Hot
My stovetop gets really hot. You know the old saying about “A watched pot never boils”? Well, if you watch a pot on my stove, you’ll see that it boils in about 2 minutes. The burners get so hot that you can have them set to “medium” and they still boil.

It is for this reason that I almost never use the big burner. The three little burners are more than hot enough for a frying pan, so what’s the point of frightening myself and potentially burning the building down? (It’s brick, so it wouldn’t burn very well, but you know what I mean.) The only pot that goes on the big burner is the enormous pot for spaghetti. I think the pot came from Eli, who left it at our house in Olympia last year, prooving that the number one reason to have a potluck is all the fantastic kitchenware you get to keep. Anyway, tonight I put the big pot on the big burner and turned the fucker up to HIGH. Scary, really. While the water boiled, I started washing dishes.

I started to hear a strange sound over the racket of dishes clanking and water tap. I turned off the water and listened. Ratta-ratta-ratta-ratta said the sound. I turned around and looked at the stove. The heat from the burner was boiling the water so ferociously that the pot had started to vibrate, rattling back and forth on the element of the burner. I tried moving it a little bit, and within a couple seconds, there it was again: ratta-ratta-ratta-ratta. I was almost reluctant to cook the spaghetti because I was enjoying the sound. I like it when my house makes music.