oh my darlin' clemintine

i'm completely addicted to oranges. it's one of my best kept secrets. in college, i would hide 10 lb bags of oranges in the drawer of my desk, leaving my books with no home. i would have to refill the orange drawer probably twice per week, three times if it was finals week. i don't quite know how i managed to keep my roommates from finding out. the year between graduation and getting married was citrustacular. there was no need to hide, no one to question the sheer volume of peel in the garbage can. i was one happy, vitamin-C filled chick.

then i got hitched, and retreated back to shamefully concealing my love for the fruit. the first two years are so full of discovering lots of little things about each other that i didn't want to just offer such a large secret off the bat. and since you share most every nook and cranny with your permanant roommate, i couldn't even hide the oranges. i've spent the last 17 months looking at them longingly in the supermarkets, knowing that if i granted myself one, i'd sure lose all control and the cops would find me three days later, my esophagus (nope, no spell checking here) completely disolved from the acid of a thousand oranges.

but today, i'd had enough. we were picking up some groceries to make dinner for friends who've just had the most adorable baby. and there, just a foot away from the celery, was a box of "cuties," little clemintine oranges, looking as cute as they claimed. my breathe quickened a bit as i saw that they were on sale. i took a deep breath, and prepared myself to casually grab a box of the cuties. the husband said "what do we need those for?" to which i replied "oh, i mean, it's the holidays, so, i just thought...you know...um, i think i might be getting a cold or something, aren't you supposed to have vitamin C or something? i mean, we don't have to get them, i just thought it might be nice...." at this point he'd already moved on to examining tomatoes and mumbled something like "whateverrrr"
glory of glories! oranges! i could think of nothing else the for the remainder of the shopping trip, and the ride home. we walked in the door, and as non-chalantly as i could, i cut open the netting surrounding the little bundles of fabulousness. the husband trotted upstairs to watch ESPN and i sat down on the couch with my orange. my peeling skills came back to me quickly...that trick where i get the whole peel off in one piece...that took me four months to perfect....and here i am, doing it as well as i had back then.

they're sweeter than i remembered. and the juice explosion is a little more excitingly startling. and now....i'm trying to find a way to reconfigure the peels to resemble uneaten oranges, how to discourage the husband from wanting to eat one, and when i can get back to the store to buy a replacement box so he'll never know what just happened.