In Honor Of Valentine's Day . . .

Chocolate Almond Kisses

The photo above shows the cookies I was trying to make this week for The Sugarbee Cookie Company.

The photo below depicts my actual product:

I'm pretending that the cookbook's cookies only looked so fluffy because a professional food stylist plumped them up with styrofoam.

At least I can comfort myself that mine were truer-to-form than Mr. C's interpretation:

(a subtle use of sprinkles)

And speaking of fluffy (yes: it's mentioned two sentences ago), I just received the following spam, which truly warmed my heart and caused me to want to share it with you all:

You have drawn my attention to a site of acquaintances. I hope, as I shall like you. How I to you in a photo? The truth - pretty? :) But in a life I more nice!!!
And as I cheerful, kind, sociable and fluffy!

I don't know about you, but I like fluffy people.  Hell, I like fluff in general.  I think I'm going to get a badge that states I HEART FLUFF, and I shall wear it proudly, and I shall, of course, contact my new friend 'Olga' so that we can be sociable and fluffy together.

I was so obsessed with Olga's e-mail, in fact, that I felt compelled to figure out what 'she' originally intended to say before the online translators did her a grave injustice.   So I typed 'fluffy' into my online thesaurus and discovered that Olga may have meant to describe herself as 'creamy', 'luscious', 'whiskered', 'dainty', 'flexible' or -- perhaps -- 'woolly'.  

Honestly, I think I prefer fluffy.

No matter what Olga, says, however, her words do not hold a candle to the poetry that spouts from woman's best friend:

(there's also a female-version for the fellas)

Meet Mr. Wonderful.  Yes, he has perfectly-coiffed hair, impeccably-pressed khakis, and a thousand-watt smile, but the real allure to Mr. Wonderful is what he says:

"No!  You don't look at all fat in that dress!  How could anything make you look fat?"

"Mmmm, you look so beautiful in the morning!"

"Actually, I don't know which way to go!  I'll turn in here, and ask directions." 

 (See?  Now you don't have to go to eBay and spend $39.97 for your own doll: you can just listen to him over and over on YouTube!)

I actually own the Mr. Wonderful doll shown in the first photo.  I bought him when I was single.  (Apparently Mr. Wonderful has become an even rarer-species, as he's gone up in price since my single days.)  C'mon, ladies: does it not give us a sense of common sisterhood to listen to Mr. Wonderful's wonderfulness and roll our eyes at the incompetence of men?  I took great amusement in whipping him out when I was dating Bee and subjecting the latter to the former's smarminess.

It's not fun anymore though, damn it.  Bee took all the delight out of it as he's continuously proved through the years that he is Mr. Wonderful: cooking dinner nightly, rubbing my feet, begging to visit my parents, wanting to ask for directions long before I'm ready to.  Where's the pleasure in that?  Just today, in fact, he suddenly turned to me and said, "I just couldn't stop looking at you earlier and thinking about how pretty you are."  And I'm pretty sure he was neither high nor horny at the time, and that he wasn't trying to get anything from me.  So I just had to take his compliment at face value and spend the next ten minutes grinning like an idiot.

That bastard.

God, I love him.