Please (Don't) Try Harder.

 Being an undergraduate student at the ripe age of twenty-five (almost 26) has both uplifting moments and also those that are rather disheartening.  To be honest, I have days when I feel, well...old.  Which is funny, because I remember feeling so grown up when I was in my early twenties, endowed with the right to vote and the ability to get into a rated-R movie.  Yet now that I am on the cusp of being in my late twenties (not to mention married), I look at these young does and they all seem like teenagers to me, frozen in some retrospective bubble of girlie world. This is all fine, except when one day are you walking through the Student Center with a cup of coffee and you pass Miss Legs wearing the smallest pair of....are they shorts?  Someone help me out here... I can barely vouch for calling them denim panties.  Maybe she was wearing a pair of denim diapers from the Gap?  Is that a new trend?

Anyway, the fact that this girl appeared to be wearing denim diapers wasn't quite as shocking as the fact that she was touring the Student Learning Center in them with her parents.  Correct me if I'm wrong, mom, but you would be mortified if you had to tour campus with me while my cheeks were on full display, correct?  It is incidents such as these that make me let out a sigh and consider myself old fashioned at the age of 25.  They also lead me straight back to the coffee shop for an oatmeal raisin cookie.

 [photo via simplyrecipes]

You might argue that they are not summery enough!, not jivin' with the season!, that they are best eaten in the fall, that warm cookies in July are too off-beat , etc. etc. etc.  Yet I must insist that you are wrong.  The reason that oatmeal cookies serve a purpose in July, though not summery, and though they be not a Popsicle, is that they have the power to comfort, soothe and set the world upright regardless of the season.  Are you hearing me?  You wouldn't want to eat a Popsicle in January, but you would want to eat an oatmeal cookie in July.  And more importantly, you would eat an oatmeal cookie in July not merely because it would taste good, but because it would make you feel good. 

Now that we've established the importance of the limitless power of the oatmeal cookie.  I shall give you the recipe.  This one wins because it keeps things simple, and with an oatmeal cookie, simplicity is key.  I bake mine listening to these foxy chics (and the song below in particular). The music and the cookie combined make me feel just right.