Open that door for me, wouldja?  Thanks.  Wait–no?  You’ll walk into it and burn yourself?  You are SO my child!

(Waits ten minutes.  Checks email.  Child/perpetrator wanders off. Back in kitchen, alone now.  Opens oven door.  Waits.)

Dustpan and brush?  Check.

No. Wait. Synthetic. Might melt. Hmm.

(Re-establishes dominance over oatmeal pie crust: you WILL adhere to those sides this time thankyouverymuch.  No playing trampoline this time.)

Opens oven.  Broom proves a little awkward–let’s not sweep old hairballs all the way across the kitchen onto the newly-reestablished pie crust, okay?–moves upper rack to the top and recommences sweeping oven. Thinks might not ever again get a chance to actually sweep an oven.  Thinks how cornstraw makes a nice fire starter and about being at the other end of all those starters–but at least they won’t melt.  Uh, yeah, fire extinguisher still good.  Sweeps oven some more as the piecrust bits run and hide under the heating element.  Sees more bits go down inside the hinge socket of the door: entombed forevermore, to be excavated by some future Egyptmeofpietologist.  Pokes at run-and-catch-me’s with a wooden fork.

Child enters.  Oven devoid of major pieces, down to the last sandyish bits.  Exclaims, I didn’t mean for you to have to do that!  Tells child to look at pie crust.  Oh Mom, you did it!

Blows across fingertips.  Heh.  Puts rack back in place. Turns oven back on.  Tells child she can prebake her pie crust shortly.  Doesn’t mention not actually liking banana cream pie child is looking forward to, much less banana soycream pie. There’s another crust, safely baked, spread with melted chocolate, waiting for strawberries and strawberry puree filling; that will definitely do the job nicely.

(With a bajillion thanks to the fellow at Whole Foods on Emerson Street in Palo Alto, who, after four stores earlier in the day, got the phone call asking if please please did they have Earth Balance Sticks for the severely dairy-allergic kid who wanted to make a pie she could actually eat on Thanksgiving Day with the relatives. Who said, We discontinued that; no, wait, let me check. We stocked it for the holidays! We have it! Come! And whom I thanked in person as we loaded our basket with four boxes, to his very obvious delight at being thanked in the craziness that was a grocery store the day before Thanksgiving.)