I'm in trouble now

I have managed to seriously upset Mrs S and she has stopped talking to me. All the little Olive branches I have motioned her way this morning in order to reopen a dialogue have failed. Didn't want the tea I made for her. Didn't want me to make her breakfast. Barely said a word to me except in a very tight little voice. All the little affectionate gestures that populate our behaviour have vanished like snow under a blowtorch. What this means is that I am in real stercus profundus.

Sometimes when a conversation goes wrong it is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. You can see it coming, but there's not a damn thing you can do about it. All you can do is wait for the crunch.

So it was yesterday evening. I was a bit distracted and let my metaphorical eye drift off the ball. "What are you doing tomorrow?" I was asked. Had I been a bit quicker on the uptake I would have seen this as the first warning sign that things were not as they should be. "I'm in the office. I've got a few things to do." I replied distractedly. Tell you the truth I've had quite a few things on my mind of late and wasn't paying attention.
"Like what?" Mrs S asked with a certain edginess in her voice which Mr Klutz here missed completely, but in hindsight was glaringly obvious.
"I'm trying to get the fixes for that laptop."
"Which one?"
"The older one. It's proving problematic. Needs a BIOS upgrade and I've no floppy drive to boot from." I said, wondering why she wanted the information. Normally her eyes tend to glaze over long before I've explained this much.
"Whose is it?"
"Terry's. You know the guy you spoke to on the phone last week?"
"I thought it was Larry." The sharpness in her tone should have made me pause for thought, but by the time Mister Brain had figured out what was going on, it was too late to stop.
"No, Terry." I said. "He's promised me the old machine as payment for fixing his other one."
"Why's that?"
"I thought it would be nice if we both had machines to work off."
"Yeah but it's Terry's machine."
"No, he's giving it to me for fixing his new one." At this point I'm starting to get a little uncomfortable. "Why the interrogation?" I asked, a little tersely. Well big dumb and ugly had to put his foot right in it didn't he? My other half gave me a long cool look that could have frozen the Georgia Straits. "You don't normally want to know this much." I added and her mouth tightened in a line of disapproval. Impact! Ouch.

Upon reflection I should have asked what she wanted to do this morning, as she was obviously angling for a favour. That simple act would have kept me out of trouble. Unfortunately now I have to figure out how to mollify my best beloved without a) totally screwing up our relationship, and b) feeling like I'm making an insincere crawling apology for being an unthinking cur.

Relationships are complex.