Sinking

I headed to a friend's house for our standing weekly morning coffee. Shortly after 10:00 the Jehovah's Witnesses arrived. Friend had requested that I do something about these repeat visits. No problem. Or so I thought. The door swung open to the expected but unwelcome guests, and I was fully prepared to use some very blunt language to make it clear that they were not wanted and should stop returning. Except our JW's came with an unexpected arsenal. I saw the goody basket, and all resolve not only melted--- it flat-out fled.
Rather than telling the JW's to move it on along, I watched Friend's preschool daughters take off with the basket of doom. Friend and I stood feeling helpless as the JW's read us a single line of scripture before saying how they knew this to be "our special time" and then leaving. They know my car. They know our schedules. We closed the door behind the pair with an air of resignation and thoughts of, "Oh, ___fill-in-the-blank___."
Walking into the living room Friend pointed out that I was all sorts of going to take care of this. They had a gift basket. A gift basket! Who can be firm in the face of tea and coffee assortments, handicrafts, and cookies in an attractive presentation container?! We took the basket of doom away from the pre-K crew. The feeling of helplessness only worsened as we examined the wonders contained within as we sat at the kitchen table sipping our coffee and eating the world's best-ever gourmet chocolate chip cookies (clearly homemade). While wondering if the cookies had some sort of special JW conversion spices within, we made sure to polish off the every crumb.
We are sunk. But maybe they will bring us more cookies next week.