LJ IDol - Week 13 - Open Topic
I have an addiction.
I'm not addicted to shopping, although my husband might tell you otherwise. I just find the treasure hunt of an all day foray into the wilds of our local thrift stores to be intensely satisfying!
And, I'm not addicted to porn, although on a regular basis I do adore a good gangbang video, you know, the kind set in a cheap hotel room with 31 flavors of dudes and some great money shots? Hot!
So, it's not shopping or porn, not booze or social media or cigarettes.
I have the sweetest addiction of all.
I am addicted to sugar.
Sugar is one of the most highly addictive substance on the planet. Rats, when given cocaine and sugar will summarily pick sugar over the other white powder.
I have loved sugar for as long as I can remember. One year at Christmas, my mom put mugs full of M&M's and Reese's Cups and ribbon candies on the mantle. While she napped one afternoon, I piled up books and climbed up there and devoured ALL of it in one sitting, hiding the wrappers in the backyard. That night I watched wide eyed as she hollered at my dad when she discovered it gone but never fessed up.
Candy is my kryptonite. Now I keep a "candy purse" hanging in my closet with an assortment of boxed and bagged treats for trips to the movies - or for when my husband or I get a craving while lying in bed watching TV at night. I can recite Wonka and Nestle and Ferarra Pan varietals like they were members of my nuclear family. Tangy candy is my favorite. Lemonheads and Airheads, Nerds and Runts, Skittles, Starburst...man, when was the last time I had a Starburst?
Getting off track... I knew I loved sugar but didn't realize it was an addiction until I was cleaning out my closet a couple springs ago and I kept finding candy stashed all over the damn place. Like, six sticks of rock candy behind the shoeboxes and a box of Lemonheads in the back of my underwear drawer. You know you're a junkie when you start stashing shit in your underwear drawer! I had no idea how long it had been there, but I ate the stuff anyway. I do know it takes a LONG time for candy to go bad.
But it's not just candy.
Donuts, ohmygod Krispy Kreme donuts make me drool. If the hot light is on - Wait, do y'all know what that means, "If the hot light is on?"
Ok, for those of you not from the South, it means the donuts are being made RIGHT THEN. The conveyor belt is, right at that very moment, rolling along with fresh, hot donuts on it and the glaze machine is running nonstop too, pouring a sweet, sweet waterfall of sugary perfection over the tops of the fantastically fried rings of dough. When you eat one, they just melt away in your mouth, ephemeral clouds of Heaven on your tongue. You cannot eat just one. Hot Krispy Kremes are one way you know God loves you and wants you to be happy.
And chocolate - dark or milk or bittersweet - can blindside me with its beautiful complexity. Reese's Peanut Butter cups are irresistable - the man who thought to put those two flavors together - or woman - I can totally see a woman having invented that - they are genius! But not white chocolate. That stuff turns my stomach due to an unfortunate Easter Bunny overeating one spring morning as a child.
Oh, and cupcakes, who doesn't love cupcakes? Cupcakes are so much better than just cake because they totally maximize the frosting to cake ratio. Frosting is fabulous. Last week I got some donuts and then made Martha Stewart's Nutella whipped cream frosting recipe and slathered the donuts with the homemade stuff and it was AWESOME!
And therein lies the problem. I might want to slow down but sugar is easy to get. There are no age restrictions, no one taking my name when I buy it at the grocery store to make sure I'm not abusing it at home. It's cheap, and if I run out of candy or donuts, I have learned to bake like a sumbitch so whatever I crave I can whip up in the privacy of my kitchen in about an hour! I'm proud of my baking abilities but it sure isn't helping me lose any weight.
So last week my parents came to visit. When my dad arrived - he's 69 years old now - he discreetly asked if I had a safe place in my refrigerator for his insulin bottles. My stomach turned over. My dad, a long time sugar lover who would sit, when I was a child, and eat an entire jar of marmalade with a spoon while watching television at night was now shooting up due to his sugar habit.
"When did that start?" I asked him.
"Oh, about three months ago" he tossed off, like it was no big deal. "That's what they give you when your pancreas don't function like they used to, baby."
When he was here at Christmas, he was still fine taking pills to regulate his sugar. I guess his diabetes has taken a nose dive since then. Just like my grandmother, who started insulin pills in her mid 60's but was up to six shots a day when she died at 74. And now look at me, the granddaughter who never meet a cookie she didn't like.
I've been thinking a lot about my grandmother and my father and those two little bottles, and the needle my father pulled out to jab himself with the next morning before breakfast. That's going to be me sooner rather than later if I don't slow down.
But then, as I'm driving home from the Goodwill this afternoon, I see the marquee on the Chick-Fil-A sign.
"Hot? Cool off with a fresh peach milkshake!" it calls.
I think 'They must have read my mind!' and pull in to the drive through where I order a peach shake, large-sized, with whipped cream too. Damn, it was good.
And that's why I call it an addiction.