Kids, No Chaser

Love in the Time of Toffee

Sunday, January 20, 2008 posted by Henri

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T'was the week before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring because the kids were asleep and the Mom had the flu and she had made one desperate plea to her confused and slowly angering husband before she passed out in bed...

please....make....the....toffee

Dear baby Jesus, please come down from heaven with your little baby Jesus powers and strike me dead as I stand because there's no way in hell I'm making toffee. Seriously. No effing mother-effing way.

And so my tale begins...

I've always joked that me being straight is an incredible waste of fabulousness. I paint. I like to cook. I once wore a tight shirt. At the same time I overcompensate by building stuff and fighting people in my backyard. Oh and then they're these rules. Like rule #13: As a man you can smell of only one of five things 1) oil 2) dirt 3) sweat 4) blood 5) meat. Yeah manrules. I don't trust men who turn down beer. Don't ask if stuff makes you look fat. Oh and of course there's rule number 2: Don't make candies or cookies or cakes. Oh and wait...sometimes the rules conflict. Like rule #4: Support your family when they are in need.

And there was my wife, stressed and sick with a million things to do for Christmas and she needed help.

So I agreed to make the damn toffee. I promised her to secrecy. I felt shame. And then I remembered rule #7: Feel no shame. I'm still not happy about it. Hell let's blog it.

I'm making toffee damn it.

Step one...call James.
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Hello James.

Hey buddy, we're making toffee. Shut up. Seriously shut up that's why you're here--to help make the toffee.

I'm conflicted whether to file this incident under the things we do for love or the things we do for our family. I mean I've done a lot of stupid stuff in the quest for love. I built my wife a bed to try and impress her when we first met...

She comes up to me one day and says.

"You are a very short Korean man, yet I cannot help myself from being drawn to you"

no wait maybe it was

"Despite your gnarly looks and the fact you as loaded as a Getty, I really like your kind eyes"

oh wait no now I remember.

"You have a truck?"

That's it. Woh I'm no idiot....

"Of course I have a truck" I have no truck.
"Can you help me move a bed"

Donotmakeaninappropriatecommentaboutmovingherbed
Donotmakeaninappropriatecommentaboutmovingherbed
Donotmakeaninappropriatecommentaboutmovingherbed


"Um, yeah I'll move your bed"
"Great tomorrow night"

So it turns out she needed to go to the store, pick out a bed, buy the bed, and I was supposed to move it to her place. I show up in a Jeep. My wife looks at the Jeep and says...

"Nice truck"

I start to laugh. Oh wait she's serious. Anything that's not a passenger car is a truck to her. Cool. Get in the truck.

We go to Macy's and peruse the beds. I am in full fabulous mode. We talk about midcentury modernism. She thinks I'm fabulous. Crap too fabulous. Oh wait I got an idea...

"I'll build you a bed"

Ahh yes the old I'll build you a bed line. There's something really different about building someone a bed. It's sheltering. It holds them in their sleep. It was the greatest idea I had ever had. It was the twenty-third time I had it.

Oh crap the toffee. So the one thing about making toffee is that you have to melt sugar down into a wicked state with devilish names like soft ball, hard ball, hard crack. I prefer to call them hot, hotter and stupidly hot. This stuff is like lava but better tasting.

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Ok back to the wife...

She was thrilled. She promised to make me a quilt in exchange. I didn't have the heart to tell her that there was no way in hell I would ever use a quilt. Ok maybe if I needed to stop some kind of arterial bleeding, I'd be willing to be seen using a quilt.

We left Macy's and she fed me a burrito from this little Salvadorian joint around the corner from her house. It's the house we still live in today. And she's sleeping her flu off tonight in that same wonky bed I made her.

Must be love.

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5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What's wrong with a quilt!!?

My manhood is wounded.

3:54 PM

 
Blogger Whit said...

I have quilts too. My grandmother made them and we use them. I'm okay with it.

I smell like whisky and pop tarts.

4:26 PM

 
Blogger Sam and Lori said...

i just need to know one thing...were you wearing your dockers while making said toffee?

11:17 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very romantic--making the bed. Good thing you didnt show up to her place in a maxivan!
But you left us hanging. How did the toffee turn out? Our family makes something similar that's white and hard and relative humidity has something to do with how it sets, blah blah blah--major pain. James and his Scottish cousins are fixtures in our kitchen as well.

10:28 AM

 
Anonymous Kaleb Stanton said...

Hello mate great blog poost

8:21 AM

 

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