Sleep, cookies and other deep thoughts

I have a new philosophy that I've adopted as my motto in life, since becoming pregnant with my fourth child in 5 years. It goes like this:

"Never think farther ahead in life than past my next sleep"

Now this doesn't mean I can't plan fun vacations next month, and I can't daydream about what I'm going to be when my kids grow up... but it does mean that I don't have to worry about how I'm going to handle making dinner tomorrow when my one year old has kept me up all night, and I'm not to even start thinking about how I'm going to teach my 6 year old high school physics when she's a teenager.

In fact, I don't worry about laundry, dishes, vacuuming.. or even what time I'm going to be woken up in the night by assorted children who need their mommy.... Because it's all after my next sleep and therefore is out of bounds.

Miraculously, without all the worry and angst that I used to put into everything from laundry to when I'm going to hit menopause... Life still seems to go on. Laundry and dinner get done, because I'm not as stressed out anymore. Children get attended to, and husbands get clean socks and underwear, and I even get naps in.

......

Now I am wondering how I can transfer this good motto over to my cooking skills somehow... Like don't think farther ahead then when your timer buzzes.

I'm not sure why, but every single batch of cookies I have made in the past 5 years or so has managed to have at least one tray full of burnt hockey pucks. The first tray always comes out perfectly, but after the initial excitement, all the kids wander in search of greener pastures, and I am left in the kitchen all alone with a timer waiting to beep, mess everywhere, and a tray full of warm fresh cookies. What am I to do but to ignore the mess and sit down to taste-test one or a few of our freshly baked treats.

This is where I go wrong every time.... I'm eating a cookie, there's a mess I'm trying to ignore, and there are no kids around so I'm trying madly to think of something to do to take advantage of the quiet. I start thinking beyond the end of the timer, and inevitably phone someone, start checking my email, or settle into a good book, and then poof!! Where did the time go? All of a sudden that telltale smell drags me out of my state, and I realize I've wrecked yet another batch. Urgh!

I think I'm going to have to set a rule of only baking one batch at a time and freezing the rest of the dough for another moment of 'domesticity'. Or maybe just eat the cookie dough raw... Yummy!!