Glycotopia

When my younger brother was small, my sister indicated she thought he was stupid - "so stupid," even - because when he'd be in the kitchen eating sugar, and Mommy would ask him, from another room, what he was doing, he would answer quite factually, "Eating sugar."

Nobody in our house is quite that honest, but they do have the same taste. We keep sugar in its original five-pound bag, usually, but the bulk-and-mass do not prevent Daniel from liberating it from its lofty kitchen cabinet shelf (using a chair, of course), and Madeleine and he seem to take turns absconding with the entire bag, spoon in hand, and having a little Cuban feast. In fact, you can sometimes hear sugar spilling onto the floor, abruptly, from another room, as an empty stomach finds its way to some much-craved, crunchy carbohydrates, and you can sometimes hear the crushing crystals beneath your feet as you walk across the dining room floor.

I don't really like this phenomenon, and the other day, I was inclined to clean up the entire mess, but then Daniel pointed out a way of taking care of a couple of needs at once, which I hadn't considered - the need for nourishment and the need for cleanliness:

"I think the dogs might like this sugar-mess."

And the best part is, I also suspect that the dogs would enjoy that kind of thing.

(January 14, 2012)