My New Stove

When I bought the condo in Florida the previous owner had put in a beautiful tile floor in the living room, glassed in the lanai (what Floridians call the screened in porch that runs the length of the unit), and made various other attractive improvements, but left the rather elderly electric stove in the kitchen.  It worked perfectly well, as my economically prudent husband kept insisting while I viewed it with disdain and suspicion.  The kitchen was small; so was the stove, but still it had four burners and one oven capacious enough for two elderly gents who ate out a good deal.  I hated it, hated the seriously baked-on crap in the oven that even the oven cleaning mechanism could not remove completely, hated th crazy  tilt of the electric units on top of the stove, even if you could push them down and make things more or less level when you cooked, hated that the wells beneath them had been lined with aluminum foil by the previous owner, and there were baked on drippings here and there.  I HATED THE STOVE!  One day, enough was enough, and I set out to replace it, and discovered that so idiosyncratic was the arrangement of the cabinets and stove in this tiny kitchen, that either I would have to remodel the cabinets or have a custom made stove built for its one and only possible location.  Eighteen months later I have a glistening stove, a considerably diminished bank account, but I am happy.  We seem to be eating out even more so that it is seldom used.  My husband has taken over more of the cooking and he is quite good at it, but surprisingly enough his quite compulsive personality (he balances check books to the penny, the second spouse of mine to commit to this practice), he does not think to clean up the stove after using it.  There are drips and spills thither and yon, well, I exaggerate, but nonetheless, there are spots.  I bought this stove spotless and spotless it must continue to be. I have discovered the new joy of my life, which is cleaning the stove.  Yesterday, for instance, I took all the metal spill cups out from under the burners, washed them, dried them, lovingly put them back in all their shiny beauty.  The polished metal surround of the burners is polished by me every day, sometimes twice a day.  I take a wet cloth to the white baked enamel top surface whenever I near the stove, eagle eyed as well, to spot any spill that might have fallen on a bit of horizontal trim above the oven, and, of course, speaking of oven, that mechanism of automatic oven clean is ever on my mind.  You have to cut back here and there as you advance in age, no doubt about it, but maybe I have given up a lot of projects as old age comes on me, maybe I grow frailer, yes, and maybe less imaginative, but I still have my shiny new stove to clean.