only enough to burn for one night

I actually did check well ahead of time. The box of Hanukkah candles had been sitting in the cabinet since last winter, and it was about three-quarters full. There was no need to go out in the snow in search of more. I didn't open the box until I wanted to light the candles. Oops. The apartment was not air conditioned for most of the summer. Some of the candles bent into S-curves, some into C or J-curves. When I poured the candles out on the table to see if any were still good, it looked like 8 of the candles were straight enough that adjacent candles would not push each other out of the holder. 6 of those had deformed at the base so much that I broke them trying to put them in the menorah.

2 candles is all you need for the first night of Hanukkah. (They were a little wobbly, but I lit them. *I* was a little wobbly, indeed I have been all month, but I was safe and warm inside, with candles and food and no need to go out until noon tomorrow.) Rather than the sense of abundance I generally feel with lighting Hanukkah candles; so many candles they hardly fit in the box and you have to pry them out gently, so much food you can't eat it all and there's no point in saving it. This felt like just barely enough. Cold butter scraped over too much bread. I've never seen olive oil cold enough to scrape that way, and nobody every talks about miracles of margarine. (Not even the people at Brandeis advocating for Earth Balance. Certainly not the thousands of people writing about holiday baking, and how absolutely essential it is to use butter if one wants to make cookies worth eating.)

2 candles. It was enough for one night, or for 20 minutes. And I will deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.