You know something serious has happened when E has a frown on his face. The poor thing got audited by the IRS, thanks to his former accountant. The penalties are enough to make anyone’s wallet cry.

At first, E wasn’t too bothered by it. “It’ll hurt for a while, but I’ll fix it and move on,” he said. Then he got the final bill. That’s when frustration set in. Owing thousands of dollars of money to the government hurts, but E had that annoying “I should have seen it coming” feeling. “I knew that accountant wasn’t kosher,” he said.

While his money issues aren’t directly my money issues, I still worry for him. I worry if we’ll be able to plan vacations or keep our brand new car or even continue to buy overpriced gourmet goodies at Foragers. I assume we’ll be sacrificing $10 bars of Mast Brothers truffled chocolate bars for the near future until he gets a sense of how long it will take him to rectify his tax bill.

If I got audited, I would have cried, then called my parents and cried to them, then called my friend and cried some more, then bought a pint of Ben & Jerry’s mint chocolate cookie ice cream and cried into that. But E’s a fighter. He only cursed the accountant’s name a few times, then came up with some solutions. “I’ll get through this. It could be worse,” he said. E is an absolute champ at dealing with adversity. I betcha he has everything squared away in a few months, and we’ll be back to snacking on Mast Brothers chocolate in no time.

To take his mind off of his tax trouble, I made him comfort food. What’s more comforting than a grilled cheese sandwich (other than perhaps Ben & Jerry’s)? Brie with pear was an easy morning snack, and a good excuse to fire up that panini press. Plus it’s National Grilled Cheese Month—which I am actively participating in.

E perked up when he shuffled into the kitchen and saw I’d made him breakfast. His mind relaxed as he washed down the sandwich with OJ and relaxed his arms on the kitchen counter. “It’s going to be fine,” I told him, looking at the situation from the same sunny side as E sees life in general. He smiled. “I know.”

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