Oh hubris, you pernicious harpy cloaked in a clarion's finery. How often do you court me with promise of good deeds done and favors to be won? To damn often, that's for sure. You see I can rarely tell the line between hubris and self-confidence until it has formed a noose around my neck and smacked the rear of the horse on which I was standing.

I met my father's request this Monday afternoon with putative self-confidence. A few dozen "easy" cupcakes was the charge - for the parents' church crowd who would convene the next morning. "And why ever should I not?" said that prodding bastard in my head. My power of reason, being the lobotomized dog that it is, agreed readily. Without delay I mentally queued the recipe and icing(s) I would use, and went about my day.

Being the noctural-ite I am meant that a late start was precisely what I wanted. An unfettered and uncrowded kitchen would be less frustrating than when one is competing for VERY limited cooking real-estate. So I was hardly worried when dinner ceded to conversation, which bled into a few episodes of Treme and an apertif of the Daily Show. As the parents faded towards slumber, I set to get my Jacques Torres on. As it would turn out all I could "get on" had all the finesse of a post-mortem Tupac.

Oh, the cupcakes went fine. No they went better than fine. They plumped into perfect little domes with so much crumb that Martha Stewart inquired after possible internships. But it was precisely when I pulled those beautiful midget-cakes out of the oven that I realized I had prepared a heaping side of...hubris. Check to ensure that I had icing ingredients? Why that's for my little sous-patissiere Pierre to do...wait...shit. And my Jacques Torres delusions walked out on me like Boehner from a debt ceiling conversation...post-mortem Tupac indeed.

1:30 a.m. and I'm angrily pacing Meijer's for ingredients. A few chocolate bars and icing sugar later and I was out. 2 a.m. and I am ganche-ing and chilling. 2:10 a.m. and I'm creaming butter, cocoa and icing sugar. 2:15 and more icing sugar. 2:25 more icing sugar. 2:40 who the hell installed an icing sugar black hole in the Kitchen-Aid? 2:45 icing sugar and cursing. 3 a.m. icing cupcakes in the vaunted "I gave a damn about style at 2 a.m. but now f*** you cupcakes" style.

3:30 a.m. people; that's when I got into bed. My parents got to eat cupcakes the next morning with the church crowd. I slept in with a belly-ache from all that hubris.