After we got back from Boston, I was at the Dunphy house because of a school project.
Phil was comfortably on the couch with his Bose QuietComfort 2 headphones, connected to a long cable running to the TV, watching the National Geographic Channel.
Meanwhile, Claire was scolding Haley and Luke. She quickly yanked the headphones off Phil's head.
"Can you seriously not hear me with those things on?" she remarked angrily.
Phil tried to explain, "It's noise-canceling technology," and handed the headphones to her. "Give it a spin. It's got-"
She pushed them aside and waved her hand. "Sweetie, focus, now."
"Claire, why are you freaking out on everyone?" I asked her.
"Because all of you are acting extremely procrastinative right now," she declared.
"Is that a word? Procrastinative?" Alex asked me.
I thought for a moment. "It is correct, it's in the Oxford Dictionary, but it's very rarely used."
Claire ignored us. "Listen, honey" - she turned to Phil - "Luke has a giant project due tomorrow for school that he hasn't even started."
She went on, "And Haley just informed me she needs 2,000 cupcakes for her school fund-raiser, also due tomorrow."
"Two thousand??" I exclaimed. "I thought it was two hundred, fifty for each. Summer and Marissa are coming over soon," I told Claire. Haley had said we could make them here.
"I might have made a mistake when I filled out our forms," Haley said innocently.
By a factor of ten...
"Fine," I shrugged. "I can just order 2,000 tomorrow, and we can make a few here for ourselves."
"No!" Claire objected immediately. "That defeats the entire purpose of the act."
"How?" I raised an eyebrow. "The idea of a fundraiser is to raise funds. Besides, Haley would poison half the school if she were the one baking the cupcakes."
"Heyy!" my cousin exclaimed, annoyed.
"Why don't you prove me wrong and do it?" I challenged her.
She made a face at me. "Good try, smarty."
Claire jumped back into the conversation. "I will help the girls and Jake with the cupcakes. You do the project. It's on Vincent van Gogh."
"Done!" Phil agreed.
"I need you to really stay on him," his wife said like a general. "Keep him focused."
"All right. I'm actually gonna take a different approach, but-"
"Actually gonna insist that you don't."
"Claire, I know you've got your methods, but so do I. Trust me, I can provide Luke with the tools and guidance he needs..." he paused, "without, uh, smothering him."
"You think I smother our child?" Claire asked, staring at her husband.
"Children," I corrected her, "you also smother your brother, your husband, me..." I said, counting on my fingers.
"Jake!" She barked.
"It's not your fault, honey." Phil tried to ease things, " 'Mother' is part of the word. You never hear of anyone being 'sfathered' to death."
Claire took a deep breath. "Just promise me that you will stay on him until this project is done."
"I will," Phil confirmed, "but you might have a little more confidence in him."
Luke, who had already slipped onto the couch, started making noises. "Wah! Wah!"
"No one can hear me now," he said with the headphones on his head, misunderstanding the idea of noise canceling.
"Whoo! Everybody is stupid except me," he continued, waving at everyone over the kitchen, "Ha, ha, ha. I am funny!"
We all stared at him, stunned.
"Thank God we have Jake," Alex commented dryly, "otherwise I'd be the one stuck with Luke when he's thirty," she threw the responsibility on me.
Haley mocked, "Then who's going to take care of your cats?"
I don't know if Haley did it for Luke, for me, or just to bicker with Alex - probably the last one.
I placed my hands on their heads before they could continue arguing.
The doorbell rang.
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"We need to do how much again?" Marissa raised an eyebrow.
Haley replied, a bit embarrassed, "Two thousand."
"Okay," I began, since everyone was here. "Claire, two thousand regular cupcakes would be impossible by tomorrow if we bake them here the normal way.
Besides ingredients, with these 24‑cup molds, we'd need 84 batches, two trays per round, and assuming 20 minutes each... that's around fourteen hours of oven time, not counting breaks."
"What are we going to do?" Summer asked.
"Well, I can just order two thousand from somewhere. Or we can make really tiny cupcakes, since we only mentioned the number, not the size."
And I gave one more option. "Or we make two hundred and say the form was filled out wrong - which is true"
"Okay, we can do two hundred," Claire said.
"Why is mom the one who decides everything?" Haley crossed her arms.
"Because it's her kitchen, and because she'll probably be the one doing most of the cleaning afterward," I explained. "But hey, Aunt Claire, you could make Haley do all the cleaning".
Haley gasped. "No way!" She snapped at me, "Why are you picking on me today, cousin?"
I squished her cheeks with both my hands. "Because I know you wanted to bake here just to make us do the work while you came up with excuses."
Alex snorted, "Typical"
"Don't worry, Haley," Marissa joined the conversation, "we can make him model for us again later, since we have several other ideas."
I was about to turn to Coop, but I was stabbed in the back. Summer also added, "Jake always mocked us for being bad cooks, Haley. We could make him the taste tester today, so we can improve."
Claire leaned in, amused. "Feels good, huh? Being right but everyone is against you," she said with a schadenfreude face.
I stared at them as they looked all victorious after that little blitzkrieg. But they weren't expecting my kamikaze attack.
I calmly walked over to the table, grabbed two handfuls of flour, and threw them right in Haley and Marissa's faces. Then I placed my hand, still covered in flour, over Summer's mouth.
Chaos was unleashed.
Fortunately, I had bought a nice new cleaning vacuum. I (bribed) gifted it to Claire, which erased her ire.
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Alex looked at me suspiciously. "You wanted to cause chaos from the very start, didn't you?"
"Your mother wanted that new cleaning vacuum, I wanted some entertainment. Seemed like a win-win situation," I smirked.
Alex swept another spot that had been hit. "How come I have to help if I didn't do anything wrong?"
"Don't you want me to buy that book you asked for?"
"Fine."