Did I ever tell you about the time I was grounded from using my own oven and it was only a few years ago? It's true! The Captain banned me and insisted for several weeks if I did use it, I was to be supervised.

All I did was twice bake a sheet cake.

It was a simple mistake anyone could have made.

Here's how it happened.

We bought a full sheet cake to celebrate the birthdays of the Captains sons who were both living with us at the time. Their birthdays are only a few days apart so we got the jumbo cake so all three boys (mine included) and the Captain could pig out. Well, two sons ended up being gone that evening and the other one got sick so only the Capt. had a piece. Since we had four dogs at the time and a couple of them were known to counter-surf when no one was looking, I suggested we stash the cake in the oven. Logical. Only the next day when I got home from work, I decided to preheat the oven before baking chicken and then blithely went out to pull some weeds in the yard. Half an hour later, my son came out to ask me who had turned on the oven and did I realize the cake was still in there?

Oops.

Have you ever seen a melted cake? At least the house smelled really good.

And yes, the next day I purchased a new sheet cake. To this day I still check the oven before turning it on. You never know.