I goofed with my cookies, + w/a2k login, now what, please?

I've long asked to ok cookies; I know this is unusual. I decline a lot of cookies from various sites I go to on IE (IE 5.16). Every once in a while I go clear out my cookie cache, leaving in the ones that matter, like a2k's and some others I recognize. This has not been a problem before.

Recently I've been remiss in the cookie review, and they seem to have multiplied logarithmically. So, I spent a bunch of time clearing out declines
(I know, or think I know, that I'm being silly, but I just like to clear them out), and then checked back into a2k.

I accepted the first forty or so cookies, and then figured I'd gotten the key ones, and started declining. Declined another, maybe eighty, and somewhere in there, I had to log in again to a2k. UH OH. So I logged in again and started accepting them. Seemed like another hundred. Then I thought, what the hell, and started declining.

I suppose I need to add that I have an old IMac, and older IE, therefore my cookie cache and yours may not look alike.

So now I think better of all this and decide to just grow up and accept all cookies. I go to my cookie cache and only see enabled and accepted listed there, and any I declined Not listed. What's with that? Declined were always listed before, so I could delete those and reconsider.

In the meantime, now, after years of not having to log in every time, I do.
Yes, yes, I have checked the log me in automatically box.

My query is that I seem to have altered the nature of my Cookie history procedure to not show declines -
how can I repent and fix this?