The Meltdown

It's becoming harder and harder to stick to the script. The conversation at lunch began with an innocent-enough question.

"Do you know where to buy fondant?"

"Excuse me?" (Did she just ask me about fondant?)

"Fondant - do you know where I can buy it? I was up until 2:00 a.m. this morning planning my baby's first birthday cake. I'm going to bake two kinds of cake, then cut them into squares and assemble them into blocks. I want to cut the block letters out of fondant, so they'll look really nice."

"Oh. No, sorry, I don't know anything about fondant." (When I'm up at 2:00 a.m., I'm worrying about the coming climate-change cataclysm. I can't think of anything else to say for the rest of lunch.)

The word "fondant" comes from fondre, the French equivalent of "melting."