garage sale and sometimes smells funny, caught on fire?" Ideas I had included:

• Go outside and grab handfuls of dirt and grass and fling them on the fire.
• Get a heavy blanket and throw it on top of the fire.
• Open the freezer and put bags of frozen vegetables on top of the fire.
• Run upstairs and hope my housemate has a bucket of sand sitting in her kitchen.
• Put water on it in the hopes that "don't put water on an electrical fire" is an urban legend.
• Call the fire department and hope they get there really fast, just like they do in the Sims.
• Pick up the hot plate with my bare hands and fling it out the door. Worry about third-degree burns later.
• Grab the birdcage and run like hell.

I think the real answer to this is "buy a fire extinguisher ASAP and figure out how to use it" or this will almost certainly end in disaster. I also need to ask my landlord about the smoke detector; you'd think the smoke coming from the bag of charred popcorn would have set it off... if we had one.