Yuck. Also, Gag.

Oh, it did not start out like this.

We interrupt our steady stream of posts about adorable Mexican poppets to talk about filth. Specifically about other people's filth.

Husband and I are visiting Boy#3 in his brand-new-to-him rental home a couple of hours from Small Town, because JOB! He has one!

I was with Three when he chose this house and thought it was a perfectly good first-time-out-of-college habitation. It's not too fancy, but doesn't seem to have critters, so all is good. But I warned him to wait until I could come up and clean his kitchen before he did much cooking because sometimes previous tenants don't leave stoves in the most pristine of conditions.

This morning, after spending four hours cleaning the horror that was this stove, I have a few questions, namely this one:

WHO DOES THIS?

Mind you, I grew up on a farm. Where we raised PIGS. I have birthed four children, and we will draw a merciful curtain over the lack of white-glove-ness involved with that process. Heck, I have RAISED four children, and not a single one of them was born toilet-trailed. (More's the pity. A side note: I never minded changing the diapers of my children, most of the time. I knew exactly what had gone into their mouths, the stray Lego or crayon notwithstanding, and I figured the internal process was fairly straightforward. But changing other people's baby's dirty diapers? Oh. My. Gosh. My gag reflex roared with the power of a Sharknado. I have no idea why this is so.)

Anyway, I knew the oven was a mess so I sprayed it last night with no-fume EasyOff, and no, I am not receiving so much as a plugged nickel for plugging this product, but it is AMAZING. I was patting myself on the back for knowing the housewifely tricks of the trade when I turned toward the drip pans.

"Hmmm," I thought to myself. "This drip pan seems to be stuck." And I pried it off with a spatula.

People, words fail me.

I understand the occasional spill, or even the not-so-occasional spill, but who boils over rotini AND macaroni and leaves them sitting in a pool of grease that has congealed for, oh, a millennium or so? And then burnt into a gummy I-don't-even-know-what-to-call-it?

And who, for the love of everything holy, leaves THIS under a drip pan?

This was in a cooking appliance.

That's right, it's a cigarette butt.

Let me repeat that: It's a cigarette butt I found UNDER the drip pan.

I spent the next portion of my life scrubbing under that specific drip pan with scouring pads, sponges, single-edged razor blades, and every manner of other cleaning heavy guns.

Two hours later the stove was clean enough to eat off of, or at least to eat things that had been cooked with a half-inch of cast iron between the nasty stove surface and the food. I did it with cleaning products, elbow grease, and the sweat of my brow. And gagging. Lots of gagging.

But the stove is now clean. I can leave Boy#3 in peace.