Lychee-Coconut Cupcakes with Ginger Frosting 4 stars, Dallas airport 2 stars

In my post-Peace Corps stupor where I live in awe of hot running water, wall-to-wall carpeting, and being pretty clean most of the time, I've started baking but I'm also starting to lose my mind. In some countries this is considered progress. The lychee-coconut cupcakes with ginger frosting got rave reviews from my friends and family. The lychee is subtle, if you're not told that the lychee there it just seems like an extra tasty, mildly coconut cake. The cream cheese frosting that includes ground and fresh grated ginger with candied ginger on top really won everyone over. I cannot say that I followed the recipe exactly. I started to but I used coconut cream from a can instead of from the package like they suggest because I had it in the pantry already. Maybe that was the problem, but the batter for the cakes was really, really thick, probably thicker than toothpaste and sticky, which seemed problematic. So, to make it just a tad thinner I used about 1/3 cup warm water and about 1/3 cup liquid from the can of lychee fruit. In the end they were moist and had a good texture, but the frosting... make the frosting. I even used low-fat cream cheese and it was so fabulous.

So now I'm on my way to St. Louis, MO to visit family. As you might expect the Dallas airport is mostly very uninspiring. But, the reason that I'm in the Dallas airport inspired me. I was getting on my 5pm direct flight to St. Louis when I realized that my laptop that I was bringing along to continue to look for jobs and show my grandma my photos from Peace Corps, was not in my hot little hand. EEEEK! Heart attack! In this moment I was literally handing the gate agent my ticket so I had to run out of line and look in the waiting area. It was GONE! An airport employee saw me nervously pacing around the waiting room and as we do not like nervous people in airports, doing unexpected things like running out of line, he came to see what was the matter. When he realized that I was looking for something he smiled.

"Green laptop?"

"Oh my God, YES!" I squealed like a sorority girl.

"Already down in lost and found."

WHAT?!?! You have to love Texas and so many places in the US where leaving your laptop in the airport waiting area in the middle of major financial hardship for most people results in it ending up in the airport lost and found and not in you losing all of those half done job applications, all of your Peace Corps photos and the $600 that it cost you. I could have kissed this man, except I was busy problem solving how to get to my grandma's house. Unfortunately, because the lost and found is far away from the gates and outside of security I missed the plane to go and get it. Then my new, indirect flight left late so I missed my connection. American wouldn't pay for the hotel so the Peace Corps budget had me sleeping in the airport. That I believe is bunk, but whatever. I slept on a Coleman cot, with my laptop, in the back corner of the employee lounge after kindly gate agent took pity on me. Trying to regain my mental acuity is a bumpy road but, the road is sweet with cream cheese-ginger frosting.