No cookies were baked this week.

The temperature and humidity combination were too great a hill. I am officially declaring today a baker’s holiday.

Also the fact that I worked until 0430 this morning. Then the cat couldn’t open the bedroom door herself at 0800 and she sat and cried outside the door until I got up and let her in to the bedroom. My husband felt this was a mistake but she settled down happily and slept with us until I woke up at 1000.

But it is true, I haven’t turned on the oven all week. Or the stove.

It has been a very leftover week for the microwave.

Or a nosh week with cheese and crackers.

Heck, I even ate a spoonful of peanut butter and called it dinner.

By the time the storm rolled in at 1700 it was too late to bake.

That just means that the planned cookie of the week, the red velvet cake mix cookie, will have to be postponed until July 3rd.

It is more patriotic that way.

I wonder if I should tint my planned icing blue.

So I can make a red white and blue pun.

Maybe not.

In midst of yet another insane week, news of the taking the baby from its mother’s brain dead corpse June 18, 2025 was paraded through all the news media. Yes, technically this was a cesarean birth. In the broadest of broadest senses. A baby was born of a body. Yes, the body just happened to have a dead brain that was very much not directing all the minutiae that goes into balancing the pregnant body.

Doctors were directing that instead. This kind of balancing act of a body that is no longer being directed by a brain but also pregnant is abhorrent.

They had hoped to keep the uterus pregnant until over 30 weeks but they were unable to keep the pregnancy going after 24 weeks and a few days. Because, you know, the brain was dead and not directing anything.

This was not a medical miracle.

This was medical horror.

The result is a 1 pound 12 oz baby that was excised from their brain dead mother. Probably taken straight to the NICU.

This was the mad scientists in the Georgia state legislature who masquerade as legislators who are masking as doctors throwing the dice after the fall of Roe.

This was an entirely predictable outcome to all of their women controlling laws.

A brain dead mother who is artificially kept alive for 4 months so that the infant could be delivered. They were so excited to think that they could, no legislature ever considered whether they should.

Who knows what will be the outcome? Who knows if the baby will have any deficits? Who knows the survivability chances of this perversion of healthcare and women’s rights for the baby?

But the self-satisfied, self-righteous so-called Christian right will hail this as a victory. After all a baby was saved. Saved into a world that their mother had been brain dead for four months before they were sliced out of the uterus.

And salivate over the idea of another.

You know, so that the lessons learned on this poor woman’s corpse can be expanded upon. Maybe the next baby can be incubated until 25 weeks, and so on. And on. And on. And on. Until they hit upon the magic formula to reach full gestation. No matter the cost.

How long until they “manufacture” a brain dead woman?

Emory, the hospital in question that this travesty took place has demurred, saying through a spokesperson “Emory Healthcare uses consensus from clinical experts, medical literature and legal guidance to support our providers as they make medical recommendations.” 

I cannot say it louder that legal guidance has any bearing on medical recommendations. Especially in a situation such as this.

Rest in peace, Adriana Smith. They can’t torture your body anymore. Best wishes to the baby.

And sorrow for any other woman who is forced into continuing to gestate a fetus after they have been declared brain dead.

She won’t be the last.

There I was, running an errand, Throughline on NPR when they started talking about creating the first department of education in the 1860s.

The title of the episode is The First Department of Education and it first ran on June 12, 2025.

The entire episode boils down to how educating people will decrease societal ills. One of the first points that I heard was education of all costs less than a jail.

Of course people who craved control were against it.

Just like today.

Quality episode, definitely worth your forty eight minute listen.

I may be reaching a bit with this pun.

This is in honor of the For Good trailer that dropped this week. You know, the sequel to Wicked? Galinda always says “Toss, toss” right as she shakes her beautiful hair out and back. She also tells Elphaba that there is another version known as toss, toss, leg where she tosses her hair out and back and then sticks out her leg.

This is also the closest I am going to get to doing a Pride cookie this month.

I am a proud ally and I wore my Ally Cat tee shirt in to deliver the cookies.

The cookie of the week continues the Cake Mix cookie theme. The cake mix of the week is Funfetti.

This is a deeper richer vanilla cake with sprinkles in the batter.

Everything is better with sprinkles I think.

So much so that I used the rest of a bottle of sprinkles in the dough. I also added half a bag of white chocolate chips because the recipe says to add in a mix in.

And also to extend the dough just that little much farther.

These are some seriously pretty cookies. All the colors of the rainbow.

It’s okay if your Highlander point of reference is Henry Cavill reprising the role in 2026, Adrian Paul from the television show or Sean Connery from the 1986 movie. The only thing you need to know is that there can be only one.

But one what you ask?

In terms of the show and the movies, there can be only one immortal left after the “Gathering” and that immortal will be gifted all the powers of the other highlanders. You see the highlander can die, and often, but at the end there can be only one.

For a geek in the late 80s and 90s (hello, that’s me and countless others) there can be only one was a rallying cry.

But why only one immortal you ask?

I don’t make the rules.

This does handily shift the balance of favoritism in the operating room.

Favoritism in the operating room is where one person seems to be unable to do anything wrong. No matter what they do it, is explained away by management. No matter what they do in the operating room, it is explained away by the surgeons.

Kind of like rose colored glasses on the face of management. For one person.

They go home early every day? Well, duh, they have a family.

They put in the incorrect blood order on a hemorrhage patient? Well, the patient was getting other products and the bleeding stopped eventually.

They take extra long luxurious lunches, mostly off the clock? Well, duh, a body has to eat.

They have a posse that hangs on their every word and covers for their every against the rules action? Well, duh, a leader needs followers.

We all know or have known of the previous favorite.

We have picked up their slack, caught their mistakes, covered for their hour and half lunch.

The secret of the OR is that the role of the favorite changes over time.

Someone new and fun comes into the OR and all the favors transfer to them. The old favorite is dog meat now and is in the manager’s office for a “talk” about their lunches or a “talk” about their habit of going home early every day.

It is unpleasant to watch the tantrums of the old favorite that result.

But whatev.

Have you met the new favorite? They’re awesome and want to remake the entire OR to reflect where they came from? Sure says management, sure says the posse that has sucked up to the new favorite.

And the old favorite is left in the cold.

Because there can be only one.

My favorite Highlander? Sean Connery, of course.

Duh.