A Saucy Tale (well, sort of)

When I was in Florida, there was a time when I was scheduled to work for hours long enough that would require me to eat two meals in the break room.  Usually lunch and dinner.  Being the optimistic sort that I was, I decided that packing a lunch would be beneficial because there wouldn't be enough time to go to the cafeteria and I really didn't want to eat out of the vending machine for meals, that sounded like a spiral of sadness that would just never end.

So that meant peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Because I'm not really a fan of putting together cold cut sandwiches, far too much effort.

If I was going to pack multiple PB&J sandwiches, I would want some variety, right?  At least, that's what I figured.  I don't eat grape jelly.  It's weird.  And I'm not a fan.  Strawberry jelly all the way!  But that left the question of how could I possibly bring variety to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?  The answer was clear: raspberry jelly.

Fast forwarding to my departure from Florida, I had a nearly full jar of raspberry jelly.  Somehow it found its way into the hamper with my sweaters and my hats.  And that was how a jar of raspberry jelly traveled unrefrigerated from Florida to Illinois.  By car.

I'm sure it was a really thrilling ride for the jelly because I spent the majority of it either singing along with the radio or crying uncontrollably, and I know how sensitive jelly can be.  Its hearing, of course.  Pretty sure I missed a couple notes in my singing those days.  But being stuffed in with sweaters and hats and random plush animals, the raspberry jelly must have had a grand old ride home to Illinois.

And when we got home, the jelly was abandoned in that hamper for a good week before I remembered that it existed.  And that was how a jar of raspberry jelly sat in the front room of my parents' house, unrefrigerated, until I remembered that these things are supposed to be refrigerated.

So now there's a jar of raspberry jelly, nearly full, in the refrigerator at my parents' house.  I suspect that either my family members know that I forgot about it, or they don't eat raspberry jelly for the same reason I don't eat grape jelly.  Because they think it's gross.  So I can't help but pity the poor jelly that didn't do anything wrong, and is just sitting there in the refrigerator door, waiting to be put to some use.  I smeared some across a slice of soda bread the other day, and I haven't died yet, so I'm thinking the time of unrefrigeration didn't actually cause any damage to the jelly.  That or jelly is so full of preservatives and fake things, it doesn't really matter in the first place whether you keep it in the refrigerator or not.  OR that the house is so cold that it was close enough to a fridge in and of itself.

If this jelly is really one of the most dramatic things that I brought with me from Florida, maybe that's why I've been disinclined to twist open the cap and eat some.  Because what if I have flashes of memories of peanut butter and raspberry jelly sandwiches in the break room and get hit with a sadness of missing that time?  I hardly think that this is even remotely possible, but it distracts me from feeling writer intimidation which isn't even close to being related to what I was saying at the beginning of this sentence, but you know, sometimes the sentences need to be let off the leash to run away from you.

And let's not talk about how there's no strawberry jelly in the house.

"When the tide of misfortune moves over you, even jelly will break your teeth."

- Persian Proverb