The problem with being perimenopausal is that you find yourself getting cranky and you’re not sure whether you really should be cranky or if it’s just the testosterone talking. It has taken me all week to try to finish this off without using too many cuss words.

It all started innocently, and promisingly, enough.

She had volunteered to coordinate the refreshments for the kids’ informal Christmas party, which was a very nice thing to do. And she really wanted the refreshments to be good, which is just about all you can ask from someone who is very nice enough to volunteer with your teenaged sons.

She was organized, too. She had a handout! Organized is good. You want that in a volunteer, too.

The handout was very thorough, which is never bad. It had an exhaustively long list of what those refreshments should and should not be.

The refreshments were to be cookies. Not bars. Brownies were suggested by one boy, but that was nixed immediately as not ‘shaped’ enough.

The cookies were to be made from scratch, not bought. No one was brave enough to check to see if a mix would suffice, which was good, because it wouldn’t. There was, of course, a list of allowed and prohibited ingredients.

And there was an email address, so everyone could submit their suggested cookie offering to make sure that not only the recipe and those pesky ingredients could be approved, but to make sure there were no duplicate submissions. Because apparently there’s nothing worse than having too many chocolate chip cookies. (I’m lost at this point: I could never say those words in any combination unless I was yelling, “Hey! You’re eating too many of the chocolate chip cookies!”)

But it wasn’t until one of the boys (for whom, we think, the cookies were actually intended) suggested that they could make the cookies themselves as a friendly competition that the whole thing fell completely apart. Because she replied,

“No. I want them to be good. This is only once a year. Your mothers can do it.”

Now, I don’t want to disparage the efforts of volunteers. I’m keenly aware that I was not running the Christmas party treats this year. Of course, my husband spends about a thousand hours a year with this organization and was in precisely this role for last year’s party so I’m guessing our family is well-represented on this front. (Note: he bought the cookies last year, thus freeing everyone from obligation and all resemblance to the Pillsbury Dough Boy.)

But at this point we have departed from the realm of cookies and have into the realm of Fightin’ Words. For anyone to casually dismiss my time at arguably the busiest time of year for a family (not to mention someone in my particular career) and suggest that it’s no big deal to spend a day making cookies for a hundred ravening teenaged boys…I don’t know how she lives with herself.

Oh, you say? She couldn’t have known how busy a mom like me could be? Then she shouldn’t have presumed.

The only person’s time you can commit is your own.

I’m just sayin’.