Sugar Cookies: INTENTION vs. REALITY----or----I'm Sorry My Dogs Run on Your Ceiling

I have 2 dogs. They are pretty cool. I like hanging out with them. They like to play fight, bark at passersby, and eat and stuff. Pretty much they are like most dogs I guess, but they are kind of loud and I live in an apartment complex. To add to their loudness, I keep odd hours and sometimes come home really late. They don't care if it's 5pm or 2am when I get home, they just care that I'm back and they have to reach deep into their doggy souls to let me know how excited they are that I'm home, and by-the-way-mom-we-have-to-pee-really-badly-so-let-us-out-bark-bark-BARK-BARK-TAZMANIAN-DEVIL-SOUNDS! That has to be annoying for my downstairs neighbor, but what am I to do?

To add to the chaos, when they get back inside after walking in several circles before finding the perfect place to drop a deuce, they take it upon themselves to run back and forth summoning the noises of elephant stampedes and drum and bass music. Apparently my neighbor had enough and told the leasing office staff at my apartment complex.

I wasn't angry. I actually feel pretty crappy about my dogs making so much noise, but I just haven't gotten to a point where I'm okay with duct taping their feet together and tying their mouths shut with zip ties. I decided that the best thing to do was to make homemade cookies and deliver them to #1204 with an apologetic smile and charm. This is how it was supposed to go.

Of course, that isn't how it went. We are talking about my life. This is what actually happened.

Then I mixed all the ingredients. Things seemed to be going well.

I put them in the preheated oven and waited. When I pulled out my delicious I'm-sorry-my-dogs-run-on-your-ceiling sugar cookies, they didn't look quite right. First of all, they hadn't risen. Secondly, some of them were brown instead of white, like normal sugar cookies. "Well I'm never using that recipe again," I thought. A normal person would have tried them to see if they were edible, but me and normal don't coincide often. Currently I'm on this sugar moderation kick that involves me only getting to eat sugar when my girlfriend gives it to me. On the plus side I limit my intake of sugar while simultaneously making my girlfriend appear to be even sweeter than she is. On the down side, I'm militant about the rule and thus could not taste test the cookies. They were warm and sweet and free. She woudn't complain, right? So I was off to deliver them and make my amends.

After knocking enough times that if she was trying to ignore me, I only made things worse, I considered placing the tin of cookies on her doorstep with a note of apology. I scratched that idea after I realized that the cookies might very well be eaten by a stray dog that liked to walk up stairs, or even worse, she would not know they were there and trip on them on her way out of the house, causing her to fall down the stairs, break her neck and die a slow painful death due to exposure in the cold conditions. I didn't need that on my conscience, so I decided to leave them with the apartment manager at the leasing office.

After leaving the leasing office, I was filled with that self satisfaction that only comes with doing something nice for someone expecting others to think you're a super person. You should have seen the look on the apartment manager's face as she held that tin, still warm and filling the office with the aroma of sweetness.

At this point, I was imagining receiving the Nobel Prize for superb neighbory, or at least special mention in the apartment newsletter. Throughout the day I mentioned my good deed to several people. Then, hours later, it hit me. I didn't put the egg in the batter. I DIDN'T PUT THE EGG IN THE BATTER!!!

No wonder the cookies didn't rise. Those eggless chips of burnt sugar were not going to win me points. What if she choked on the dry crumbs of my disgusting-to-the-point-of being-the-equivalent-of-rat-poison cookies? What if she chipped her tooth, vomited from disgust, or went missing for several days until the smell of death brought maintenence crashing through her door only to find a half eaten tin of cookies (aka poison) with my fingerprints on it?

I should've broken the rule! I should've eaten one! She could've been saved! Oh cruel, cruel world! Why must I suffer from such shame and guilt? I was just trying to apologize! I don't want to go to jail! I'M TOO PRETTY!!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Wait. One. Second. Maybe she hasn't eaten them yet. I can go on YouTube and learn how to pick a lock, sneak into her kitchen and replace the scary cookies of death with some sweet apology cookies. Cookies of LIFE. Then if she really did pass into the netherworld I can bring her back, or I can just call 9-1-1 and be the hero who discovered the poor dead woman in #1204. I let you know how it turns out.