Look What I Did - The Aftermath

See now here's the problem with making cinnamon rolls. Seven pans of cinnamon rolls to be exact. I eat them. Lots of them. Lots as in 3-at-one-sitting. And I have the gut ache and incisor pre-cavity and sudden urge to reacquaint myself with a confessional to prove it.

I did well for a while.

I promptly drove a pan of freshly baked cinnamon rolls to my sister's house because she'd been feeling low. And also because I'd borrowed her last 2 jars of home-canned garden tomatoes for my lasagna-making event. And that's just incredibly generous of her to give them up, all so I didn't have to drive my lazy *ss to town. That day I only ate one cinnamon roll.

The next morning I took a pan to my friend Gina, just because I like her. And maybe, secretly, just a wee bit, in hopes that she'll now feel obligated to repay the favor with one of her lust-invoking dishes. She invited me in for coffee and I didn't even eat one when she offered. Total self-control. Other than that one I'd eaten before I got to her house.

And I sent a pan over to the neighbor's house after hearing it was the dad's birthday. He turned 40 and it was the perfect occasion to send some love-handle sustenance and a "Holy cow, man, you're, like, OLD" sentiment. I resisted the temptation to lift one from the gift pan and instead indulged in one from the leftovers.

So that was 3 pans down, and my family had inhaled one pan about 2.3 seconds after it came out of the oven, so that meant 3 pans remained on my counter, tempting me like the little cinnamon-sugar-buttery-devils-in-disguise that they are. So I started packing one each day in Brady's lunch. I wrapped and gifted two cinnamon rolls to my dear friend Dana when we met over coffee. And I was doing well, and my blood pressure was normal, and my thighs were maintaining their usual homeostasis.

Until today. Blame it on PMS. Blame it on the weather. Blame it on my incessant need to tidy my counters which means the cinnamon rolls had to go. Blame it on global warming, or the Bush administration, or those annoying 'I'm Thinking Arby's' commercials. Wherever the fault lies, it certainly doesn't have anything to do with my total lack of self-control.

And when I get to that point of madness, of rationalizing the eating of three cinnamon rolls in one day, it is hopeless. As the kids readied for bed, I surrendered to the well-worn refrain of "I've had three, so what would it really matter... if I ate... a fourth?"

But sometimes, even when you can't find the brake peddle, something else comes along and saves you from yourself.