The Hazards of Cereal

Oh, those Special K commercials make it look so good and healthy for you. Their little brown flakes with mini chocolate bars mixed in with them, "... so you don't ruin your day" they say... what about your night?

This is why you shouldn't eat cereal at night. I didn't have Special K. I had what was left in the bag of maple-and-brown-sugar-fake-shredded-wheat. As my mild sweet-tooth clouded my judgement and beckoned me to pour all the little wheatlings into the bowl...along with all of the maple and sugar bits that had flaked off the big mini-wheats and collected into a funky brown and white dust in the corner of the bag. No where in my brain did anything register that I was about to ingest enough sugar to launch the next three space shuttle missions. No, totally blanked that part out.

So here I am, at 11:45 pm --wound tighter than an eight-day clock, you ask?--Oh honey, I am so far beyond eight days... I am wound like someone who snorted their body-weight in meth and then washed it down with a quadruple espresso. I am Amped to The Moon and Wired For Sound! I would ride roller-coasters if I could. I want to bungee jump off of Mount Rushmore. I want to run to Walmart~literally~~ Run the thirty miles to the nearest Walmart and do donuts in the parking lot without the car. Did I mention that normally, I don't run for anything. A fast-ish walk is the best you can hope for.

There is only one saving grace in this as-close-to-a-coma-as-is-possible-without-completely-having-a-stroke sugar high; I know when I crash, I'll sleep through the night, no problem. I'll probably even dream of chasing Oompa-Loompas through Willie Wonka's factory only to wind up taking a breather by doing the backstroke in the chocolate river.

This type of wound-up should be reserved for mornings when you're facing a house that has just been vacated by hundreds of way-drunk frat boys and have to get it ready in 7 hours for a dinner party when your in-laws, your priest, Martha Stewart, and Oprah are on the guest list. This kind of fake-energy is only useful when you are bamboozled into solo-supervising an entire class of pre-schoolers on a playground about 90 minutes before nap time. By the way, I'm typing like 700 words a minute right now.

I was watching TV, but it was too Too TOO slow-moving to handle this kind of zing. I manually cleaned out the coffee maker and have high hopes that tomorrow when I turn it on that I haven't ruined it, nor will I have to wait the FULL HOUR I did this morning for the damned-worn-out-clogged-up-cheap-ass maker to brew the entire pot. Luckily, I was cleaning house and didn't mind so much. The roads were fogged in badly this morning, and hubby requested that I keep the phone lines free in case he needed to call me, so I couldn't get on the computer. In that one hour I'd done everything but vacuum floors and fold laundry. You can tell now what a mistake that was, what the hell am I supposed to do while I'm all sugared-up and zippidy-do-dah over here now? I already made hubby's lunch. I figured that if I crash as hard as I'm flying high, I may not wake up until Thanksgiving dinner.

And, since my mind is going several-hundred-miles-per-minute, I've had plenty of time to think about the sugar content in today's cereals. This is the REAL root cause of all those kids with ADD. They eat fruit-loops and the like, finish off the little dust in the bottom of the boxes, and they can't sit straight and concentrate to save their lives. I finally understand and can now say that I know the feeling. What I don't understand is how this much sugar in one product is legal. I became diabetic in one bowl, I'm sure of it.

Oh, they talk about Big Tobacco and their lobbyists on Capitol Hill... Bullshit, it's that satanic General Mills over there with their evil little Leprechaun and that plotting rabbit who has grown malevolent from years of "Trix are for kids" tauntings, and then there is their CooCoo for Cocoa Puffs--thing...what the hell type of creature is that Cocoa Puffs thing anyway? I'll tell you what it is, it's something they came up with in their uber-sugared-synthetic-chocolate-flavored frenzy. Sonny-Cocoa-Puffs was a sugar fueled hallucination put on paper. These are the people who are the real threat to this country--Sugar and Cereal manufacturers.

So rant if you will about cigarettes and drunk drivers, pollution and pipelines, pharmaceutical companies and the economy... but I know the truth, the real hazard in America is cereal.