No Self Control

Today I decorated Christmas Cookies. It is one of my favorite things to do during the Christmas season and it has been a couple of years since I made time for it, so today was a big day. I had already baked the 15 dozen cookies, so I could focus entirely on making the frosting and decorating them. It was pretty fun for the first half and then I started questioning my sanity and by the time I was decorating my last cookie, my feet and back are aching and I was vowing that this would be my last year of doing this. But then I looked at all the fun cookies and I changed my mind (as I do every year) and got excited again about delivering Christmas treats to my neighbors and friends. Every time I decorate cookies, however, I have absolutely no self control and I end up eating about a pound of frosting, a bag of chocolate chips and half the cookies. I am exaggerating just a bit, but here is the pattern and this part is pretty accurate:

• I make the frosting and feel that it would be wasteful to just put the beaters in the sink without eating the frosting off of them and since there is just me, I polish off both of them.
• I divide the frosting into 5 different smaller bowls to make the different colors and I notice that if I use a spatula, I can probably get a bit more frosting off of the big bowl before it goes into the sink and so I eat that.
• Then I get out the sprinkles and colored sugar and chocolate chips and this starts the random eating of chocolate chips throughout the rest of the day. I honestly don't even know I am doing it half the time.
• Then I frost my first cookie and I usually need to eat that one just to make sure that it is okay and I am not going to poisen anybody.
• As the frosting continues, a few of the cookies inevitably break and it just makes sense to eat those...but not before I frost the broken pieces and add some chocolate chips.
• When the task is finally done, there is usually just a little bit of frosting left in each bowl...not enough to save, but definitely too much to just throw away, so I clean those out too.
• By this time I have entirely overdosed on frosting, but I still feel the need to eat one more cookie when I am packaging everything up and grab a few more chocolate chips.
• And now that it has been a few hours since the cookies were done and delivered, you know where I just was? Out in the kitchen eating two more cookies (I saved a dozen or so for myself) because I actually felt like I needed a snack for staying up late.

Am I normal and will I ever get to sleep tonight?