I’m engrossed in the squiggles on my screen when… crash, clatter, thump. I run and halt at a kitchen disaster zone

I’m poring over the computer screen,

intent on making copy happen — it brings me an income. My sister calls me obsessed. “Money ain’t gonna buy you happiness,” she intones. I disagree. With extra cash I can pay the drum teacher, stage a sushi surprise, gift each child and grandchild on their birthday. If that’s not happiness, I don’t know what is.

Something must give to make space for all that income-making, and so be it. One of the fallouts of working 10/6 is that there’s no longer time for things like potato kugel on Friday afternoons. The kids make peace with pizza, and hubby doesn’t like kugel anyway, so it’s all good.

The problem starts when Chesky comes home from his yeshivah dorm for his orthodontist appointment every sixth Friday-Shabbos combo. He wants kugel. I want happiness. Of course, I schmooze with him over farina sprinkled with sugar and cocoa, but then I’m off to my home office and he, to shul. Or so I think.

I’m engrossed in the squiggles on my screen when… crash, clatter, thump. I run and halt at a kitchen disaster zone. Gray mush clinging to cabinets, peels flecking the shined floor, more towering on the just-a-few-minutes-ago gleaming countertop. In the middle of it all, a menacing machine, and a white-shirted visionary with a sheepish grin.

“How do you work this thing?” Chesky asks.