The Day the Sugar Ran Out

As a rule, we are healthy eaters. Most of the time we don’t have sugar in the house and we limit the amount of junk food. There are, however, exceptions such as moving.

If you have been following my blog the last few months, you’ll know that we are at the end of a very chaotic move that has lasted for many long weeks. Hence, we have been eating junk food that whole time.

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The morning started like any other Saturday – with boredom. Saturdays should be a day of rest, but all too often they end with bored children wandering around. It didn’t help that we didn’t have anything to rest from. No school for the kids, not much work for me to do around the house. We should have been unpacking, but alas the basement was still being finished and we weren’t able to bring our boxes in from the garage yet.

After a breakfast of cereal and yogurt, during which Baruch remarked plaintively that we had run out of milk…and butter…and (good) crackers and all other wonderful things in the world, I set about writing. The first five hundred words that filled the pages of my novel that morning were trash. But as I went on, I stopped hearing the screams (of joy, delight and anger) of my little siblings and I was lost in the world of my characters. I finished with a grand total of 1,739 words and went to find something else to do before I had to come back and write 800 more.

The morning and afternoon wore away in this and that and after a lunch of leftover matzo and cheese, I sat down in front of the glowing blue screen to work on my Etsy shop. More precisely, to find supplies for the things I was going to create for said shop.

Hours ticked by and my mind whirled with plastic charms, apple and eucalyptus branches, mini mugs (all of which were tragically out of stock), coconut shells, zip ties and hangers. More things piled up in my cart and I cringed at the price tags. Young, naive little me had no idea that starting a shop would cost so much of my precious, dwindling money. Alas, I know better now.

I’d only found half the things on my extensive list but my brain was so shot that I could no longer add $4.94 to $29.56. It was $45.19, right? I tried to search for plastic chain and instead wrote chocolate in the Amazon search bar.

Oh.

That was the cause of my dying brain. It had nothing to do with the glaring screen or the countless numbers that I had added (using the calculator, of course).

I was low on sugar. That could be easily remedied.

Up the stairs and to my makeshift room I went and plopped down inside of the closet where my stuff awaited the finish-ment of my bedroom. Amongst dirty clothes, half-filled journals and gum wrappers from at least five packs, I dug in the front of my backpack for the little stash of candy that had kept me afloat during the long, uncertain days of wondering if we would be able to even buy our house.

But, to my deep horror, all that met my searching fingertips was candy wrappers. Empty ones, with little remnants of chocolate staining the edges.

I dug deeper. No, no, it couldn’t be completely gone, could it?

Frantically, I dumped the contents of my backpack out onto the floor in front of me. The carpet was littered with wrappers, pen caps, The Iliad, a book of baby names and a phone charger. But no candy.

I searched through my camera bag where I had stashed a few pieces. Nope. Gone. Just a couple forlorn, half sticks of gum lost among a multitude of wrappers.

With a sigh, I walk downstairs, defeated.

I shouldn’t have eaten all three of those truffles yesterday. If I’d known that they were the last….

I glanced through the kitchen. Little bits of cheese and matzo littered the counter and the floor. Someone should probably clean that up. Or maybe just wait until supper because anything I attempted to clean would inevitably get dirty five seconds later.

A glance in the baking cabinet confirmed the horrible truth. We were completely out of chocolate chips. And…and sugar. The cookies that had used both two days before had long since vanished.

The house smelled of sweet vanilla coffee, but the pot was empty and the aroma mocked me. I had to do something to get away from my brain that was crying for sugar. That is, unfortunately, quite hard to do.

I decided to take a walk. It was just the thing to take my mind off of everything but the beautiful, snow-covered mountains.

The house was icy inside so I assumed that outside it would be just as frigid. I grabbed the thick coat that all of the older girls in the Reschly home shared and went to look for socks. I hate socks, so that tells you how desperate for warmth I thought I was.

I clawed through the dirty laundry, looking for them. I found one of one color and another of a vastly different shade. Hmm, but none that were similar. I was just about to give up when I found the long searched for socks hiding in the middle of the bin, right next to Dovid’s dirty pants. I pulled them out and slipped them onto my feet. Maybe they looked silly with my sandals, but who cares? It was warm.

Nahum and Baruch accompanied me on their new scooters that they found at the thrift store for less than $10.

Within ten minutes, I was sweating profusely and my face was tinged red. The sun had decided to come out and warm the world with its brilliant rays. Everyone else was walking in T-shirts and there I was in a massive coat and huge socks. Great. I hoped that nobody would mistake me for a giant penguin, waddling down the sidewalk. I couldn’t even take off the coat because I had a very dirty shirt on underneath that I had no desire for all of the neighbors to see.

After a long and beautiful walk, in which I spent half the time running after the boys (legs go much slower than scooters, for any of you wondering), and the other half gasping for oxygen after the cold air stole it and left icy claw marks in my lungs, we returned to the now warm house.

It still smelled like sweet, vanilla coffee and I was once again painfully reminded that I had no more sugar at my disposal. I should have treasured my candy more carefully when I had it.

~Hattush