I know it’s a new year, and we should all be moving forward — letting bygones be bygones, forgiving, forgetting, and all that jazz. And I really do want to move on, leaving all the grocery store hate and Sephora hate and french cable company hate behind. I want a year without hate, if you will.

But my god damn pièce de merde pictogram oven just won’t leave me alone.

See that smug look on its door? The mocking tone in its clockface? Just sitting there, refusing to let me cook food in any kind of logical, efficient manner? It makes my blood boil.

I thought we had reached a mutual peace, the god forsaken oven functioning in a fairly consistent manner if I promised not to get too adventurous with the pictogram settings. We had some good times together even, churning out molten caramel brownies and cinnamon rolls and some delicious roasted carrots. Things were good.

But the oven just couldn’t leave well enough alone. It had to get one last jab in before the New Year, just to spite me. So on Christmas morning, with a houseful of in-laws, one delicious egg casserole and a tray full of unbaked sticky buns waiting, my oven decided to give me the finger.

Not only did it refuse to let me change the temperature settings. Oh no. It decided to only function in broil/dangerous fireball mode, heating and heating and heating itself (from the top only) into oblivion as the digital thermometer said it was still preheating.

I discovered this at about 8am, after letting the thing preheat for a good 15 minutes. When I checked back, it said it was still preheating. That seemed odd, since smoke was seeping out of the oven door. So I opened it up to check and almost singed my eyebrows off.

The stand-alone backup thermometer assured me that my oven, supposedly “still preheating,” was in fact trying to kill me. The inside temp was about 260 degrees Celsius, which is about 500 Fahrenheit. In other words, a very clear “F-YOU!” from le four.

So after rousing Husband with a jolly string of profanities and threatening to take that mo fo out once and for all with a sledgehammer, I decided I couldn’t give up. That would be like letting the pictogram oven win, and lord knows I was not about to give it the pleasure.

Hence, egg casserole was transferred to a cocotte for stove top preparation. Sticky buns were broiled on both sides (not a method I would ever, ever recommend, but don’t you dare tell the oven). Christmas dinner went from beautiful roasted filet to filet chops fried on a grill pan. Broiled mushrooms took 3 minutes instead of 10.

So suck it, oven. I don’t need you anyway. We’ve put in a work order, and I hope some French maniac with a tool box comes to tear you apart, burner by burner, wire by excruciating wire.

You know, some time in the next month or so when they finally get around to it.