Our oven

stopped working. Yesterday. I was planning on making pizza for dinner. We got home, I started the oven, then I began making the pizzas (the bread machine had already made the dough for me). As I was putting the sauce on, I realized that I wasn’t hearing the usual oven-warming-up sounds. It still read “100.” I turned it off and turned it back on (Michael would be proud of me – that’s always the first thing to try with the computer) to no avail.

Pizza is not a dish best served raw. Nor is it particularly easy to make on the stovetop. We ended up ordering from the little Italian restaurant down the street.

Having one’s oven stop working in the busiest baking season of the year, just a couple weeks before guests are to arrive and just 17 days (as Hannah informed me – during Mass on Wednesday, being sure to explain that 25 minus 8 is 17, which is how she worked it out) before Christmas might be seen as a really problematic situation.

UNLESS! one can thank God for the inspiration to actually go on Black Friday (the day that one NEVER NEVER sets foot inside a store if one can possibly help it) and order that new range that one and one’s husband have been looking at since June, and get the installation of it (and the hauling away of one’s now defunct old range) scheduled for next Monday, less than one week from the time that one’s old oven decided to become defunct.

Doing the math, it’s about 2 1/2 weeks from the ordering that the new range is scheduled to be installed. Let’s see, 2 1/2 weeks from yesterday, when the old oven stopped working is…Christmas! Something tells me that ranges aren’t installed on Christmas.

So I’m spending some time counting my blessings and thanking God for the timing on this one.

Oh, and I’m also very grateful that the stove is still working, too, since it means that we can have warm dinners. The amusing thing is that now I am having trouble thinking of the meals that don’t require the oven.