Once Upon A Time....

Sit down little children and let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a beautiful, smart, funny, adorable, charming, wonderful, lovely...uhm...modest Queen. She lived with a handsome, charming King and a darling, sweet tiny little munchkin tornado in a quaint little modular home.

The Queen lived a wonderful life and adapted very easily into her role of a stay at home munchkin tornado wrangler. She adapted so well that she rarely had any clothes piled up or crumbs on the floor, and she did this all without the help of little singing pudgy mice.

The Queen only had one little hangup and that was the small habit of leaving things in her oven overnight to finish drying. It really hadn't been a problem before. She simply put dishes in the automatic dishwasher and whatever was left was cleaned by hand and stuck in the oven to dry. The next day she awoke to clean, dry dishes ready to be put up in their places. This system worked well for the Queen and all the people in the land of modular homes were happy.

At least until the King decided to make breakfast one morning and turned the oven on to 400 degrees ( without checking it for dishes) and let that puppy go.

The King had turned his back to the oven to begin making biscuits when flames began rolling out from the oven. The Queen awoke to the wonderful sounds of their smoke alarms blaring. She raced to the kitchen in time to see her husband put out the fire and race past her holding an oven rack covered with the melted white goo of plastic.

The Queen despite all odds broke into a hysterical laughing fit...until she saw the king's face. The king wavered from happiness because they were all alive and still able to live in their little modular home and wanting to strangle the lovely yet apparently forgetful Queen.

As the black soot settled on the counter tops (and fridge, sink, cabinets, pantry...really...I could go on..) the Queen vowed to never leave anything in the oven ever again and took the family out to a nice breakfast at the royal International House Of Pancakes.

So dear children if you find yourself visiting a friend's home and see the charred and gooey ( now hard as a brick) remains of plastic melted onto an oven rack on your friend's front porch try not to judge because one day it just might be you who almost burned the kingdom to the ground.

Damn plastic bowl....