A Cautionary Tale

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I had hoped  my head would be far enough above the water to let me to write Friday Orts and a Blurb last week. It wasn't and I didn't, but I had my blurb all ready to go, I realized today I probably shouldn't wait until another week has gone by to publish it, because it could save someone else from the sad fate that befell  me.

Husband and I are trying to be the kind of healthy people that grace the front page of the AARP newsletter. They are shiny-haired and smiling and too busy to look at the camera because they are scuba diving and parachute jumping and whatnot. If you know Husband and me, you know we have not yet been called to model for this publication. But we still want to be that kind of healthy.

To this end I've started stocking bags of almonds for the times when we're too famished to wait for the pureed cauliflower to reach the table. A handful of almonds, according to nutrition experts, are practically health in a bag. They lower your cholesterol and higher your potassium and I don't even know what else, but Dr. Google is very impressed by them.

So, anyway, I've been buying the big bags of almonds for snacks and last week I saw that Blue Diamond sells a dark chocolate flavored variety. I checked the calorie count, saw it was identical to the regular almonds, and threw the bag in the cart.

This was a very, very huge mistake.

These almonds taste like a Hershey bar that has been inverted onto itself, leaving the most delicious parts behind. Except that unlike a Hershey bar that is finite and makes you quit eating because you have finished the whole bar, these almonds are in a nice big gigaquintillion-calorie bag.

"I'll just have two more," you say to yourself when you have finished having the recommended serving size of a dozen nuts. That original dozen were healthy, but the excess two (or four or 14 or however many handsful) go straight to your waist and hips.

"That's okay!" your waist urges you. "Those are so delicious--eat some more!" "Don't forget that if you eat them while you're standing up the calories don't count!" your hips chime in.

If you decide to ignore my warning and buy some dark chocolate almonds, don't blame me. A waist is a terrible thing to mind, but the hips straight-out lie.