The Cookie Crumbles

It seems a little silly mentioning it now, so long after the collapse of her sugary empire, but for a span of about two months, wife had a job. She was our muffin making bread winner. She baked and sold treats. I had a sugar-mama.

Every morning I'd take her fresh-baked goods with me to school. It got so that some of the students would be there waiting for me, cup of tea in hand, "Whatcha' got today?" Was it some of her delectable muffins, zucchini, pumpkin chocolate-chip, orange-spice, or apple-strudel? Or perhaps some of her scrumptious cookies, chocolate-chip, chocolate chocolate-chip, peanut-butter, or M&M? Or could it be some of her warm, crispy, homemade biscotti, dipped in chocolate, with just a hint of almond?

"Well, boys, " I'd say, popping the top off her Tupperware boxes, steam rising from her still-warm goodies, "Feast your eyes on these!"

Oohs and ahhs would reverberate throughout the halls of the language center, followed shortly thereafter by the clink of change in the tin cup we used to collect payment. Life was sweet.

And then, disaster!

It was wife's habit to prep and mix her batter in the evening, and wake early the following day to do her baking. One evening, I could hear her sobbing in the kitchen. Waves of chivalric gallantry lapped at my sandy, pericardial beaches! My chiseled, knightly visage became red with anger and despair! That the mother of my children should shed even a single tear while tucked under the griffonic wings of my matrimonially sanctioned guardianship was a heretofore unanticipated trial, but one, I assure you dear reader, that I would respond to as Hercules at the stables!

I threw open the door of our kitchen, being careful not to rip the hinges out of the wall. There wife stood, her cheeks a doughy mess marred now by tears and flour.

"What is it woman! What manner of evil hath beset you that you should wail thus, your cries kindling within my bosom a fantastic tempest, her gales lusty enough to harrow even the Red Spot of Jupiter? Pray tell me! Do not vex me further!"

She glanced at the far corner of the kitchen. I took the cue and had a look myself. Our laptop was sitting open on the counter. The keyboard was buried in cocoa powder.

Two words:

Oh God.

Two more words:

Buy Mac.

Sure, it was over a month before I had the courage to type on the thing, but after repeated bouts of violently shaking cocoa dust out of our iBook's innards, running all over Amman to track down even a little bit of that canned air gassy stuff (it was like $7.00!), and numerous consultations with the neighborhood cybergeek, I wrote my first email. And everything has been fine since, wal'hamdu'lillah.

Wife's business took a strange turn, though. People were excited about her stuff. They kept right on eating her stuff. But at some point, they stopped paying. We don't know what happened, but there was all kind's of oddness, people paying with Filipino money and such. She got stung pretty hard a few times. So we stopped.

Huzzah!