Though yesterday was not a typical day, it started off poorly, and ended in the same manner, with a little bright spot in the middle. For now, I’ll just stick to the started off poorly, and if time permits, I’ll add another post, and so…..
I wake up on a typical day around 6:00 am. Usually I do this so I can run downstairs and make my daughters lunch before she gets down to the kitchen and asks for breakfast. Sometimes I am lucky enough that she sleeps in a bit and I can grab 15 minutes on the treadmill as well. Yesterday was a little different in that it was the last day of school before Christmas break. So I made her lunch, then started baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies for the teachers room at school.
I wanted to make them specifically for her teacher Miss Brown and assistant teacher Miss Alston, but my husband assured me that giving presents to our daughters teachers was completely inappropriate. (Naturally, when I got to school, I saw every other mother and child with bags of gifts for their teachers and classmates and cursed him vehemently) Needless to say, I have a very good cookie recipe that I have used hundreds of times and committed 100% to memory. Just as I started putting the butter and sugar in the mixing bowl, my daughter comes down and asks for breakfast.
I’ll admit it, I’m a little grumpy because it’s early, I haven’t had a chance to make coffee and I know I won’t have a chance to exercise this day. Anyway, I pause in my cookie endeavor and “Phew” I have some left-over pancake batter in the fridge and whip up a nice little breakfast. I put it down on my daughters little craft table and turn myself back to making cookies, when all of a sudden she starts crying.
The dog is standing by her table licking up all her syrup!! Ugh!! Luckily, the syrup was on the side because my little one likes to dip rather than drizzle, and the breakfast disaster is easily averted with a ramekin of syrup.
Ok, cookies, where was I? Well, I think I remember where I was so I continue making the batter and preheating the oven, and dropping the cookies on the sheet, I’m on auto-pilot, because the dog is in her crate, my daughter is happily munching and I know that I have a few minutes before anything else could possibly go wrong. The cookies go into the oven, and I start brewing my coffee, and with the promise of caffeine I am no longer grumpy.
16 minutes later, I have enjoyed my coffee, managed to put another batch of cookie dough together and my daughter is still busy with breakfast. The timer for the first batch of cookies goes off and I pull the sheet out of the oven to find…..what are those? Chocolate chip cookie balls? What happened? Crap, I forgot to put the baking soda in, and now that I think of it, the vanilla, too?
I know the next batch is good, after doing a quick review of making the dough in my head, so I bake those and sure enough they come out perfect. I’m a little upset, because it hardly seems like enough cookies to put in the teachers lounge for the entire school staff to share, so I do some quick math to see if I have time to make one more batch before we need to get dressed and out the door.
My microwave has a soften feature for butter (whoever thought of that option was a super-genius to be sure!!) and I start on my third batch of cookies. The dog is getting a little whiny from being in her crate, and my daughter is all done her breakfast, so I pause briefly to gather my little girls plate and release the dog from her prison before dropping the cookies onto the baking sheet. After popping them in the oven and setting the timer, I decide it’s time to get ready for school.
I pick out some clothes for my daughter and then follow her to the bathroom to get her toothbrush ready for her. I run downstairs to see how the final batch of cookies is doing, and there’s like 7 minutes left on the timer, I peek in the oven and though they don’t look quite right; they do not seem to have spread out as much as they should have by this time, I decide they will be fine having been systematic about making the dough this last time.
Back upstairs to get myself dressed, my daughter is doing well on her own, I’ll have enough cookies, it’s smooth sailing now.
The timer must be just about ready to go off, so I head back downstairs to await their baked-perfection. However, when I look in the oven they are just as they were the last time I checked on them. I prod them, to see if they are cooked through and for some reason, they are still quite doughy. What in the name of all that is?!?!? I have made cookies hundred and hundreds and hundreds of times and they are perfect and delicious, and infallible!!
Well, the cookies might be infallible, but I am certainly not. At some point after the second batch, I turned the oven off and even though I had it in my mind to make a third batch, I must not have turned it back on. I try to salvage them, by turning the oven on and baking them a bit, but it is too late, and the third batch is a loss as well as the first. I have one small batch of cookies to convey to the teachers lounge.
We arrive at school with the single batch of cookies, which my daughter is just thrilled to be able to deliver. She has no idea that I ruined two other batches, she is not aware that every other student is laden with gifts for their friends and teachers, she is beaming as she hands the cookies to the receptionist, in the main office, who thanks little Martha Stewart profusely, and everything is as bright and beautiful as the day is long. Though I feel like a failure, I can see that my daughter feels like the little princess she is, and I think to myself, well, I’m that little princess’ mother, so what does that make me? =)
Woes of a Wife, Waitress, Wannabe, and most importantly a Mother 