Ooh, Ooh That Smell. Don't You Smell That Smell?

After spending a wonderful two days at the beach with friends and dogs and kids and Brad Pitt supposedly somewhere nearby, we returned to town and snuck out to see The Hangover while our awesome babysitter sat on our couch watching our cat Joey molt on one of the living room chairs. The movie was hilarious, the popcorn was delicious and the Hot Tamales were fresh from the candy jar. Finally, upon returning home, I slept like a drugged lion after a zookeeper attack. It was the perfect end to a perfect weekend.

When we all got up late this morning, I truly felt that the perfect streak was still going strong. Dave took charge of breakfast as usual and made me and Otto an amazing egg scramble, toast and bacon. I was so hungry and happy that I finished my eggs before I even noticed the bacon he had promised was no where to be found. Then, as if cued by a tyrannical director with a bullhorn in an old time movie, I heard an insane crackling sound coming form the kitchen. I asked Dave a few times if he was all right and he told me more than once that everything was fine. The dining room table is out of eyesight from where Dave was standing so all I could do was to continue to ask. Finally, the weird popping and cracking noise became unnaturally deafening. I ignored Dave’s innocent reassurances and walked into the kitchen where I was overtaken by invisible, toxic fumes. My eyes burned as badly as an unfocused, lazy sex offender’s eyes would have after encountering an angry, middle-aged she-male and a professional grade can of pepper spray on his first day of raping.

Dave is a great cook, a total food snob and bat shit crazy and absentminded when it comes to creating his masterpieces in our broom closet of a kitchenette. He once tried making a rue on an open flame on the stove using a Pyrex baking dish. When the glass broke and the unfinished cream sauce dribbled all over the floor he looked at me with an arrogant gaze and simply said, “What? It’s Pyrex. This shit never breaks.” He has set many a pot holder on fire, broken umpteen glasses, grazed the ceiling with flames of cooking Sherry and ruined a handful of pans by leaving them unattended while he read a recipe or watched Southpark with his pants around his ankles and a beer in his hand.

So, it was no real surprise when my house smelled like a Beijing chemical factory on a busy Monday morning. Dave and his culinary daring, no doubt, were at fault. Yes indeed, Dave had left a plastic plate in the oven while trying to keep the bacon warm and had forgotten all about it as Otto and I were discussing our day’s schedule of poopy diapers and people watching. Specifically, Dave left a melamine plate in a 1940 O’Keefe and Merritt oven, an appliance that is at a constant temperature of 175 degrees and can cook your ass cheeks if you lean on it for too long while the oven is off. Logically, one would think that we must not have any glass or ceramic dishware that Dave could have used instead. Maybe we never received any housewares off our early 90's wedding registry forcing Dave to put a small, non-heat resistant disk in the oven that contains the most famously toxic ingredient known to Chinese Officials and new mothers. He is so focused on using the best ingredients, delivering five star food presentation and serving at the ideal temperature that it never occurred to him that he could have murdered us all with a deadly mix of noxious melamine gas and bacon grease instead of just serving up  lukewarm swine strips and calling it a day. 

For those of you concerned for the health of my wonderful helper monkey, the moment I went blind I ran back to the dining room, grabbed Otto and ran out of the house cursing Dave under my breath the entire time. Otto, Brody and I then spent the next hour and a half outside memorizing the names of the native shrubbery while Dave pulled apart the oven and washed every inch of toxin down the drain. When the dust settled and it appeared that our apartment was back to simply being a rent controlled tenement instead of an illegal chemical plant, I calmly told Dave that if this ever happened again I would move to Chernobyl where I would finally be out of harm’s way.