I ate an ice cream today. 

It sounds okay, right? Here's the thing, though. I've cut down my sugar intake pretty intensely over the last few months, and especially in the last few weeks, so that pretty much the only sweet things I eat are dates, sultanas and (sometimes) 70% dark chocolate. (Which I Love. Want me to do something for you? Promise dark chocolate at the end of it and I'm yours.)

Basically, I'm not used to it anymore.

Slightly reluctantly, I've been taking the kids to the lolly shop as an after-school Friday treat. They aren't allowed very much; just something small, and normally I don't ever get anything for myself. I actually don't like lollies at all.

Ice-cream, on the other hand...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

The lolly shop has recently moved. They are approximately 20 metres further down the road from the pub where the cash machine is, making 50 metres in distance all told. And here is the crux of the story. I HAD NO CASH. (Actually, I don't know why this is a surprise to me. I almost never have cash. I have embraced the cashless society completely and utterly and if I ever open my wallet and find actual hard money in there, I'm astounded. But the point is made. Today, like every day, I had no cash.)

The next thing was this: the register in the shop had a sign on it. $10 minimum for purchases with cards. Now, to buy three kids a small treat, I was pushing to make ten bucks. And this is how my brain worked. If I buy something to make up the difference, I won't have to walk 50 whole metres there and 50 whole metres back to the pub to get some cash. Truth be told, I'm pretty lazy. In my defence, 100 metres seems like a very long when your children are desperate to get their lollies and get home. But really there is no defence. And I can't pretend there is.

So. I ordered an icecream, to get myself to ten bucks. A chocolate icecream. Because I love chocolate. And I thought, "I don't actually want this that much. But that's okay. It's a treat." The lolly shop man scooped my icecream and I nearly died, it was so big, but I thought, "oh well, it's a one off" and then I took it home and ate it. 

It WAS SCRUMPTIOUS.

My mouth was my best friend the entire time I was eating. And then my body was like, 'hey, that was okay, for a treat, every so often' for 20 minutes after that. BUT then the sugar kicked in.

Headache. Nausea. General gross-ness. The need to skip dinner and drink 50 cups of water in one sitting, just to get rid of the yuck. Four hours later I still feel revolting. 

I like ice cream, but I like how my body feels when I don't eat sugar, much, much more. And next time I'm just going to walk the 100 metres to the pub and get the cash out.