« BFF (Best Friends Forever) | Main | Ready for my close-up »

January 20, 2006

Temptation

Those damn Girl Scouts with their damn cookies . . .

Last night when the doorbell rang, I braced myself for the onslaught. Sound dramatic? Well, you would do the same, if you lived in my house and every time someone tripped up the front walk, you had to deal with the Freak Out.

The Freak Out comes when my very small pug, Lulu, senses that someone, somewhere might be approaching the house (or one of our neighbors’ houses, she’s not picky), and responds with a cacophony of high pitched yaps so loud and so annoying, it leaves me twitching for a half-hour afterward.

Lulu was already in a Time Out. I was making her sit quietly in her basket, as punishment for the last Freak Out that occurred twenty minutes earlier when the guy down the street returned home from work.

(And, yes, I put my dog in Time Outs, something that my husband finds hilarious for some reason. But, really, it works. Lulu hates Time Outs. She skulks over to her basket, and lies there quietly, looking at me with sad, regretful eyes until I tell her she can get back out.)

But the door bell was more than her pea-sized brain could handle, so, just as I feared, Lulu launched out of her basket and began throwing herself at the front door, yipping and yapping and generally making a pain in the ass out of herself.

When I finally managed to shove her aside and wrench the door open, there was a wide-eyed little girl standing there, wearing a smart beret and a green sash.

“Hello! Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies,” the little girl asked brightly.

Now, being the cynical Gen-Xer that I am, I’m normally not much into religious zealotry. But even I could recognize Satan when I saw him. And he/she was here to tempt me.

See, I’m on a diet. I have just over a week to lose five pounds, and . . . it’s not going well. No, it’s not going well at all.

“Girl Scout cookies?” I repeated, my eyes shifting side-to-side, as I looked for an escape. Or maybe some Holy Water I could spritz at her when her mother wasn't looking.

The Girl Scout thrust her order form at me, showing off the pictures of her cookies.

“I have everything,” she said temptingly.

And, God help me, I looked. And there they were. The cookies. Shortbread . . . Peanut Butter Patties . . . Cartwheels . . . Thin Mints . . . oh, God, Peanut Butter Sandwiches!

I could feel my resolve slipping. She was such an earnest little girl. And such a go-getter. And, hell, I used to be a Girl Scout myself. I used to sell cookies, and knew what a drag it was. No matter how many boxes you moved, how many neighborhoods you hoofed your way through, there was always that one little girl in your troop, the one with the seedy mafia connections, who somehow managed to sell four thousand boxes and win the Top Seller award.

“I’ll take one box of Thin Mints, and two Peanut Butter Sandwiches,” I heard myself say, and, quick as you like, the little girl plucked the twenty-dollar bill from my fingers before I could change my mind.

So now I have three boxes of cookies sitting in my pantry. Satan cookies . . . tempting me . . .

Posted by Whitney at 8:52 AM | Comments (7)

Comments

Posted by: May at January 20, 2006 10:28 AM

Posted by: Lani at January 20, 2006 11:13 AM

Posted by: Eileen at January 20, 2006 11:25 AM

Posted by: Whitney at January 20, 2006 3:28 PM

Posted by: Michelle at January 21, 2006 8:15 AM

Posted by: Sheri at January 22, 2006 2:09 AM

Posted by: Kerrilee at January 23, 2006 10:04 AM