Improper use of a household appliance

Many parents will understand when I say that one of my only times of peace at home is when I’m in the bathroom, even if I am often disturbed while I am “incapacitated.”

I’m not sure what the children expect me to be able to do or what level of intervention they imagine I can perform while I am locked in our facilities. Before I go, I even make an announcement to the entire household that I will be engaged in this activity so that I might not be bothered for a while.

The other morning was no different. My son was still asleep, but my daughter was awake and engaged in watching "Strawberry Shortcake." I told her where I was going and she asked if she could have the bacon on the counter. I said that was fine.

I assumed our business was done and I could begin my own. I was wrong.

While I was relishing the quite time and reading my book, I suddenly caught an incredibly strong bacon odor as if the house had been dipped into some strange, new porcine cologne.

Knowing something was very wrong, I rushed into the living room to find my angel innocently sitting in the living room.

“What’s that smell?” I asked. “Nothing,” she said as if there wasn’t a smoky cloud of rancid bacon between us.

I ran into the kitchen and saw the microwave with a cook time of 1 minute 39 seconds remaining. I opened the door to find it empty, but the odor of overcooked bacon almost knocked me to the floor.

“Where is the bacon?” I shouted, knowing that whatever came out of this microwave was on fire. “I don’t know,” she responded meekly.

“Listen, you need to tell Mommy what you did with it, honey. I need to know, okay?”

I grabbed the lid off the garbage and saw the evidence. The blob of burnt pork product had melted a hole through the plastic of the garbage bag and was still smoldering. Of course she threw it in the garbage. What else was she going to do with it?

After an education session on what little girls are not supposed to do in the kitchen without help and thanking God that she wasn’t hurt, I aired out the kitchen and checked out the poor microwave.

This compact unit has seen its fair share of overdone food. We’ve had it about 10 years and, the funny thing is, it’s on loan from my husband’s Aunt Ann Marie. I wonder if she’ll ever want it back.

Before this one, we had an Amana Radarange that was given to us by my mother. That sucker was huge! It must have weighed about 50 pounds and, for a while, we believed it had a brick inside of it.

Come to think of it, we’ve spent most of our adult lives living on the microwave generosity of others.

When I told my mom about the bacon burning, she reminded me about the time I tried to microwave food in a metal pan and the “fireworks” that incident caused, but I was a teenager, not six years old!

I told her that my sister and I exploded a palmetto bug in that same microwave. That was a stink I’ll never forget.

In all fairness, I really do have some bad microwave karma coming to me. I guess I should consider myself to have been quite fortunate so far.