Today is donut day (well actually it is the 2nd Annual Emergency Preparedness Expo at NDSU) but the fact that there will be donuts is what looms in my mind presently. I made special efforts to use my small coffee cup today so that I had to make more trips up and down the stairs. I thought this extra calorie burning activity would help rationalize my donut intake.

I do so enjoy donuts. I have a long history of warm, fuzzy memories with donuts. My favorite donuts are glazed, powdered and the glazed with chocolate icing and sprinkles –mc-yummy. There was an incident in the early months of 1999 that did somewhat taint my memory though for powdered donuts. It happened over ten years ago, but it still sticks in my mind.

It was when I was maybe seven or eight months pregnant with Cheyenne and I was coming back late in the day from a whole day of shopping with my sister (who would lure you out on a “just a few stops” promise only to return you home at the end of the day exhausted and wondering what happened).

The last stop of the day was at the grocery store -ostensibly for a few things. What that meant in reality was a few things from every grocery shelf. By this time I was starving (I was, after all. eating for two and lunch had been long ago). One should not shop when one is starving because sometimes it makes for poor purchase choices. When all the grocery booty was loaded up one item made its way to the front seat for the ride home (which was thirty minutes back then as we lived in Kindred). That item was the powdered sugar donut box. I thought no harm would be done if I had just one donut as I was driving home to take the edge off my hunger.

Well, I was a bit hungrier than I thought. I was hurriedly shoving in the last remnants of donut three in my mouth as I was pulled over by a county sheriff’s officer. Let me provide you the visual imagery: very pregnant woman with white powder all over her face, on her hands and a nice dusting over her fairly large baby bump (which was serving at the time also as a crumb shelf catcher) trying to respond to an officer with her cheeks filled with powdered donut.

To the officer’s credit he did not laugh – one must wonder if they receive special training at the academy for that. He just looked at me with one of those looks that clearly conveys the message, “what in the heck is going on here?”

He asked me if I knew how fast I had been going. I couldn’t even speak my mouth was so full. I just shook my head. And then he just looked at me intently for what seemed like minutes, but in reality was likely all of five seconds and I couldn’t take the pressure – I cracked and started spilling my guts. I was trying to half chew and talk and in the process I spit a few small pieces of donut at him – it was a lovely scene to behold. I realized that me with white powder all over me looked like I was guilty of something and I wanted to make sure that the officer understood that the only white powdered drug that had been used in that car was in the form of powdered donuts.

Well, it was traumatizing and horribly embarrassing, but the officer, after graciously hearing the rambling story of my day and its culmination in the powdered donut incident, decided he would let me off with a warning to drive slower and to wait till I got home before I ate any more donuts. Lovely memory.  I cannot imagine how he related this scene to his colleagues.

So, it’s donut day, and on this occasion please allow me to serve as a horrible example of why one should never eat powdered donuts while driving…I think glazed would be okay though.  🙂

Day eighty-one of the new forty – obla di obla da

CC