Investment pays off

I belong to a club of men who tricked quality women into marrying below them. I don't know how I did it. I suspect Brut had something to do with it.

Besides being hilarious, creative, biting and beautiful, Erin is nice. She's damn nice.

Not everyone repays niceness with more nice. Some choose to walk all over it. Others repay it by using your shared driveway as a service centre for a local taxi company. I digress.

Sydney is one of the few places that has repaid Erin's niceness in kind. Yesterday was a great example:

Two doors down from us live a nice young couple with a son around Henry's age. We really like them. The wife's mother lives with them, and she's pretty great herself. Friday night she called Erin with an invitation. Every year, she likes to take her two daughters out for dinner and "retail therapy" (shopping blitz). She and her room-mate daughter were sitting around bemoaning the fact that Daughter Two up and moved this year to Ontario and couldn't make it.

"Well... what about Erin?"

So Erin got invited along for some much-needed girl time. She was gone most of the afternoon and evening. They stuffed themselves silly at dinner, and then dared each other to fill up the spaces with desert. They all did. She was so happy when she got home.

The neighbours who live right next to us are a hilariously sassy older couple. The wife is gluten intolerant, but loves to bake. She wears a mask so she doesn't inhale any gluten when she's baking the wheaty stuff her husband loves. Erin decided a few months back someone needed to bake for her.

The woman turned 80 this past weekend, and Erin surprised her with a cake: a beautiful, savory-sweet bunt cake with apricot glaze and (most importantly) no wheat.

Last night, as I was getting the kids ready for bed, there was a knock at the back door. I opened to find the woman was sending our plate back (with her husband) covered in cookies (the plate, not the husband).

"That cake sure was good. Frances was overwhelmed that Erin went to all of that trouble. Tell your wife she's one nice lady."

I did. She is.