I Can Neither Read Nor Cook

I learned something about couscous the other day: I was trying to time dinner so that everything was ready exactly when my wife and kids got back from swim lessons, and so I followed the instructions on the couscous box and prepped the mixture ahead of time so that it would be ready to cook at a moment's notice . . . I mixed the flavor packet and the couscous and 1 1/4 cups of water and left that on the stove while I chopped up stuff for salad and then when I went to boil the water, I found that the couscous had absorbed soaked it all up, though the stove wasn't on, and when Catherine got home I told her what I had discovered: that you need to cook couscous right away or it absorbs all the cold water, and she said, "It says to add the couscous to boiling water," and I disagreed, but we checked the box and she was right . . . I must have read the instructions wrong, which is weird because I'm an English teacher.