Cookie Therapy

By the next morning, I have reassembled my emotional foundation and am reasonably certain I can let my children leave the room and my field of vision without having a panic attack, calling 911 or sending out a pack of hounds to find them.

Charlotte has invited us to her house to jump start our old tradition of The Cookie Exchange. We used to do it every year without fail, but somehow the drama in my life and my commitments have served to derail it for the past few years.  We used to include Kate and even my idiot sister-in-law (who made laughable inedible cookies but was not indelibly carved on the Black List quite yet) but this year it was just going to be me and Charlotte and my kiddos.

Or one of them.

Pat has decided he is too cool for cookie baking. (Though not too cool for cookie eating, we've found). He wants to hang out with his friends and play Xbox and skateboard to Wawa for a soda. Even in the bitter cold. Anything but hang with the girls doing some girly activity, no matter how much he'd enjoy it.

I suppose it is time. At least he hasn't decided I am a complete embarrassment yet. He still thinks I am the bomb when I swear at other drivers. My heart aches for him to be little enough to drag out to the car by his jacket sleeve. But those days are over. And he won't wear a jacket anymore either.

So Hil and I head to Charlotte's with sufficient refrigerated cookie dough to feed a premenstrual army.

Like the superhero Charlotte always is, she has matching aprons for all of us (including the absentee Pat) and holiday music on the iHome. And Jack is making breakfast while the coffee is brewing. And the house is festive and brimming with candles, and pine rope and poinsettias and pine cones. 

We mix. We roll. We shape. We decorate. We roll in sugar. We accent with candies. We are cookie making perfection. Dozens and dozens or fabulous cookies.

It is exactly the leg up my anemic Christmas spirit has needed. As I head for home to host 5 teenagers for lunch and Just Dance 4 for a few hours before Kate's party, I am in exactly the festive mood I had thought would evade me this year. And for the moment, I'd say, "Scott who?"