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It is Monday. And I am content.

Usually these two states of being don't coexist very well. I like my weekends a lot, and I don't think the last weekend should really have counted as a full weekend since it rained all day Sunday. Constantly. No little lulls, no stops, no waiting, no hesitation, it was raining when I got up around 8AM, and was still quite determinedly raining when I went to bed around 9:30PM. In fact, it's still raining right now.

It doesn't matter though. I'm content. The Girl Scout Cookies arrived today.

I'd actually like to talk about Girl Scout cookies for just a moment. Not the Thin Mint. Everyone loves the Thin Mint. I do, too. I take a box of Thin Mints and stash them in the freezer until July or August, one of the swelteringly days when the thermometer and humidity are each around 100, and then I lovingly retrieve that box from the freezer, get a large glass of milk, and calmly devour the whole box in a manner similar to a tyrannosaurus rex wolfing down several sedated Holsteins.

But I don't want to talk about Thin Mints.

I want to talk about Samoas.

Don't get me wrong. I love Samoas, too. In fact, the first box of cookies I opened was the Samoas. I was so deliriously excited to that I didn't even see the little label that said OPEN OTHER SIDE, and I ripped the box open from the wrong side, tore open the cellophane that was foolishly keeping me from the Samoas, and ate a row. That'd be 5 cookies, totaling 800 calories, 45 grams of fat, 10 grams of fiber, a mere 60 grams of sugars, and, hey! 20% of my Daily Recommended Allowance of Iron and Vitamin C! Which is why I eat them. No, really. ;-)

Anyway, in my opinion, the Samoa is a great example of how a rather shoddy foundation can be redeemed by some killer accessorizing. Consider this, if you will:

The foundation of the wonderful Samoa is the rather humble "butter cookie", called so presumably because it's supposed to have a buttery taste. However, sometime in the 1970s or so, butter was determined to be bad for you, since it comes from milk which comes from cows which just lack that muscle tone and definition that says healthy. Or maybe butter just didn't come in a green box or something, like all the healthy food does now. Anyway, some bizarre chemical oil was substituted in for the butter, so for most of my life, butter cookies have tasted like moderately oily congealed flour. The main redeeming feature was the hole in the middle, so you could stick the cookie on a finger and nibble the rounded edges off. Inevitably, the cookie's structural integrity failed the task, but I was a quick little kid, especially when it came to cookies, so I didn't lose too many.

Anyway, the butter cookie is, on the grand cookie scale of life, about a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. It's never going to be inducted into the Cookie Hall of Fame unless it gets a big sympathy vote, and hardly anyone is going to list it as their favorite cookie, especially as long as the Girl Scout bakers keeping making Thin Mints and Samoas.

But the butter cookie is the basis of the Samoa! Here, follow along with me at home. Take a Samoa out of the box, and bite half of it off. I really shouldn't have to say this, but chew and swallow the half you bit off. Sheesh.

Anyway, look at the... what? You don't have a Samoa cookie? Well, CHRIST! Go out and get a box! The Girl Scouts are everywhere peddling them. Wal-Mart, K-Mart, grocery stores, the mall, and the really mean little shits have an armored booth outside the Weight Watchers headquarters. Go get yourself a box. Come back.

Okay, now look at the... what? You ate the other half of the cookie while I was talking to the yahoos who didn't have a box of Samoas? Well, let's all get on the same sheet of music. Get another Samoa out and bite it in half. Yes, chew and swallow the half you bit off.

Okay, now look at the Samoa. Butter cookie base! But it's all the other stuff that makes it so wunnerful. Caramel piled on top of the cookie not just supplies a sticky sweetness, but the texture is a great contrast to the moderately crumbly butter cookie. After the caramel, there's the coconut, also sweet, with a new texture. Then, there's the unusual cocoa coating, which gives a wonderful light toffee-brown color to the cookie (do not underestimate the value of presentation). And finally, the chocolate coating the underside of the cookie, as well as drizzled across the top.

See! This is a great cookie! But it's not actually the cookie that deserves the praise here! It's the supporting cast! The caramel, coconut, cocoa and chocolate! These are the prizewinners! If I could just buy little balls of coconut, caramel, cocoa and chocolate, instead of the Samoas, would I do so? HELL YES! I'd buy about thirty damn boxes and just stuff myself until they had to cart me down to the hospital and shoot me up with insulin so I didn't develop a spontaneous case of diabetes. And you know what I'd do when I regained consciousness?

EAT MORE COOKIES!! I'm dedicated. I'm no quitter. When I set goals, I meet them. And I'd eat every last one of those cara-coco-cocoa-choco treats that I could until I passed out again.

You can't stop me. And you can't have my cookies.