Out of Ketchup

It rarely happens in this house... The Johnstone's actually being out of something!

The diligent shopper that I am (my friends might call it obsessive compulsive) has turned our basement & attic into more of a warehouse then anything. I have a second pantry in the basement that is difficult to get to on account of the bins & boxes piled up filled with stuff, good stuff, useful stuff that's intended for more then the 8 people in the house. The walk-up attic has an entire room that's dedicated to "presents" and stuff, good stuff, useful stuff for other people... My freezers, yes ~ a full one in the basement & one littler one in the fridge in the kitchen ~ are usually brimming, so much so, that I sometimes have to stick a big piece of packing tape across the door to make sure it stays closed. I actually pride myself with the knowledge that I have a replacement for the replacement for the replacement. We have toliet paper for our toliet paper & enough diapers to make sure every stuffed animal & dolly have their own allotment... what we didn't have was Ketchup!

There I stood, having exhausted the main kitchen pantry, down in the basement pulling boxes & totes out of the way so that I could get to the shelves & again NO Ketchup! My children were sitting at dinner with lovingly prepared, highly unoriginal Chicken Nuggets & Tater Tots & Corn & Milk and the one last thing they wanted was Ketchup... such a simple request. A request I, as a parent, the grocery shopper, the fridge & cabinet filler, the keeper of the Ketchup should have been able to grant. However, the facts remained, we were in fact Out of Ketchup! Suddenly, a lightbulb went off ~ I grabbed out the small bag of condiments from the butter dish area (who ever uses it for that!) of my fridge & found some ketchup packets that they could squeeze onto their plates... so useless... Ten packets later, dinner was over & I had escaped the paradox of not having more, in a family where one of our mottos is, "There's ALWAYS More!" I have a good feeling that we may never again be... Out Of Ketchup!