Guilty Pleasure - Jennifer Baljko

I knew I shouldn’t have even given it a second thought. I should have just kept walking. But, I swear, I heard it call to me from the bakery window. “Jenn, Jenn… I love you! I’m yours. Take me home. Me – the lemon muffin with the white chocolate chips. I’m over here next to the brownie!” Honest to god, the muffin was bouncing on its cute little bottom, desperately trying to catch my attention.

Orgasmic waves of joy lapped my whole body. My feet stopped dead in their tracks. My eyes did their oogly-googly thing. My stomach purred, “Oh, baby. Come to mama.” My head, of course, had a thing or two to chime in, unconvincing as it was, “You know, you had chocolate ice cream yesterday, and that apple thing a few days ago. You can’t have the muffin, too… it’s, uh, um, it’s just wrong.” My thighs and stomach belted out their empty promises, again. “Oh, pleeeaaaase. We’ll walk up the 7 flights of stairs when we get home.” “And, I’ll do 200 sit-ups…and the 200 I was supposed to do yesterday after the ice cream.” Even my heart, usually in pensive reflection and distant from my body’s cravings, offered up a balanced proposition. “You could have a couple of cups of green tea with the muffin. At least you would be putting antioxidants in your body at the same time you’re ingesting white flour and who knows what else.”

Huffing up the last flight of stairs, calves burning, white bakery bag in hand, I turned on my heels and walked back down the stairs. “Let’s go. Another 120 steps back up,” my inner dictator barked. That drill sergeant voice of mine always seems to go missing when I’m slapping down change on the countertop and indulging my guilty pleasure of the day, but I am glad she shows up now and again to keep the rest of me in check.