Yes, that is a bag of trash. Sitting on the trunk of a car. A car that we followed out of my mom’s apartment complex, up and over a hill, through a traffic light, and then another half mile before they turned off into a random driveway, presumably because they finally realized they were driving around town with a bag of trash on top of their car.

There is only one trash compactor in my mom’s complex, so people who live at the far ends of the development sometimes put their trash on top of the trunk of their car and drive it over to the dumpster. Why not put it in the back seat? Because it’s trash. It smells nasty and could possibly stain the seats. I’m guessing this person forgot they’d put it there and couldn’t see it out of their back window because it was covered in snow. Since the bag is white, I also wonder if it took them awhile to realize it was a trash bag and not snow.

Thankfully, they did not launch a trash missile into traffic and they gave us a good laugh. Just remember, when you take the trash out, don’t take it out out.

“Uh, no,” I told her after a short pause. I couldn’t believe my mother was asking me this question. My mother, who compulsively checked the stove before leaving the house. My mother, who carefully staged all the food on the dining room table the night before departure so she wouldn’t forget anything. My mother, who made me top off my car’s coolant in the dark and cold on Christmas Eve so she wouldn’t worry about my car overheating on the drive down. How could my mother ever possibly misplace a crockpot full of meatballs?

“I carried them out and put them on the sidewalk by your trunk,” Sister-in-law chimed in. Two seconds later we all simultaneously made the same realization: We had left a crockpot full of meatballs on the sidewalk in front of my mother’s apartment.

“Do you think they’ll still be there when we get back?” I asked Brother and Sister-in-law on the drive back home four hours later. Sister-in-law was confidant that yes, the crockpot of meatballs would still be there, because neighbors wouldn’t steal other neighbors’ meatballs. She said that if she saw a crockpot full of meatballs on the sidewalk of her neighborhood, she would assume someone had left them there and would be back for them eventually.

I was uncertain whether the crockpot or the meatballs would still be there. I had seen many dog walkers in my mother’s apartment complex and was concerned that some of the mutts may have smelled the meatballs and knocked the glass lid off the slow cooker to have a holiday snack. I also knew that whenever someone left a couch or dresser and bookshelf near the dumpster in my own apartment complex, it was quickly scavenged by someone else. The crockpot was at least 30 years old, and definitely looked like something someone might throw away. We hadn’t left it by the dumpster though, which meant context was going in its favor.

Brother sided with Sister-in-Law, claiming that an empty crockpot might be scavenged quickly, but the presence of meatballs inside the crockpot would lead any snatch-and-grabbers to conclude that this crockpot had not been discarded on purpose.

As we turned the corner onto my mother’s street, there was great anticipation. Would the meatballs still be there? Would the crockpot?

Yes! The crockpot and the meatballs were both still there, just as we’d left them, four and a half hours later. The meatballs were still fairly warm too, even though they’d spent hours in the cold. We quickly recovered our crockpot and meatballs and returned them to the safety of my mother’s apartment. Later that night as we laughed about the situation, we also wondered if somewhere in the apartment complex a family was having a similar discussion about the mysterious crockpot full of meatballs they’d seen on the sidewalk and how it had disappeared just as mysteriously as it had appeared.

Here we are lighting the cake.

And here we are still lighting the cake.

And here we are again, still lighting the cake, watching the frosting start to melt.

And finally, the cake is lit! My mother blew out the candles in one breath, proving that old age has not affected her lung capacity. Happy birthday, Mom! Here’s to 60 more years!

Thank you for all your cookie suggestions. I was tempted to try all of them, but eventually settled on making Boot Tracks because I got to use my waffle iron. I love kitchen gadgets, and the waffle iron is rarely used for anything other than waffles, so I thought I’d give it some quality time.

The Boot Tracks came out well, but I wouldn’t call them cookies. They were essentially brownies cooked in a waffle iron. I felt like I got snookered. However, if in the future you are ever making brownies and simply cannot wait 20 minutes for them to bake in the oven, let it be known that you can pull out your waffle iron or George Foreman grill and cook them in two minutes or less. If any of you think of trying this recipe, please, please, please remember to grease the waffle iron before cooking. Otherwise you’ll be scraping boot tracks off your waffle iron like mud off of a boot.

There were lots of lovely cookies at the exchange. One of the cutest treats were the reindeer cookies, a ginger spice cookie decorated with broken pretzels and some dollops of frosting.

At the end of the party, we divided up the cookies among us, but only one person was smart enough to bring a tin with her for this purpose. The rest of us were shoving cookies into the hostess’s ziplock bags and hoping the peppermint cream cheese frosting didn’t smear over everything. I gave my cookies away, knowing I could not be trusted to have them in my apartment. I hope I get through the rest of the holidays so successfully!

I’m going to a Cookie Exchange Christmas party tomorrow, and I’m concerned. I’m working on losing the 40 pounds I gained during the worst of my headache, and cookies do not seem like the best way to do that. (And if anyone mentions “The Cookie Diet” I will stab your eyes out with my ballpoint pen. The PR company for that product is run by assholes and morons who aren’t competent enough to remove me from their email ist.) But, I want to see my friends, and they are throwing a cookie party, so I’m going. Everyone is supposed to bring a batch of cookies and then we exchange them so everyone gets a plate full of different treats.

