That's Just the Way the Cookie Crumbles

I've had a couple of embarassing incidents this Christmas season--there was that time I walked around church a while before I noticed the french fry sticker on my ankle, and then Sammy shouting out "Mom, I need to go pee!" during the middle of her preschool Christmas program. However, the Cookie Incident tops everything.

I spent hours last week baking and icing and decorating 4 dozen star cookies for a recipe exchange group. (I was going for the first time and wanted to impress people with how tasty and beautiful my Christmas cookies were. Normally I don't spend that much time on cookies.) The idea is that a bunch of women go to someone's house, trade cookies and recipes, and go home with a nice variety to give to the neighbors for Christmas. I think it's a great idea.

Anyway, the night of the exchange, we were running late getting home from seeing Christmas lights, but I figured I would go anyway. I glanced at the address on Google Maps and jumped into the car. The only problem was, when I got to the subdivision where the house was located, no one had their lights on and I couldn't see anyone's address. Fortunately, it was a small subdivision, and there was only one house with all the lights on and 15 cars parked in front of it. Bingo! There was a little sign taped to the door, "Come in,"  so I trotted on in with my dozens of beautiful and tasty cookies. 

As I stopped in the entry and tried to figure out how to take my boots off while holding 4 dozen cookies, I started looking around me. Strange...there were a lot of little kids running around. I thought this was a girls' night out sort of thing. I took a few steps toward the kitchen to set my cookies down and started looking at the grown ups sitting around talking. Also strange...quite a few men were there mingling with the women and I didn't recognize anyone...Oh no. Oh crap. Wrong house. RUN FOR THE DOOR! I was inches away from freedom when a nice man holding a baby came around the corner and smiled cheerily at me. "Hi, how are you doing?" He seemed a little confused as I detoured around him and reached for the doorknob, still holding my umpteen beautiful and tasty cookies.  "Great!" I squeaked. "I, um, forgot my cellphone--um, I have to run out to the car to grab it." I made a hasty exit.

Epilogue: Highly confused, I drove around the subdivision one more time and actually found the right address. Strangely, even though I was only 30 minutes late, the house was dark and everyone was gone. I gave up on my attempts to be social and drove home slowly in the dark, my dejected tears dropping one by one onto my perfectly iced cookies. Each lovingly placed sprinkle melted softly into...okay, okay, so it wasn't that big of a deal. Our neighbors just got tins of star cookies, no variety added. I went home and looked up my invitation to the recipe exchange group and saw that they had actually met two days earlier. Am I discouraged that I made all that effort to go the recipe group only to get the date wrong? No. Sometimes mistakes happen. Sometimes you go to total strangers' Christmas parties. Sometimes, that's just the way the cookie crumbles.