The phone call took place late Monday night.

I was on my way back to the office after a basketball game and decided to make a call home to say I wouldn’t be back until later in the night. And that’s when I got the news no one’s self-discipline wants to hear.

“I made cookies,” my wife said on the other end of the phone. She sounded sorry, but at the same time I could hear the devilish smile in her voice.

I groaned and asked what possessed her to do such a thing. We didn’t have any parties or get-togethers in the near future to foist cookies off on unsuspecting friends and acquaintances. That meant the cookies would just sit in the apartment, whispering of their sweet deliciousness through the dark hours before bedtime.

She apologized a couple of times and promised to hide them, but I figured that would be futile. Anyone who knows me well can understand why my mother-in-law once referred to me as the cookie monster.

When I got home, the cookies – maple snickerdoodles – were right there on the counter in all their glory. I had two with my late dinner and managed to hold off on ransacking the rest before bed.

But the next morning, when I went to the kitchen to make breakfast, the cookies were no longer on the counter. And they weren’t in any of the other normal cookie spots, nor in some other hiding places I thought they might be.

Had they been taken to work? I thought about asking, but instead let it go and got on with my breakfast.

Something strange happened after that – I forgot about the cookies. I went about my normal routine for a couple days, oblivious to the fact that there were cookies hidden in plain sight.

It wasn’t until a few days later, when I went grocery shopping and was moving stuff around in the refrigerator, that I found them on the bottom shelf. And that’s where they still are.

OK, so I might have had one, but I didn’t have them all and that’s a small victory in my mind.

We now have plans for Sunday, so those friends will be stuck with those sweet, delicious cookies.

Of course, if they decide they don’t want them …

Joe Marchilena writes a weekly fitness column for Hampshire Hills. To find out more information about the “90 Day Commit to Get Fit” program, call 603-673-7123 or
email hhinfo@hampshirehills.com.

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