cookie time is upon us once again

in the midst of working through our sadness over molly's diagnosis, we have this to deal with:

oh yes.  it is indeed girl scout cookie time.  and while my overall feelings about girl scouts in general haven't changed much since last year, we are still girl scouts and we do still sell cookies.  funny thing though...they tell you that you can't *require* girls to sell them.  but when it's time to place the order for your starting inventory, they say "you can opt out, but if you do so, expect a phone call from council."  that doesn't sound threatening at all, does it??

but the girls seem to enjoy cookie season.  of course, this is because they experience none of the headaches that go along with it.  on their end, they experience the fun of selling a product that lots of people look forward to buying every year.  and yes, they do learn some pretty valuable life skills along the way.  like, my kid has learned how to deal with rejection and how to approach people and ask them politely to support her troop.  she's had the door shut in her face (super shitty) and others who happily give donations instead of taking cookies.  and she really loves being a girl scout, so we continue on.

since last year, i've taken over the official "leader" position for our troop because of the stupid politics.  it still amazes me how many hoops they put you through and how difficult they make it to manage a troop.  and...they tagged us for yet another audit of our accounting.  i had to go back and make copies of all of our bank statements and receipts for everything we'd spent money on and produce a spreadsheet with an explanation of what all the purchases had been for.  this is all pretty standard stuff, right?  no big deal.  BUT.  they had already received this shit from us in june when annual financial statements from all of the troops.  why on earth did we have to do it again?

oh well.  in any case, we've got girl scout cookies to sell.  and this year, we even have a personalized website that can be used if you're not local to us and would like to support your favorite girl scout and her troop.  on the website you can order cookies (although you do have to pay for shipping) or you can purchase boxes that will be donated to military troops.

i'm not allowed to post the link on any public social media, so if you look at this picture and feel totally compelled to send some cookie or donation love...well, just drop me an email and i'll get that link right to you:

look at that face.  how can you resist that face?  heh.