When life hands you lemons, I always say, squeeze the juice from those lemons in your hang nails and paper cuts and then you'll really have something to complain about. Frick.
On the hottest day of the summer, in heat and humidity that rivaled temperatures in Afghanistan (which is no joke-- it was 120F or 48C after you tacked on the humidity), on the big highway between my house and my mother's, the air conditioning quit working in my car.
Anyone who has ever wondered how a convection oven works should try turning on MAX AC, only instead of delicious, cold air, crank the dial to scalding-hot-air instead. It was the most uncomfortable I've been in a long time, and I am constantly saying the wrong thing in the middle of a dinner party. Yeah.
But that got me thinking about how I could harness my new Honda CR-Oven and use it to make a little money. I'm an ok cook, or at least I can follow a recipe-- what is it that people love and can't get enough of that I can make and deliver with the amazing heat of my car?
Cake, obviously!
I quickly turned the car around and headed toward the nearest cooking store to pick up some cooling racks, mixing bowls, spoons, and a cooler (with ice). I also picked up three matching chef hats, aprons and fake-mustaches because, let's be honest, if you are going to start a business, you have to look the part.
Off to the supermarket I went with my team of sous-chefs.
While my children began making the cake batter, I whipped up a website on my iPhone (yes, there's an app for that) and paid for it to be the first thing to pop up in every google search. Sure, I had to put a bunch of nonsensical words pertaining to sex in the search criteria, but within the hour I had over 10 000 hits, and 57 orders for cakes to be delivered by 5pm! Only 5 of those cakes had a naughty theme to them, which all things considered, is pretty good.
Kiddo #2, from his rear-facing car seat, opened the cake batter boxes into bowls and add the oil and water. Kiddo #1 would then take the bowls, add the eggs and stir the batter until it was ready to go in the "trunk" of my CRV, to cook. I can honestly tell you that my car has never smelled as good as 15 cakes cooking at the same time before. And it might never smell as good again, since there are at least a few broken eggs that have cooked into the carpet and a bowl of melted butter that tipped over when I was going over some particularly feisty railroad tracks.
My kids and I are such a great team! Each kid took his or her turn, with mommy driving and singing songs like, "How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You" by James Taylor, "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies, and "Sugar Shack" by Jimmy Gilmer and The Fireballs, which lead to "Love Shack" by the B52s, "Supermodel" by RuPaul (who was in the "Love Shack" video) and then, just like my iPod likes to do, I switched gears completely and sang "Snowbird" by Anne Murray.
As the cakes finished cooking, I then brought out the icing sugar and various food colours to have the kids begin making the fluffy icing. I can't begin to tell you how easy it is to run a cake business! Why oh why didn't I think of this sooner?
While the kids were making the icing, I downloaded a credit card app for my phone so I could take money this way, as well as cash. No, I don't take cheques/checks and before you get all mad about it, hear me out: I drive around an oven and deliver fresh cakes to your home. I don't drive a TIME MACHINE to go back in time to take your cheques/checks, nor do I use said TIME MACHINE to get your faxed orders, either. Order your cakes online and pay that way, or with my handy credit/debit app and shoosh about the no cheque/check policy. Thank you.
After we'd delivered the last of the cakes, (the naughty ones I iced myself-- no sense in exposing a baby and pre-schooler to naughty cakes on their first day of work) I looked around at my staff. We high-fived and counted our receipts over slushies. After paying for the website design I did, paying for the credit card processing I did, paying for the singing I did, as well as driving, on top of my base salary, we did pretty well. There was even a little left over to put into the kids' education funds.
And since the kids worked extra hard, I decided to finish our trip to Grandma's pool to wash the batter, sweat and tears off their bodies.
I figure, if the money we made today is any indication, we should be able to get the AC fixed just in time for January. Not that it matters much, since September is when half my kitchen staff goes off to school and people's need for fresh cake dramatically decreases (at least that's what the research shows-- I earn the salary I command, you know.).
So this fall, be on the lookout for a mobile dry cleaner-- we pick it up, clean it with the power of steam (how eco-friendly!). I'm still ironing out the kinks of filling the bottom of my car up with water that will create steam to clean the clothes without making us into floppy broccoli at the same time.
Kiddo #1 suggested that maybe we could use our wages to fix the AC. I was all for that until I realized she meant MY wages, too. Oh heck no, little lady. Instead, I offered that we could drive places and the three of us could sing songs for money, like Hanson or the Jonas Brothers or that monkey from the Bugs Bunny cartoons. I guess he didn't sing though, he turned that organ grinder thing. Whatever. I'm not spending my hard earned money to fix my dumb AC, that's all I know.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
That's the iPod telling me we have more cake orders coming in for tomorrow. Maybe the kids will get that AC fixed sooner than I thought, after all.
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