I have all these other things around the house to show you, but all I can think about is the fact that I made and froze a double batch of cookie dough the other day and now I can’t bake any of it into cookies.
Our oven broke.
A few weeks ago, I opened the door and heard something snap and thought, “Oh no!” But while the door felt a little looser, it still functioned. No harm, no foul. Then on Wednesday, as I was taking some enchiladas out, I heard another snap and thought, “OH NO!” Now the door refuses to stay shut. David finally took it off the hinges so I wouldn’t have to maneuver around the thing as it gaped obnoxiously into our already cramped kitchen.
Considering that, in the nearly eight months since we moved in, we’ve had to replace both the microwave and the dishwasher–both of which, mind you, were supposedly functioning when the home inspector did his little tour of the premises–and now the oven is broken, it seems a little suspicious. I don’t want to accuse the former occupants of sabotaging our kitchen appliances when the bank foreclosed on their house, but really. This can’t be a coincidence, can it?
Argh.
It has only been a few days and already I’m going crazy. I can’t make a roasted vegetable pasta bake for dinner like I’d planned, because I can’t roast the veggies OR bake the pasta. My entire meal plan for the month has been compromised. Plus I can’t bake any new cakes (I’ve got a really great idea for my next one!) or those poor cookie dough balls in the freezer. I feel so helpless.
Also I have pregnancy brain, so every time I try to tell David that I can’t do this or cook that because we don’t have an oven, it comes out, “We don’t have an onion…” and then I feel like an idiot. A helpless, crazy, very pregnant idiot.
We need an oven. That is non-negotiable. This one is obviously old and could stand to be retired. Until Wednesday, though, it worked better than the one we had at Parkway (that thing never heated evenly and the temp was always a little off) and I wouldn’t mind limping it along for a while longer. Hopefully (*fingers and toes crossed*) David will be able to reattach the door this weekend and we can resume life as usual. If he can’t? We’re faced with two options.
1) Buy a brand new oven/stove. That’s in the long-term plan anyway, and we could do it if we needed to. However, we’re both pretty invested in the idea of putting in wall-mounted double ovens when we remodel the kitchen. It would feel wasteful to spend money on a new oven that we don’t actually want to keep forever. So now we’re faced with the prospect of remodeling much sooner than anticipated…but do we want to do that with less than two months before the baby comes? How much would that end up costing us?
2) Buy a used, less expensive oven. I kind of hate the idea of spending money on one oven when we plan to buy another one in year or so, but this would at least get us through until we can get to remodeling for reals. And then we could try to resell it on Craigslist, I suppose.
Stupid house. I love it, but then it goes and does something like this and I want to punch it in the throat.
Sorry about your onion. That really sucks. By the way, I admire your ambition! I can barely type this message because I am so exhausted.
Yes, dear, but you've got THREE babies now–and one of them still pretty new–so you have every reason to be exhausted. 🙂
Um, good luck with that. I vote for doing everything reasonably possible to make that door stay on so you don't have to do any of those buying options. They all sound bad at this particular point in time. Though I can't wait to see what your kitchen looks like remodeled in a year or two. 🙂
I can't wait to see it either! David is going to work out a 3D model so we can see if our vision will even work. Meanwhile, I'm not ruling out using a bungee cord to keep the door closed…
Stupid onion. Another option – large toaster oven. Think about it.
Could I bake a decent cake in a toaster oven? I kind of want to try and see what happens.