Flashback Friday: I used to be a cookie girl.

A blog I read, The Heir to Blair, is hosting a link-up titled Flashback Friday. Basically, you write your own post about something from your past, go to her blog and link your post up to hers. It's pretty self-explanatory and an easy way to come up with something to blog about when your blog-idea-well has run dry. Therefore, my Flashback Friday is this:

I used to be a cookie girl.

No idea where the glasses came from or why they wound up on my face. Also, please take note of my hair, courtesy of the one and only perm in my lifetime.

Beginning in February of my senior year of high school, me and my best friend CJ both got a job at the mall working at the Great American Cookie Company. We were both shown the ropes pretty quickly, and before long we were both cookie making and cookie decorating experts. I don't think I'll ever have a job that I enjoyed more than this one.

[However, working nights and weekends + the whole minimumish wage = not a job that I could stay at forever. But fun, nonetheless.]

I moved my way up over my few years of working there until I was assistant manager. I loved all of my coworkers, and never dreaded coming straight to work from college. I was in school full time, taking 15 hours a semester, and working 35ish hours a week here. Not because I had to (thanks to the generosity of my parents while I was in school), but just because I wanted to. Nobody could decorate a cookie cake like I could. ;)

No one ever ordered the cow....maybe because having a 16" chocolate chip cookie with a picture of a cow on it is condescending?

If there was some sort of cookie store emergency even today and they needed someone, anyone to come in and open the store and save the cookie day, I could still do it. I still know the morning setup and the cookie "recipes" by heart. 9 years later and the cookie business is still ingrained in my head.

FYI...those giant cookies you see on display are totally rubber. The icing is real though!

I quote "recipes" above because all of the cookies and brownies we sold came in as refrigerated dough. Some of them had toppings added to them, but for the most part we just scooped the dough out and plopped it on a baking sheet and threw it in the oven. I tell you this because if I ever botch a homemade batch of cookies, I don't want you telling me I should be an expert since I used to work here. I am an expert, however, on when is the perfect time to take them out of the oven!

Maybe one day I'll purchase my own cookie company franchise and get back to my one true career love. [Although, that makes me nervous because my metabolism is not quite the same as it was when I worked there in high school and college and could eat cookies for breakfast lunch and dinner and not gain an ounce.] Until that day comes, I'll just reminisce over these pictures that I'm thankful I took and continue boasting that I'm the best cookie decorator there is!

That is 'Wolf Camera' reflected in the glass there. They were across the mall-hall from us!

Now, I'm needing a cookie...perhaps an M&M Double Doozie. Or, a cheesecake brownie. Or, a Chewy Chocolate Supreme. Or....

Or maybe this was a dumb topic to write about when I'm nearly 7 months pregnant and the mere mention of a word such as "cookie" makes me crave them more than ever. I'm sensing a trip to the mall in my very near future. Maybe they'll let me behind the counter and let me give my old gig a whirl for old time's sake! Or maybe they'll let me take a 5 gallon bucket of butter cream icing home with me. Regardless, this flashback has me feeling very nostalgic.

Any flashbacks you'd like to share? Feel free to join me in my trip down memory lane!
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