#cookies

Cookies are delicious motivational tools. Also, I have VERY STRONG OPINIONS on Girl Scout cookies and The Great Thin Mint conspiracy… *glares*

Sometimes, You Need To Recharge

/ Morgan Hazelwood / 1 Comment

December is for Recharging

Guess How Much Writing I’ve Done Since December 1st?

None

But you know what I have done?

  • I visited family and baked approximately 50,000,000,000 cookies, with help from a 5 year old. (Plus one batch of fudge).
  • I cleaned my house.
  • I decorated for Christmas/Yule/Solstice.
  • I helped friends with prep for their annual NYE party.
  • I participated in 2 Tweet-Pitchfests — and got 2 likes from agents!
    • I submitted my queries to both of those agents.
  • I went sight-seeing and got in 15,000 steps one day, 20,000 the next – exercise I hadn’t gotten in during November.
  • I helped host a holiday gathering for 20.
  • I read a book (Wool – by Hugh Howey).
  • I beta-read a short story and a 2 chapters for writing friends.
  • I binged and made it into Season 3 of Gilmore Girls.
  • I made over 40 holiday cards.
  • I’ve finished most of my gift shopping.

Be Kind To Yourself

My December is always crazy-busy. I’m being understanding of my life and I’ll be getting back on track — albeit at a more maintainable pace– come January.

Plus, look at that list! At least 2 of those were writing related, and reading helps fuel the creative juices. Besides, I can’t imagine Gilmore Girls binging isn’t going to add clever, quick-witted repartee to my writing. 😉

The Most Important Issue

/ Morgan Hazelwood / 1 Comment
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No one wants a 2/3rds compromise!

This week, there have been several big events. I’ve heard lots of talk about the Academy Awards and Super Tuesday.  One recognizing the supposed artistic merit of recent films, one attempting to find out who can get the most people to show up for them, in the search for the keys to my nation. Yet, in the background of these has been a more important topic, touched on during the Academy Awards by Chris Rock, and near and dear to my heart. Girl Scout Cookies.

To be honest, I have a history with the Girl Scouts. I was a Girl Scout for over 8 years, back in the good ole days when cookies were 2 boxes for $5, the way Cthulhu (may he sleep forever) intended. Repeatedly, I have found myself alone amongst the tides, forever surrounded and deprived. I have been SOBER in bars and ranted for dozens of minutes about the injustice done to me and my kind. The burdens and rationing required to be what I am.

A Tagalong lover in a crowd of Thin Mint aficionados.

For those unaware, or whose cookies come from The Other Girl Scout Bakery, Tagalongs are the love child of peanut butter and chocolate, the culinary sister of the Thin Mint. But, peanut butter, due to its amorphous nature–ranking it a solid only on mere technicalities, (like cats), requires a slight build up of cookie base to cup the peanut butter. Mint apparently needs no such boundaries and stays where it’s told.

I did the math last year and with my hazy recollections and lack of 2016 research, you can trust my numbers.

Tagalongs have a mere 15 cookies per box, while a box of Thin Mints boasts more than double that at 32 cookies! Who could hope to make 15 cookies last as long as 32? No one. Especially not an eight-year-old girl. A girl, watching her mother and her sister open their boxes of cookies, filled to the brim with two sleeves of cookies! Opening her own box, with barely contained anticipation, what should she see? Not cookies stuffing the box, from end to end, but a plastic separator padding half the box and keeping the cookies from touching.

But Morgan! (the Thin Mint lovers attempt to rationalize), your cookies are thicker!

Remember what I said above about doing the math? Why do you doubt me? It is true that my cookies are larger, but by volume and weight, each of your cookies are 2/3rds the size of a single Tagalong. If they wanted to compare, ounce for ounce and it was even, I might concede. But I’m still 6 and a third cookies short!

Blah, blah, blah, ingredient cost, peanut butter stability, not melting together. (And I’m not even going into how the cookies are somewhat of a shadow of their pre-Cut-All-Trans-fats glory (Samoas suffered the most there, including being 25-33% smaller than of old (the coconut, caramel, chocolate ring cookies)). If we average each type of cookie lover having a conservative 2 boxes of cookies a year for, let’s say 25 years, I’m due….

(Cookie monster has the right idea about how to accept payments and when they should be processed)

21 BOXES of cookies!