The Best Thing In The World.



"Someday, when I'm awfully low, when the world is cold...  I will feel aglow just thinking of you, and the way you look tonight."

 I know Frank was singing to a Ritter bar when he recorded that song.  How else could he lace is voice with so much adoration, joy, and sweetness? 

If I'm ever feeling blue or annoyed or lonely or disenchanted with the world, I don't reach for wine; I reach for a Ritter Bar (a habit that will surely take me down a deliciously hazelnut-ty road towards heart disease one of these days).  No matter how bad my day has been, if I eat one of these babies, the world is my hunky dory oyster. 

Near the beginning of our relationship, when Jeff and I had to live apart (which was no fun) I used to get... cranky... at the distance.  I loved him and missed him very much; I was working 65 hours a week, so I could rarely visit anyone; I was occasionally using my sparse spare time to clean out a horrifyingly filthy house, and I was living alone... with no air conditioning.  Needless to say, relatively minor things could set me on a downward spiral into the lair of Dark World Anne. 

During this summer of doom, Jeff would buy Ritter bars in bulk and hide them around my house, unbeknownst to me, while he was visiting.  Then, like a choco-ninja, he would perch and wait for the appropriate time to strike. 

I'd call him - after cleaning the moldiest shower on earth without any access to water, or after 8 hours of being yelled at over billing problems, or when my car stopped working mere days after a $600 repair, or when my dogs' regular check-up and booster shots cost $400 instead of the $80 I was expecting, or after being hit on AGAIN by an extremely persistent teenager at work who I referred to as "overly-confident boy."  Any one of an innumerable amount of circumstances in which the universe tried to play a hearty game of "not touching, can't get mad" with my dignity over summer break would occur and Jeff would simply say, "Walk into the kitchen and check the cupboard above the refrigerator, that drawer in the mud room you never look in, in the closet under the stairs, etc" and there, lovingly placed and waiting for me would be the best thing in the world... 2000 calories of sweet release!  I can say with confidence that without Ritter bars during the 3 hottest months of this year, I would not currently be sane...  Or would not have whatever small resemblance to sanity I currently possess.  Thanks for the savings, boyfriend and Germany.  My functioning brain owes you both big time!  ;)