I’ve decided it’s time to taunt my inner fatty. I need comfort beyond blankets, tea, and Linus lickings. I need cookies. Is there anything better than a chocolate chip cookie floating in a pool of milk? I can’t name it. All I want to do is stay home, under the covers with a stack of chick magazines, chick movies, and anti-chick food. I want to bean with Linus, cuddle in the white feathers of my heavy down, and chick out… cookies and all. I’m sorry. I know cartons of Ben & Jerry’s works better visually, the milky spoon leaving a ring on my bedside table, but I’m a cookie of a girl. Ice cream makes me thirsty. Cookies make me satiated. Oh god, chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies. I could die, just there, with one partially dipped, drenched in cold milk. Something that small can make me that happy. But I can’t remember the last tin of homemade cookies I received out of love, not obligation. We’re talking full on mixing, baking, and leveraging, cookie by cookie off a greased metal sheet into a paper cup, inside a tin, and the whole time, my name is on the card. There is nothing more dear. Want to give really good gift? Send a tin of cookies for no reason at all. It’s a hug, and certainly something good for the soul. Okay, now I’m kinda depressed; Linus and I need cookies.

The cookie swap needs to happen again this winter. It’s the least we can do in the face of “dark” when we leave work. There’s nothing I hate more than turning the clocks in the fall, except for a house full of everything but cookies. And for those of you who only read about my life, but don’t inhabit my space, I host a cookie swap during the winter holiday season. Everyone brings a certain amount of one type of cookie to my apartment. Each of us leaves with the same number of cookies we began with, but with many varieties. We use glue, glitter, felt and tins to encase our flour jewels for the holiday season. Gifts. Pahleeze. I eat them all, one by one, despite trying to keep them safe in my freezer. It’s a nice idea if you don’t have an inner fatty.