I helped my mom out sometimes ... _{[p ... ause ... wow she feels alone suddenly, very aware of the fact that her mom isn't there and can't help her. Something shifts in her face with that but she shakes that off with an only somewhat forced smile and throws herself into the cookie discussion instead. That's easier.]}

Yeah, we did all kinds of stuff like that. It was pretty good. This one time we got it perfect, so we kept trying all the time after that to do the same thing, but we'd forgotten which notes we used.

Did you have a recipe? Maybe you didn't have enough sugar or vanilla in.