Exit Stage Left

Every year about this time I get an urge to bake. This year Mary and I special ordered a dozen bags of Hershey's Cinnamon Chips (Mary, I think I still owe you for those) which are way harder to find than they should be (hence the need to buy in bulk). They make the most absolutely divine Oatmeal Cinnamon Chip Cookies...and the chips are irreplaceable. Last night, I got home reasonably early, cooked dinner and still had an urge to stay in the kitchen, so I decided to break out the cookie sheets and get an early start on holiday baking (it couldn't hurt to "butter up" my boss before Thanksgiving, either). As I was dropping the stiff dough onto parchment paper, scraping the bowl to get every last drop of batter, I remembered watching Mom make homemade noodles when I was a kid; sneaking them from beneath the pastry cloth as they sat on the counter and hoping that she'd neglect to get a glob from the mixing bowl, so I could eat the goo. But, tonight I realized I'd crossed the threshold from child to adult as I took painstaking care to make sure every last oat stuck to the side of the bowl would ultimately transformed into a cookie, not just eaten in its raw form.