Start with:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup white sugar
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups flour
2 cups chips
Assemble ingredients. Remember that the only unsalted butter you have is in the freezer. Take it out and put it on the deck to defrost in a hurry. Discover the bag of chips you thought you had is in fact flaked coconut. Make a grocery store run.

Return from store. Find the butter is only marginally less brick-like. Decide to chop it up and cream it anyway. Spend twenty minutes looking for hand mixer your roommate put away in the wrong place again. In large bowl, attempt to cream hard butter. Completely destroy hand mixer. Select sturdiest wooden spoon (remember, the mixer is toast) and cream together. Add eggs one at a time, blending thoroughly after each, and vanilla. While looking for vanilla, find a bottle of almond extract you bought for a strawberry trifle a year ago and decide to throw some of that in too. Decide as long as you're experimenting to add a dash of cinnamon. In separate bowl, mix flour, salt and baking soda. Add that to the butter mixture and, again with the sturdy spoon, mix together thoroughly. Remember that the last time you went shopping you bought the good old-fashioned kind of oatmeal. Decide to make them oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Add 1 cup. Open bag of chocolate chips. Eat a handful. Throw rest in and mix. Try a spoonful of dough. Worry about salmonella the rest of the evening. Realize maybe you ate too many chips. Add 3/4 cup of raisins to compensate.

Preheat oven to 350. Spend twenty minutes looking for cookie sheets your roomate put away in the wrong place again. Load a cookie sheet with a test batch and bake ~8 minutes. Continue hauling pans in and out of oven until all are baked. Oops! A phone call distracted you, and one batch is a little darker than the rest. Decide to save your colleagues the agony of imperfect cookies. Eat them. When the cookies cool, put them in those tins you've been hoarding in the basement. Set aside a plateful for self and roommate. Go to bed with a very upset stomach.

The next morning, eat the ones you set aside for breakfast. On a perfectly serious note, the cookies will come out better shaped if you cool the pans down again between batches.