Preparing against the day

I've recently become addicted to Trolli sour brite crawlers. It would be a bad thing, except now I get my daily recommended values of Yellow 5, Red 40, and Blue 1. Everyone knows that it's hard to find a reliable source of Blue 1. Now I have one.

I became addicted to TSBCs on my trip to California to attend my grandfather's funeral. Before then, my traditional travel candy was good and plenty. But on this trip, I found myself devouring pack after pack of these little goodies. I couldn't help myself. The Blue 1 had me hooked. And I am still craving them, even though the road trip has long been over.

Now I'm constantly seeking a cheap source of my drug of choice. I went to Wal-mart two weekends ago and found them on sale for 79 cents a pack. I grabbed every pack they had. It wasn't rational. I just had to have them all. And when I was about to run out of them, J-Girl bought five more packs from Smith's. She had to pay 99 cents a pack, but she had no choice—Wal-mart has been out of TSBCs every time we've gone there since I last cleaned them out. I'm beginning to suspect that there might be other addicts out there. Or maybe there is some cartel at work trying to artificially jack up the prices, like OPEC. Or it could be the wheat shortage. After all, the bag contains the warning, "Packaged on equipment that also packages products containing traces of milk, egg, wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, and/or soy products." As wheat prices soar, it can no longer be cheap to find wheat tainted packaging equipment, with or without the appropriate "and/or."

I interpret all of this as a sure sign that I need to stock up on TSBCs so that when famines and pestilences come, me and my family will be fine. I'm going to start building a TSBC storehouse. I think I'll put some malt balls away, too. And maybe even some "and/or" wheat tainted packaging equipment.