(Note - This story involves a big wiggly insect. If you are terrified of bugs or prone to bug nightmares, you might want to skip it.) I was making my favorite cottage cheese, fruit and nut breakfast combo this week. A key step involves wrapping macadamia nuts in a paper towel and bashing the hell out of them with the bottom of a heavy sugar jar. I had my cottage cheese in the bowl, my fresh strawberries sliced, and my nuts ready to be whacked. As I reached for the glass sugar jar, something in it moved, something big and black with spiky legs and long antennas! Eeeeeeeeew! EEEEEEEW!!! Using every ounce of self-control and all of my monkey ninja powers, I resisted the urge to throw the jar against the wall, shriek like a little girl and levitate out of the room. Instead, I slowly and calmly placed the jar on the counter and I dove behind the refrigerator.
From my safe vantage point behind 300 pounds of Kenmore, I could see that Mr. Insect was behaving a little weirdly. For one thing, his bug butt was sticking straight up in the air and he was literally face-down in the sugar. For another thing, he wasn't... really... moving. I crept up for a closer look, thinking maybe he was dead. I tapped on the jar and he slowly and nonchalantly moved one leg. I hopped in a circle flapping my arms and bounced out of the room.
What to do? I couldn't do any nut-smashing (heh, heh, heh...) with him IN there, and I didn't want to open the lid because then he might come OUT and I might run through the wall of the kitchen like Herman Munster. So, I left him on the counter for further observation. I smashed the macadamia nuts with a pointy hammer thing I found in a drawer, and I ate my breakfast far, far from the icky insect situation. In fact, I forgot all about him for a few hours.
Later that afternoon, I looked at him again. He was still face down in the sugar, apparently eating it, apparently in some kind of a drunken bug sugar stupor. He'd been eating sugar non-stop for like ten hours! I was amazed, and I felt some kind of a twisted carb-junky bond between us, but I wasn't about to open that lid. I waited for my husband to come home. He listened patiently as his crazy wife explained to him about the big wiggly bug in the sugar coma and how I'd been "observing" it all day. He immediately picked up the jar and shook it (eeeeee!!!). The drunken bug righted itself, perked up it's scary antennas, and looked at us like WTF? I bolted out of the room on my tip-toes. I heard the back door open and I ran back just in time to see the jar open and the wind catch the cloud of white sugar. Mr. Insect hit the ground running, as fast as his little bug legs could carry him, in a twisted, drunken serpentine line, covered in magical white fairy dust. I said, "Wow! That bug had quite a party today." Husband said, "But now he tastes like sugar. His friends are going to eat him."
Ugh! I'm sure there is some kind of a moral to this story, some cautionary tale involving insulin, addiction, restraint and friendship, but I don't know what it is and I have a sugar jar to boil.
