chocolate Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

Decadent Toffee

Sometimes we need a little help from our friends to get a job accomplished. And my job tonight is to follow through on my nightly devotion and fulfill my Act of Power on behalf of my son Karl. Surely you might think if all I have to do is write something – anything! – each night, then meeting my obligation should be easy. But trust me, that’s an illusion. And that is where the help of my friends, and in this case, decadent toffee, comes in.

There’s no minimum number of words required or specific topics that demand coverage. So what’s the big deal, you might ask? Staying awake. Thinking of something to write about within the vast ocean of life. (It’s harder than you might think.)

Searching For Indulgence

I try not to indulge in my vices too often but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Hmm. Re-reading that sentence, I’m compelled to clarify: The truth is, I try not to write about indulging my vices too often!

If I do a keyword search of my blogs, though, I discover that I’ve mentioned chocolate something like 27 times and Owowcow ice cream at least five times. I have a sneaking suspicion that I must’ve screwed up on that in some way. It seems beyond comprehension that I only mentioned Owowcow 5 times in over 900 posts. Even if I’ve tried to curb my tendency to write about my indulgences – that seems rather unbelievable.

Makes me think I should search the more generic term: ice cream.

Never Mind

Yeah…never mind. I just did said search and, not surprisingly, 33 posts were referenced. But I’m claiming skepticism on this. For instance, I re-read one of the posts that came up under the search term ‘ice cream’ (a post entitled “Double Icing”) and for the life of me, I don’t see that I mentioned ice cream once in that post.

Perhaps I’m distracted by all the talk of cake and icing in that post. After all, the whole point to this post this evening is the fact that I’m so tired that the only way I’m keeping my eyes open at this point is by savoring a few gooey, finger-licking pieces of utterly sinful toffee my kids left on my kitchen table the last time they visited.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Success! Sort Of?

It’s time for bed. I’ve mostly only succeeded in doing a bit of re-con on the posts I’ve written that might qualify me for an Oral Fixation Award.

I do want to give a shout out to Sage and Sarah, though. The toffee got me to the other side tonight. It’s delicious, it’s sinful, the caffeine in the chocolate and the sugar throughout were beyond yummy and helped keep me focused. Sort of.

Note: I did not finish the box. The decadent toffee depicted in the photo above may be somewhat diminished – but self-control was exercised in the writing of this post.

(T-162)

Pandemic Panacea – Photo: L. Weikel

Pandemic Panacea

I’m not quite sure why, but it felt, today, like the country finally hit a tipping point. All of a sudden people seem to have awakened to the fact that this pandemic is real and it’s going to start impacting all of us now. Yup. Even Americans.

It wasn’t the President finally declaring a national emergency, either. I say that because when I ventured out today, hours before the declaration was made (and “no responsibility at all” was taken), I most definitely detected a dramatic shift in attitude all around me. People were more than edgy. It wasn’t quite panic yet; but the anxiety level was dramatically more palpable today than it was at the start of the week. And the parking lots of all the grocery stores were packed.

Cleaned Out

I was especially astonished when I went into our local Giant supermarket and discovered a ‘pathway to checkout’ had been created, guiding shoppers to their designated cashier in a chute not unlike cattle going to…

Yeah, you get the picture.

But upon chatting with the cashier who was lucky enough to encounter me and my dozen bars of cheddar cheese to ring out (don’t judge; we all have our comfort foods), I discovered that the real craziness had started yesterday, when people were apparently so backed up into lines waiting to check out that other shoppers couldn’t get down aisles or even enter the produce department. Hence the rope line today.

Glad I missed that.

I have to admit, I didn’t even go down the paper goods or hand sanitizer aisles. I did, however, think I might pick up an extra bag or two of frozen spinach – but as you can see from the photo below was quickly disabused of that notion.

Frozen Vegetables Decimated at Giant – Photo: L. Weikel

What’s Really Important

I’ve come to the conclusion that this unprecedented societal experience we’re all having is causing us to run up against some pretty profound choices and realizations.

Some of these might superficially seem mundane. But I actually think they may give us more insight into ourselves than we realize. I sort of think that’s at least partially behind the run on toilet paper. I’m not judging it one way or the other; I’m just saying…it says something about us if the thing we don’t want to get caught without for several days is toilet paper. Perhaps something different if it’s cheese. The hand sanitizer is in a league of its own. We are dealing with a rampant damn virus after all.

Pandemic Panacea

Which brings me to the light bulb moment I had earlier this week.

When I started thinking about what I might want to ‘stock up on’ just in case things get really dicey out there, I made a shocking/not shocking discovery of what’s most important to me: coffee and chocolate. Two substances that have the power to either perk me up or take the edge off…just enough to help me find my center and maintain my balance.

That’s why, earlier this week, while other people were plotting their runs on bathroom tissue (poor choice of words?) and before hand sanitizer flew off the shelves in droves, I made sure I had enough of my precious panacea to tide me over for a potential long haul.

According to dictionary.com, panacea is defined as:

1. A remedy for all disease or ills; cure-all.

2. An answer or solution for all problems or difficulties.

It’s my considered opinion that we all need to find our own unique Pandemic Panacea. Given my earlier admission about cheese, I supposed you could add that to my PP list. And yeah, there might be a couple other eclectic additions as well.

What’s interesting to me is that I have a feeling this is just the first of a number of discoveries I’m going to make about myself as I bear witness to something I can barely imagine unfold before my very eyes.