Crimes of the heart - or gullet

I've been kiting candy out of my kids' Easter baskets for nearly a week now. Mind you, I have a basket of my own, but it was filled with candy I don't actually like. Somehow my mother has decided that Jordan almonds are my absolute favoritest, and so she gives them to me at every opportunity. Needless to say, I have a Jordan almond surplus over here. Y'know, one or two or even a handful are sorta good in a bland way every once in a while, but I have three 1/4 lb containers of these now, and I don't know what to do with them. Also, there was a plethora of fancy candy in my basket - liqueur flavored chocolates and the like - that in abundance leads to indifference. My top ten list of Easter candies (yes, it's that long. shut. up.) were sorely underrepresented. So I've been snitching.

My number ones, Cadbury Minieggs, I was smart enough to buy a huge (try two pounds!) bag of, and dumb enough to misplace in my kitchen ten minutes after I put four eggs each in the kiddos' baskets. So I have eaten six of the eight of those available within the first couple days, but I feel okay doing it, since I plan on replacing those as soon as I find the bag.

My number twos, Peeps, I have not been able to steal successfully. I limit us to to a single box per year, and there are only ten Peeps in a box. Stupidly, I forgot to parcel these out evenly, and so we opened the box and split it all at once. Now, I don't hold with any of that stupid Peeps-at-any-time-of-the-year-'ceptin'-Easter nonsense. If the sugar crusted marshmallow perfections are ANY shape except a chick, and ANY color except yellow, well, then, they are obviously evil and deserving of destruction. Not the kind involving your mouth, either. So my measly two chicks did not last the night, And the children, who are wily in their own way, hid their portion from me before I could find the stale crispy marshmallow glory.

My number threes, pastel wrapped Hershey's kisses, sadly did not make the candy cut this year. If you could buy these in little packages of twenty or so, it would be perfect, because who needs more than twenty kisses (of the Hershey's variety)? But the remaining 3,489,583 kisses in the bag go stale before you can pawn them off on anyone, and then there's the guilt about wasted kisses.

Number fours, jellybeans, I've been guzzling by the handful. At several points in my life, these have been my version of crack. I used to pull all-nighters in college fueled entirely on jellybeans and Diet Coke. I once got a box of them bigger than my head for a Christmas present. I still love them, and they would be higher on my list, but frankly, anymore you can buy jellybeans any time of the year and the candies higher up are seasonal specialties. Luckily for everyone involved, jellybeans spawn as along as they are left in Easter grass, so no one will notice or lament this particular larceny.

Five on the list, Cadbury's Creme Eggs, are there mostly for nostalgia's sake. My sister once brought me three of these concealed in her school bag the year that we were living with her father while my mom was in training while in the Army. He was a weird survivalist religious fanatic who had bizarre rules governing food, and he thought candy was evil. It was the only year in my more than three decades on earth that I have not had a Halloween costume, for example. And we were not allowed to eat meat (which we ate every single night, no exceptions) less than well done. Anyhow, my sister, who was in high school and had a boyfriend with a car, showed how much she loved me by checking out books from the town library in Madison and bringing the occasional clandestine chocolate from the grocery, a 1/2 mile down the drive, past the railroad tracks, over Rollercoaster Hill, through the poor side of town, past Cherry Lake and its resident alligators, right next door to the hair salon.


There are more candies I love, but I will stop enumerating them here. Talking about them all makes me feel sad that soon we will be down to the dregs of the baskets, all grass covered, squished lime flavored jellybeans and the just plain wrong "Bunny Corn" (again, this is OUT OF SEASON. Candy Corn belongs to Halloween, thank you. I don't see me forcing ribbon candy on you at Flag Day, so BACK OFF) in all it's insipid aqua and pale pink glory.