The Ingredients List (henceforth to be known as The IL) on the Totino's Mini Meatball Pizza box is more useful than you might think. Contrary to appearances, it is not just a bookmark-sized chemistry cheat sheet that could double as a reference in geology and astronomy electives. Last night, it lent the sole voice of reason to my emotional rollercoaster as I delivered the pizza from freezer to table.

On extricating the stiff from its cardboard and plastic sheaths, I lost the few mini meatballs to the kitchen floor in surprise at the even fewer mini-crumbs of mozzarella dotting a gaping field of tomato sauce. As I brushed off and replaced the meatballs, I prayed, for the sake of maintaining the kids' temper, that the eventual melted surface area of the cheese might address the imbalance somewhat. However, what passed under the anxious oven light over the next fourteen and a half minutes could only be described as supernatural.