So I thought I started my house on fire last night. I ran the dishwasher and went upstairs to get Sam and I settled for bed. While in the bathroom I smelled what I thought was smoke and/or burning wires. Ok. I ALWAYS think I'm smelling fire and it drives Wayne crazy. We joke that I'm about to have a seizure or something. AND...back in December I ended up calling the fire department when we were in Ottawa because I thought I smelled a gas leak in the basement. No such thing by the time the whole drama was over. Man. Sometimes I think I'm going crazy. ANYWAY, as I was saying.... I started sniffing around in the bathroom thinking of what I may have forgotten to turn off downstairs...maybe a burning element on the stove...nope. I followed the smell down the stairs and it lead me to the dishwasher where I saw smoke (or what I thought for a second was steam) coming out of the cracks. The cycle was done and on 'dry'. The smell of burning wire was really strong so I opened the door and a plume of smoke poured out - I quickly opened the windows in fear this would all set off the fire alarm.....I was freaking out and went back to the dishwasher. I looked inside to see what was burning and the bottom black element had Sam's sippy cup lid melted around it. MELTED! So I had to scrape it all out...what a horrible smell throughout the house! I had to open almost every window for an hour. It was 11 degrees so not too cold but Max kept trying to climb out and into the darkness. Sorry pal, cougars and coyotes out there. So I closed up the windows and went to bed all paranoid there was something still smoldering that I missed in the dishwasher. the smell wouldn't go away. this morning it seemed back to normal and I scraped what was left off the element and cleaned out the smell as best as I could. Wayne's in Calgary through all of this of course. Why can't he ever be home when things like this happen??!!!!