the muffin incident

or "The Great Muffin Caper"

In my previous post, I make reference to a time when I "practically threw a plate of muffins" at my community coordinator. Having read through that post multiple times, and thinking about that phrase, I can envision all sorts of different scenarios that someone might think of after reading it and not having witnessed it firsthand. So I decided I would write a post to share that story with you, so that you'd know exactly what happened and not have some image of me as a horrible and violent angry person.

It was a Wednesday morning. It happened to be the day of the week we have our assistants' meeting, where we all get together and go over the schedule for the next seven days, and we also would have a time of prayer or formation. This particular Wednesday also happened to be a special day for Thomas, our community coordinator. I'm pretty sure it was his birthday, but it could have been his anniversary in our community. I don't remember which, right offhand.

I enjoy baking goodies to bring to our meetings. I've made muffins and donuts on a couple of occasions, often times for special occasions like birthdays or anniversaries or if it was a new assistant's first meeting with us or someone's last meeting. But often I would just bring treats for fun. But, since today was a special day for Thomas I decided I wanted to bake some muffins to bring to the meeting.

I woke up earlier than normal that day, and had arranged it with the other assistant in my house that she would drive the guys to work on our normal route that day instead of me, so that I'd have time to make the muffins. Now, when I bake stuff in the house, even if I'm planning on using them for some other occasion or place, I usually make enough so that the guys in my house can have one of whatever I'm making because I'd feel guilty if I baked something, and filled the house with a wonderful smell and then they didn't even get to have one. So in the first batch of muffins I ended up with nine muffins, and I gave four away, one to each core member. That left me with five muffins. I figured if I made a second batch, with another eight or nine muffins in that batch, I'd end up with 13 or 14 muffins and that would be plenty to take to our meeting.

Well, as that second batch was baking, I noticed that, for some reason, the oven didn't seem to be getting as hot as it should. The muffins were taking longer to bake than the last batch. After this batch was done, I still needed to take a shower, and then go pick up another assistant from the auto mechanic because he had dropped of his house van and needed a ride to our meeting. So I needed this batch of muffins to bake on schedule. I waited and finally they were done so I took them out. I left them in the pan to cool, next to the five muffins that had already cooled and were sitting on the counter, and I went up to my room to take a shower.

When I had gone upstairs to shower, all but one of the core members in my house were either already at or on their way to their day services. When I came downstairs I was in the house alone. I walked over to the muffins to take them out of the pan and put them in a container with the others to take to the meeting when I noticed that they, in fact, were not done and every single one of them had sunk. They were inedible. I couldn't serve them like that and I couldn't put them back in the oven. Even if that would have worked, for some reason the oven was not working well enough, and I certainly didn't have enough time to wait for them to finish baking or to make a new batch. So I grabbed a plate to put the five edible muffins on, when I noticed that there were only four. Someone (and by someone I mean the only core member who had been home when I had gone upstairs) had decided he needed a second muffin and so he had snatched one when I was out of the room.

I was upset. I had wanted to make muffins for Thomas, to celebrate this occasion. I had wanted to make enough muffins for everyone to have one. I pride myself in my baking skills, because I often get a lot of compliments for the things I bake. But now, because of that stupid oven and that certain core member I had four muffins for more than four people. This was not how I envisioned things happening. For some reason, that was enough to practically ruin my whole morning.

The entire drive to the auto mechanic I was fuming. I just sat there and went over everything that went wrong that morning over and over again in my head. That oven didn't get hot enough. Those muffins didn't bake all the way and then were ruined. That core member stole one of my muffins.

When I picked up my fellow assistant he saw the muffins and made a couple jokes about them. He saw that there were only four and that we had more than four people at our meeting. He thought he should eat one now, just to make sure he got one. He was trying to make a joke. That's how he is. But I was definitely not feeling it that morning. I tried to tell myself not to get too upset about it, but I just couldn't talk myself out of that bad mood. It was planning on hanging around whether I wanted it to or not.

I tried to tell myself that I was just going to walk in and put the muffins on the table and explain to everyone what had happened. And then we'd go on with our meeting. I envisioned it happening that way in my head as I pulled the van into the parking lot and turned it off. But that is not how it happened.

I grabbed the plate of muffins and walked into the office. Thomas and a few of the other assistants were already sitting at the table waiting for the rest of us to arrive for the meeting. He was in conversation with another assistant when I walked over to the table. All of those good intentions went out the window. I was suddenly overwhelmed by my disappointment and anger and I tossed the plate on to the table in front of Thomas and said something along the lines of, "Here's your stupid muffins." Then I said something like, "I am in the worst mood ever." Then I walked into Thomas' office and shut the door and proceeded to have a little bit of a meltdown.

After I had composed myself I walked back out into the main area of the office and started to try and calmly tell them what had happened, but as I relayed the story and got to the point about the core member taking an extra muffin, I got angry again and kicked a chair out of frustration. But then we went on with our meeting, and as we talked and discussed the week ahead I began to calm down and my anger subsided.

When the meeting was over (and after people had split the muffins so everyone who wanted one got to enjoy at least part of one) and most of the other assistants had left, I apologized to Thomas and Kathy, our community leader, saying that I realized that it was just a bunch of muffins and it was really no reason to get upset. Kathy said that she figured I'd come to that realization sooner or later. Then we all laughed at the situation and Kathy called the electrician to go to the house and check out why the oven wasn't working right.

It turned out that something was wrong with our main breaker, and it was getting overheated and so the entire thing was not working right. He said we were lucky it didn't start on fire. I figured then that the entire morning went far better than it could have. At least I didn't have to come to the office that morning and say, "Here are your stupid muffins. And the house burnt down."