It was his turn to make the tea, but to sweeten the deal, my beloved spouse, the Carpenter, delivered not only a hot cup of black tea, but two tiny white powdered sugar donuts. Is it wrong that my first thought was, “What has he done wrong?”
Two sugar donuts surely means he’s broken something, or pushed us into overdraft, or is about to ask me to go into overdraft for some power tool he cannot live without, or something. It’s suspicious behaviour, I assure you.
White sugar powdered donuts are coveted in our house. They are a luxury grocery budget item only purchased when on sale (and they are rarely on sale) or when one of us is stressed about something and we just need a sweet pick-me-up.
It’s terribly inappropriate to say this, but we used to call them cocaine donuts because, though I’ve never dealt with that illegal substance, I was a kid in the 80s and I figure these donuts are about as addictive to me as those drugs were to Demi Moore’s character in St. Elmo’s Fire.
When the plastic container of powdered sugar donuts comes home from the grocery store, it’s as if everyone in my family knows they are in the house. The minute we hear one of us struggle to open that container, with its wide sticky label and indented plastic tabs, we gather around and secure two donuts each. It’s an unwritten rule: everybody gets two. Then we eye each other suspiciously, with a warning glance that lets one another know that we know the total count of donuts remaining, and since we have to live in some degree of harmony, that math had better balance out equally for the benefit of all before the plastic container is empty.
With this recent purchase, the Carpenter was sly. He bought the sugar donuts and hid them in a cupboard with the mixing bowls, because only someone who likes to cook looks for the mixing bowls, and that, my friends, is not me. So I had no idea the sugar donuts were on the premises. Our daughter, a tiny lass, also had no idea because, honestly, she can’t reach that cupboard.
You’re thinking what a swell guy that Carpenter is for stashing the donuts away to surprise me with my tea and sweet treat after a long work day, aren’t you? You’re probably thinking, how romantic that he served me tea at all, or that he’d done the groceries and planned this little gift for his working wife. He’s the best. What a sweetheart.
Oh yeah? Well, guess why I got just two donuts? It wasn’t the family two-donut tradition. It wasn’t a gesture of affection. It wasn’t even a backhanded suggestion that I lay off the sweet stuff. Nope. It was an admission of guilt. Let the record show, my initial instincts of my beloved’s kindness were not paranoid – they were accurate.
Truth be told, there were only two sugar donuts left in the package. According to my math, that means that sometime between the grocery store purchase and my arrival home from work, approximately two hours, 22 donuts were devoured. Some of them never even made it home. The Carpenter later admitted he cracked the plastic container open in his truck and nibbled all the way back to the farm, where he “accidentally” finished all but the remaining two.
Yep. Love: sometimes it’s sour, but it’s almost always sweet.
