I just bought a huge box of copy paper, and it has given me some pause. I mean, I don't buy green bananas and I have never bought a year's supply of toothpaste or toilet paper. That's not because I thought I wouldn't live long enough to use it but because of something that happened to us early in our married life (My Other LIfe). Bill was a great peanut butter eater so it made sense, when we had the chance, to buy wholesale a 25-pound pail of peanut butter, at a great saving. A pail, I said, so we had to decant peanut butter as we needed it, into a container that fit a kitchen cupboard, thence into a good-looking jar for the table. We put the pail into a closet in an empty bedroom - this was early in our marriage, as I say. The bedroom was designated soon to be a nursery for our first child. For the nonce, the closet was a storage closet for out-of-season clothes hung in garment bags which I had laced with mothballs. (I used to be very organized.) The moth balls were so powerful that their fragrance permeated the peanut butter. We discovered this when we went back to the font for a refill. The peanut butter wasn't poisonous, I guess, but it tasted terrible. I tried baking cookies with it, hoping that in combination with other ingredients and with the addition of heat, the hint of mothballs would go away. It didn't. We ended up throwing out almost an entire pail of peanut butter. And that's why I never bought "lifetime" supplies or bargains on bulk. Paper was different. When I was living up north, not far, just Muskoka, but too far from an office supply store for me, I stocked up on supplies, not food but paper. I still do, obviously, because I just bought that big box. But for the first time it hit me: maybe the paper will outlast me? I had better keep writing.