CHRISTMAS COOKIE PRINCESS

The Christmas holidays

always remind me of

other Christmasses gone by

...the times when I was a little girl

and baked and decorated

cookies of all shapes and sizes

working in the kitchen beside my mom

we were very proud of our cookies

But times were simpler then

SHE bought all the ingredients

and we had a real kitchen

and a big mixer and muffin pans

and cookie sheets

and lots of big bowls

and it was so much fun

I was truly the cookie princess

My first year on my own,

it wasn’t quite so easy

I borrowed pans and bowls

from all my neighbors and

mixed everything by hand

because nobody had a mixer

and the oven didn’t quite work right

so lots of stuff burned

But after a week or so of baking,

I’d created 27 dozen different kinds

of wonderful cookies

...brownies, cakes, candies and breads

...all simply but painstakingly scrumptious,

wrapped in cellophane with ribbons and bows

on lovely Christmas plates.

I was finally ready to deliver them to all my

friends and family.

So I loaded them all into my van

and dressed Lhasha, my basset hound,

in her best red t-shirt

and off we went to make our deliveries

I was indeed...the cookie princess

and my first delivery received rave reviews

but I probably shouldn’t have stayed so long

For when I returned to the van

all that remained were numerous

empty Christmas plates

with torn cellophane

and shreds of ribbon strewn about

My trusty hound now lay

flat on her back

her belly stretched tight as a drum,

extending way beyond the

bottom perimeter of her cute little red t-shirt

and all she could do was go

“arrh arrrgh arrrrrggghhh”

and I just didn’t have the heart to yell at her

So nobody else got cookies that year

and I haven’t baked cookies of that caliber since

Now I just buy them from the girl scouts.

I no longer refer to myself as the

cookie princess

and I certainly never attained the

coveted rank of

cookie queen

But I always will remember

fondly the holidays

and baking happily in the kitchen

beside my mom