That Time of Year

The season I usually look forward to with equal parts dread and excitement is upon us. This year, for the first time in my weight-conscious adult life, I have been able to truly embrace Girl Scout Cookie season. The miracles of pregnancy keep on coming!

The true "GOTCHA" of these little cookies lays in both the timing of their distribution and their short duration of sale. Just as those of us in the Midwest begin to hope, dare to hope, that spring is really coming, that we may be able to shed a layer or two of winter clothing in the coming weeks--that is when the Troops hit the streets.

Exercise hasn't crossed many of our minds since a brief week in the gym in early January but, suddenly, with the return of the robins and the bravery of the crocuses, we remember that carbo-loading and channel-surfing will make our first shorts-worthy day in April or May downright scary. So we buy more broccoli and chicken. We see the spring and summer clothes on the racks in Target and use the extra hour of daylight to take the dog for a longer walk. We try to undo some of what has happened to our bodies since the Winter Solstice.

Then, as if making these changes wasn't difficult enough, the Girl Scouts unleash their cookies. The door to door push isn't what it used to be, but almost every grocery store has a strategically placed Brownie or two pedaling her wares to hungry grocery shoppers. If I was teetering on the brink of a diet slip, these tiny $3 boxes will give me the push. And, if the temptation doesn't get me, the guilt will. Girl Scouts are cute, after all. And what the young ones lack in sales skills, the heavyset mother chaperoning can usually make up for in guilt tripping.

So I buy two boxes. They are both gone within 48 hours. And they were good. During a normal year, one when I want my weight to hover further than closer to the 200 lb. mark, that would be it. I'd feel guilty about it for a day or two, and then remember my wise friend Jen's bit of GS Cookie wisdom: "I know I'm going to eat the whole sleeve of Thin Mints. What does it matter if I do it in a week or an afternoon?" This bit of knowledge would help me move on.

2008 is a pregnancy year, however, and the initial two boxes just left me wanting more. This is the second piece of genius in the Lady Scouts marketing ploy. Like the daffodils and tulips that also show up this time of year, the Girl Scout Cookie has but a brief window to dazzle us before it is gone not to be seen again until 2009. Hard-pressed is the junkie on the hunt for a box of Do-

Si-Do's in late May. So I buy a few additional boxes--they'll freeze won't they? Of course you can freeze cookies, but that would first require putting them in the freezer. If they sit on your kitchen counter, not only do they not keep, they disappear. So went the Samoas, followed by the Tagalongs, and finally the last box of Thin Mints.

I have heard that by about the 20th week of gestation, a fetus will actually practice eating by opening her mouth and swallowing some of the amniotic fluid she floats in thereby getting an early taste of what her mom's cooking is like. If that is the case, my Felicia might be born much like a crackbaby, wondering what has become of the sweet, sweet, smack that she had grown accustomed to in the womb. At least she will be learning one of life's hardest lessons early: Get Girl Scout Cookies while the getting's good or wait another whole year for the sweetest season.