Does anyone have a recipe for healthy cookies? Or is that term an oxymoron? If I can’t find a healthy cookie recipe, I figure I should find a recipe for cookies I hate. That way when I’m baking them I will not be tempted to lick the beaters and shove five spoonfuls of dough down my throat. (Just to taste test, I swear! Give me my spoon back!!) Of course, I don’t want the cookies to taste bad to everyone, or else I will get a reputation as the bad cookie lady. “Did you taste those cookies Jennette brought? I think they were made of Elmer’s glue and sidewalk chalk!”

Ideas please! And quickly! I need these cookies by tomorrow afternoon.

Either my local Kroger exists in a time bubble that has been forced one month into the future, or the managers are missing the month of November in their wall calendars, because as we all know, it is far, far, far too soon to be putting up Christmas trees.

Help Heather help girls with eating disorders

Heather at MamaVision is encouraging people to give to the National Eating Disorders Association via a link on her site. The funds will be matched by an anonymous donor. You can also leave a comment about why you donated which she’ll send to the NEDA.

Be Barb’s weigh-in partner

Friend of the blog, Barb, is looking for a weigh-in buddy. Here’s how she put it, “Do you know somebody from blogland who would be willing to let me report my weight daily — starting now and going to through January, and perhaps to be extended beyond that if it proves to be an effective self-monitoring system?…Unless I have an external commitment to tell somebody else, I don’t do it. I dread the scale. So I’m looking for a system of accountability. The person I report to doesn’t have to respond or say anything or even actually read my email. I just need to know that I have to do it.”

Any takers? Leave a comment and I’ll send your info to Barb.

If you are shopping today, like so many Americans, good luck to you and don’t forget your scarf! I froze my ass off in line at a Circuit City two years ago at 4:30am to get some bargain USB drives. It was fun to do once, but I don’t have any desire to relive the experience. If you prefer to stay at home and shop online in your pajamas with a warm cup of coffee, and you’re shopping at Amazon.com anyway, please consider clicking through to the store via one of my links. If you do so, I earn a small commission on any item you put in your cart after you click through that you buy. There are also some coupons for Avenue and other stores here that you might find useful.

I usually wouldn’t be so overtly and annoyingly commercial as to ask for your click-throughs, but the fact that I might be unemployed at this time next week has made me a little more brazen. Either way, I hope you spend the holidays with the people who matter to you. They’re more important than any Amazon gifts. (Don’t tell Jeff Bezos I said that!)

What’s changed? I know I can handle it now. When I was first learning new habits I was worried that any deviation from my plan could knock me off course. I wasn’t ready to knowingly indulge in pies and cookies. It was too early. But I’ve been doing this for awhile now and I know that eating a pumpkin roll and Italian Crème cake and the richest fudge brownie in existence for lunch one day is not going to doom me to a life of obesity. It will make me feel sleepy in the evening. It will cause me to gain a pound or two. And it will definitely make me think, “Woah, I cannot eat like that all the time.” But it’s also a lot of fun. I enjoy eating and I’m never going to apologize for that. There are only 3 or 4 times a year when I am surrounded by so many delicious desserts and treats. I have to take advantage of it when I can.

My philosophy towards the holidays this year has been, “Eat whatever the hell you want and just go run later.” Or as my older brother put it, it’s just easier to lose the weight afterwards than to try to resist. I’ve got to agree with him on that one. Maybe that won’t be true when I’m in my 50′s, but give me two or three weeks here and I’m sure I can get rid of whatever I’ve gained. While it was lots of fun to eat whatever I wanted for the past three days, I sure am relieved that the holiday eating season is now over for me. All that sugar makes me enter an altered state of existence where I feel lethargic and spaced out, almost like I’m on drugs.

I wouldn’t describe my feelings about such indulgences as “guilt.” I felt guilty about stealing a granola bar from the grocery as a child. I felt guilty for not cuddling my guinea pig enough in the years before she died. I felt guilty about damaging my brother’s copy of Catch-22 and trying to stall him until I could buy a replacement copy. The way I feel about eating a lot of food is not guilt. It’s vigilance. It’s something I’m aware of, something I know I need to take care of, but I’m not going to beat myself up over it. It’s the same way I feel when my laundry has piled up and the number of clean panties I have left is serving as a countdown to the point of no return. I just can’t go commando and I’m not going to turn my underwear inside out. Yet, I’ve never felt guilty about not doing my laundry. And I don’t feel guilty about eating a lot on the holidays, not as long as I take care of it later.

The one thing I might do differently next year is to tell myself to limit it to only a couple indulgences. That way I’ll end up eating several indulgences over what I intend to, and end up eating about as much as I’m okay with. It’s like telling someone who is chronically late to be someplace 15 minutes before you really want them to be there so they’ll actually get there on time. This year I told myself to eat whatever I wanted, and holy cow, I really did. I gave myself an inch and took a mile. I doubt anyone in my extended family cares what I eat at those gatherings, but if anyone is monitoring my food intake they must be really confused as to how I can eat like that and lose as much weight as I have. I usually only see them at the holidays and those are one of the few times I eat like a maniac.