Frosting Cupcakes on Demand

Every other week I go to lodge and hang out with a bunch of like minded men. Pillars of the community, doctors, lawyers, builders, politicians, ordinary salary men, engineers, barbers, butchers, salesmen, and more, we sit down to a delicious dinner and discuss Family Guy trivia. It's an exclusive, elite club and I'm proud to be part of it. During our meetings, we have a very strict NO CELL PHONES policy. I put mine on vibrate and hope the kids don't implode while I'm semiincommunicado. I tell the kids: DO NOT CALL ME UNLESS YOU ARE ON FIRE!

In the two years I've been able to do this, the kids have NEVER called me. Ever. They have some weird respect for me when I put on the Vegas suit (meetings are a black tie thing). I've never had to rush out of a meeting. Until this last Wednesday night.

Now you have to understand: the daughter is afflicted. Along with her gifted status and the extra brain cells she got from [My attorney]'s DNA, the stuff that helps her explain polygon tessellations and get an A in Arabic language studies (she can sass me in two languages now), Rah received (from my DNADHD) a glitch. We're not sure what it means, but, when we're both away--the mom working, the dad smoking fine cigars--Rah tends to start baking.

This is highly alarming because the genius DNA means she can measure the ingredients perfectly but the DUH-NA means she forgets the oven is on,  takes a shower, tries to write a novel, then falls asleep.

Once [My Attorney] and I were on a date. The kids were under strict orders to not call unless

1. something was poking out of them, and


2. there was a lot of blood

Even then I'd better hear sirens in the background or they were grounded. Yet, between the appetizer and the main course, we got this call:

Dad?
Are you on fire?
I smell gas.
Your brother farted.
No, I'm baking.
It's 10:30 at night!?
It's my 11 monthiversary tomorrow!
Jesus Haploid Christ.
What should I do?
Give the phone to your brother.
...
Dude!
Are you in the kitchen?
Dude.
Do you smell gas?
Dude?
Turn on a burner.
(pffff)
Still there?
Dude.

So the next day I explain to my daughter that baking is to occur during daylight hours only, when I am there, and with the local fire department alerted.

Just before my meeting starts last Wednesday, I'm having fellowship (Stewie impersonations) during dinner (pizza) when the phone rings.

Dad?
Yeah.
Is the top of the oven supposed to get really, really hot?
[insert tirade here]

I explain that she is to turn off the oven as soon as the CAKE she is baking at 8PM AT NIGHT is DONE. Twenty minutes later I call her.

Is the oven off?
(totally dejected) Yeah.
Don't call me again unless you've lost a limb.
(still remorseful) OK.

So I'm in my secret meeting, vibrate mode, in the middle of a lecture when the phone vibrates with such tintinnabulated seismic alarm it rips a hole in my pants and skips across the floor. I excuse myself under a cloud of raised eyebrows and glares, walk outside and answer the phone.

I'm thinking "Holy crap, the place is on fire." I get this.

Dad?
Yeah.
On your way home can you pick up frosting?

As a father, you develop certain skills, certain ninja-like qualities, that can't readily be explained to the unspawned. The dadface is a father's principle skill, along with all it's declinations, like the uttering of the word 'boy' with barely constrained menace; like the whistle your son can hear down in his bones even though he's six miles away with his Xbox headset clamped across his ears in the middle of a tactical assault yet still reacts with robotic efficiency and primal urgency; like the face that answers questions like 'can I watch Naruto?' asked rhetorically as they reach out to swipe the remote from your easy-chair lair, then glance over and freeze in place as their soul is melted by your Medusa-like perfunctory glare. These are important tools of a parent and to them I have added a new skill, a modern age technique for cell phone use: the silent glare. After about forty seconds of lethal silence, Rah says: Oh, were you in your meeting? I'm sorry! White frosting, ok?

Apparently it doesn't work on girls.

I get to the store rack up a basket stand in line realize I forgot my wallet when I changed into the Vegas suit drive home walk into the house and she's asleep.

Snoring.

The kitchen's been cake-bombed. The counter top is a foot deep in mixing bowls, measuring cups, flour sacks, cook books, wooden spoons, spent diet coke cans, food coloring, cupcake wrappers, cupcake pans, cake pans, cake mix boxes, and, inexplicably, a ball of yarn with two knitting needles stuck into it like a rabbit ear antennae.

In the center of it all is my enormous clear glass mixing bowl filled to the rim with a broken strawberry cake. It looks like it was raped by a squirrel.

This explains the tons of dejection and remorse I heard in my last call to her. I remember now why she's baking: it's her boyfriend's birthday the next day and she wants to celebrate at lunch and was going to bring him a cake. A cake that is now shredded and useless.

Then, tucked behind the huge glass bowl, I see three perfect cupcakes. They are naked and unfrosted.

Here's where awesome dad proves he rules with a velvet gauntlet.

I make icing from scratch, from a secret Amish recipe--frosting so white and light and delicious, angels appear halfway through mixing it, and at 12:22 am, while she's snoring in the other room, amid the debris of exploded pastry, I frost my daughter's cupcakes.