To the hash brown fairy....

Thank you for being you.  I don't know how you just knew what I would need today, but you never fail to come through.

You see, I am dieting.  I shouldn't be eating fast food, but my little boy asked for a biscuit, so I swung by Hardee's and got him a whole meal since he loves hash browns and I wanted coffee anyway.

It was a bad idea.  The car immediately filled with the sweet aroma of egg biscuit mixing with fried oil that signals the presence of those warm crispy potato treats.  I instantly began salivating.

"Control yourself!" barked a miniature Jillian Michaels on my left shoulder, mindful of the fact that this slip-up could result in recording 71,800 calories in my Lose It! app. "Eating these hash browns is not going to fix it. It's not going to change the fact that you made it all the way through childhood without ever going to Disneyworld."

Gasping for air, rolling the window further down to flood my senses and drown out the beckoning scent of fried seduction, my conscience reminded me calmly that the hash browns were for Brady. A good mother doesn't indian-give delicious treats to her sweet boy.

"He's just a kid. He won't notice if you eat most of them. And even if he does, who's he gonna tell?" snorted a miniature Andy Richter on my right shoulder.

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head quickly, trying to blink out the images and the smell. My God, the smell.

I pull slowly into traffic, all the while keeping one eye on Brady in the mirror, who is slowly and deliberately bringing each individual delectable bite of potato goodness to his mouth and smiling at me just as he pops them in, an evil glint in his eyes.

Something snaps deep inside the tangled web of gooey brain mass in my skull.  I lose all sanity and reach behind me to snatch the box from his lap.

NOOOOO! Empty! How could that little stinker eat them all? Without even OFFERING any to his sweet mommy?  What kind of little terrorist am I raising? Where did I go wrong?

Furious, I snatch the bag from the passenger seat to slam the empty carton into it.
Tha-thunk.

I pause with the bag in mid-air, a cheshire cat grin slowly stretching across my face at the realization of the source of that thump.

The hash brown fairy did it again. He/she left two golden, glistening hash browns in the bottom of the bag, all for me.

And they. were. delicious.