A Balancing Act

Waste not, want not.

Tracy never did well in the cooking department when his wife and kids were away. This was one of those weekends.

On the one hand, he hated wasting food so he did everything within his power to use up every ounce of cereal, every drop of milk or juice, and every leftover in the fridge before making anything new.

But Tracy had a problem, a minor one but a problem nonetheless.

He either had too much cereal for milk or too much milk for cereal. He was down to his last half cup of milk and he had a full bowl of cereal so he needed at least another half cup of milk. At least, that was what he eyeballed when he saw the milk.

On previous occasions, he had done with less milk but he needed the milk to wash down the cereal.

The other alternative was to half the cereal in his bowl, but that wasn’t going to happen because he had a light supper the night before and was starving. And he was starving for a bowl of cereal, the kind he likes, none of this sugary, chocolaty mess the stores pawn off on gullible customers. No, his was a wheat-based product with high protein. It was the only cereal he ever ate and he absolutely loved it.

Tracy went to the closet to forage for an alternative to his cereal, but before his wife left for the long weekend, she and the kids had cleaned out the cupboard of cereals and oatmeal.

He had to have the cereal. After he grabbed a cup of coffee, he pulled the milk from the refrigerator, eyed it again and then eyed his large cereal bowl. Rather than have dry cereal, he decided he could live without all of the cereal so he dumped about half of it back into the container and shoved the box into the cupboard. Satisfied his eyeball measurements were fairly even, he poured the milk into the cereal, took his coffee and cereal bowl into his office and plopped into his office chair.

Finally, at last he could enjoy his breakfast while he listened to 30 minutes of the Bible with his earbuds in.

Before he turned on the app, he took a swig of coffee and leveled off the spoon of cereal and milk before eating it.

The first bite was already down his throat when he realized something was terribly wrong. He put the bowl down and ran into the kitchen.

 He took the milk container from the garbage can and scanned it.

Sure enough, it was now two days after the expiration date.

“Well, coffee it is then until lunch,” Tracy said to the only person who would be listening to him today.