I am baking cookies. The smell of freshly ground cardamom is overpowering at first, but then melds with the warmth and smells of baking in the oven.

I am an American and I do not possess a good sense of what a 3 mm thickness looks like, nor do I have a ruler, so I have to open and shut the oven door repeatedly trying to figure how long it will be before my already brown cookies are ‘browned’ at the edges. I guess wrong with the first batch, so after figuring out they need at least 15 minutes, I pop that batch in again until I fear burning the pistachios.

“Pistachios?” You might ask.

“Yes,” I say, “Because of my son.”

“Oh, he likes them then?” You presume.

“No. He doesn’t. These cookies are for me. He doesn’t get any!”

I stand in my kitchen guarding both the baking cookies and my son from accessing my bedroom.

I currently have a most reluctant and unexpected open door policy.

I’m am very good at holding onto my mad. This happened yesterday and in response, I took all of his stuffies until the door is fixed. I made him write sentences based on how much the guy estimated it would cost to fix the door jam. (Hint it took about 8 pages of tiny print to write them all.) And today he’s cleaned and vacuumed most of the house and swept half the garage.

He doesn’t get any trips or treats until the door is fixed. Subsequently, I get to listen to a litany of requests to “Fix door.”

He’s even insisting on an exact time of repair.

“10 a.m. tomorrow, fix door.” He is standing next to me as I type this.

This is the parenting paradox. Anything you do to “punish” a child’s misbehavior rebounds on you. He can’t go on trips to Burger King–so I can’t go there either. He isn’t allowed to get the highly desired items from my room, so I have to guard him at all times.

It’s going to be a very annoying end to our summer.

At least I have cookies!