It is no grave secret amongst my family and friends (and fanbase? Do I have a fanbase?) that I have a sugar addiction. It primarily takes the form of ravenous chocolate consumption, as well as, bakery delights such as cookies, cakes, tarts, and, sometimes, pies. I eat chocolate by the bag and cookies by the row. And I’m talking the entertaining guests sized bags in the snack isle, not those ridiculous individual sized bags at checkout.
Cookies and Chocolate – My Dietary Enslavement
I’ve alluded to this dietary enslavement a few times in previous blogs and will do so again in some upcoming commentary. I’ve certainly confirmed it with witnesses present on more than a respectable number of occasions. Suffice it to say, this is not recent development in my life. I may only now be fully coming to grips with the realities of my addiction but the signs have been around for decades.
One such early indicator that I have more than a simple passing enjoyment of sweet treats occurred some seventeen years ago when I first moved to Calgary. I was new in town, starting a new career, and needed a place to crash while I looked for a home. Luckily a good friend of mine whom I’d met on a co-op term a couple years prior was going on a two week vacation with her husband (he is now a friend too but at the time was more of an acquaintance so for the sake of this story I’ll continue to refer to him in this rather cold manner). They needed a house-sitter and I needed a place to live and, well, the stars aligned as they say.
I settled in for my two weeks of free room and, unexpectedly, a small portion of board. Board had not been part of our original agreement though my friend, unwisely in retrospect, had given me the obligatory “help yourself” when leaving. You see, on top of the refrigerator I discovered a metal tin box about 12” square and 4” deep that just so happened to be filled with the most delicious chocolate chip and nut cookies I’d ever tasted! Only later would I later learn that these magnificent cookies were the creation of my friend’s hubby’s dear grandmother.
My mind quickly decided that surely one cookie would not be noticed nor missed. I took one. Delicious. I took two. Doubly delicious. With each passing day I methodically munched my way through more and more cookies. By the end of the first week I was starting to feel a smidge of guilt but my desire to eat these cookies remained insatiable.
That weekend became a turning point in my cookie-eating, house-sitting adventure. There remained no self-delusion. I’d now eaten far too many cookies to hide my consumption. My friend or her husband would surely notice the missing delights once they returned from their trip.
I suspect most people, normal people, would have viewed this moment as time to stop eating the cookies. An addict’s brain doesn’t work like that. I quickly and with a shamefully minimal amount of remorse decided I was beyond the point of no return. If I’m already busted I might as well go down as hard as possible. In for penny; in for a pound, as it were. And so it was that over the remaining week of my tenure I ate every single remaining cookie in that tin box. They were gloriously delicious and they were all in my belly.
This song has nothing to do with cookies or house-sitting or disgraceful behavior towards friends. I’m not even much of a metalhead or a diehard fan of Ozzy Osbourne for that matter. When the above happened I basically only knew “Paranoid” and “Crazy Train” and stories about eating heads off doves or some such lunacy. He really should have had some of these cookies instead.
Anyway, while I was busy exhausting all those delectable cookies I made good use of my friend’s hubby’s music collection and stereo system. This was the song, new to me, that resonated most and was therefore cranked each and every day as I inexorably consumed those ill-begotten cookies.
Come to think of it, the title of this song describes the above situation perfectly. So to kick off the Labour Day long weekend I give you “Flying High Again” from Ozzy Osbourne ’s 1981 solo release Diary of a Madman. Have a cookie!
Studio Version:
Live Version:
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