Tag Archives: halloween candy

I’m still eating Halloween candy. Somebody help me, please.

This year for Halloween I bought a bunch of candy in case any trick-or-treaters came by. But not even one showed up. So now I’m stuck with all of these bags of candy, which I tried to resist at first, but by now I’ve given in, and I’m just constantly eating candy, waiting for it to run out so that my brain stops bothering me every ten seconds, whispering stuff in my ear like, “Hey Rob, so, uh … how about some more candy?” And it’s such a strong craving I’ll taste it in my mouth, I’ll want it so badly, and I’ll cave to the temptation almost immediately.

I haven’t eaten this much candy in a while. In fact, I don’t think I’ve eaten any candy in a while. So I’m having like a mini candy renaissance. I pick out four big bags of fun sized treats. They looked pretty harmless when they were still packaged behind all of that clear plastic. I wasn’t yet feeling any appeal. But then I decided, what the hell, it’s just going to sit there. I might as well have one piece of candy, two tops.

And then I opened that first bag. It was a variety pack, a mix of Milky Ways, Twix, Snickers, and Three Musketeers. As soon as I split open the plastic I was overcome with the actual sensation of being a little kid again. I was instantly transported back to my childhood, canvassing the neighborhood on Halloween for candy, and saving that candy for weeks. It was that scent of assorted chocolates and candy bars. It was the smell of Halloween.

I hadn’t even popped anything in my mouth yet and I was already feeling way more excited than I had anticipated. Any ideas about having just one or two were replaced by having to try out at least one of each variety. I picked out a Milky Way and ate it. I’m telling you, that one bite completely altered the trajectory of my whole day. I was flooded with energy. It tasted so good, even better than I remember it tasting when I was a little kid. It was too much, I started making fists and jumping up and down really quickly. I didn’t want it to stop, so I went straight for the Twix. It was the same reaction. No wait, it was even better. The effect was amplified. I turned around in a couple of circles, the energy was overwhelming. One after the other, each flavor tasted better than the last. And even better, and totally unexpected, Milky Way Dark, which I never liked as a little kid, it now tasted incredible, delicious.

I went through like fifteen pieces of candy in under a minute. And then I started feeling a little worried, because I knew somewhere in my mind that eating that much candy isn’t really the best thing to do for your body. I gave myself a minute to let my brain catch up to my taste buds. Sure enough, the euphoria was very fleeting, and once I started to get my feet to stop jumping up and down, I realized that my tongue felt a little raw. Worse, I was actually sort of full, in a weird gross way, and it especially sucked because I had just ordered some dinner, and I think I might have spoiled my appetite.

But yeah, over the course of a day or two I made quick work of that variety pack. And I told myself, just don’t open the other bags. Just keep it in check, keep it together Rob. I think I kept it in check for maybe a day. And then I opened up the Kit Kats. This was really disappointing actual, because, and I didn’t even realize it until after I had opened up the first Kit Kat, instead of using chocolate, they used orange dyed white chocolate, I guess for some sort of a Halloween theme. Gross. I tried to just close my eyes and pretend that it was the original, but unlike my experience with Milky Way Dark, a candy I hated as a child but now liked as an adult, unfortunately my sense of taste remained unmoved by white chocolate. It tastes like eggs or something. I can’t really describe it except to repeat again that it’s gross.

That’s still sitting there, untouched. I’ll probably have to just eventually throw it out at some point. I think I’m going to throw it out right now just so I don’t have to look at it anymore. But I’m halfway through a giant bag of Peanut M&Ms. There’s still an unopened sack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I can’t take this anymore. Now it’s all becoming so compulsory. Every time I’m bored, every minute or so, I get up and eat a bag of M&Ms. My teeth are starting to hurt. I haven’t eaten an apple in like two weeks.

And you know what I think a big part of the problem is? Fun size. To what psychopath does a bag containing six M&Ms seem like a fun size? That’s not a fun size. A fun size is one of those party bags of M&Ms, where there’s no individual packs, just tons of loose M&Ms, like you fill up a whole bowl with them and put that bowl out at a party. That’s always the best, going to a party where there’s a giant bowl of unwrapped candy, because nobody ever goes for it. Nobody except me, I hit it really early in the night. After a while my fingers are all stained red and blue and it’s clear to everyone that I’ve made it my personal candy bowl. Still, I always get a stomachache from that much candy.

Fun size. Come on, it’s a trick. If they were packaged as regular sized packs of candy, I guarantee you I would only eat one. But because they are so little, so comically small, there’s no way I’m going to stop at just one. So I’ll just keep going, little by little, slowly getting into the double digits until next thing I know, I’ve just eaten a pound of M&Ms without even realizing the magnitude of what I’ve done. That’s not fun. Nothing that small is fun. Just call it small size. Or tease sized. Actually, you know what would be a really fun size? Like a swimming pool, an Olympic sized pool filled to the brim with Peanut M&Ms. And I’d climb up to the diving board and execute a perfect dive, face down, mouth open, just totally submerged in Peanut M&Ms. I could eat all of them, without stopping, I don’t have any doubt. That would be a really fun size.

Rob’s day off

I had off today. When I woke up, I made a plan. I’d spend the whole day writing. I’d march right downstairs and sit at the computer and type out a ton of work, volumes of material. But now all of the sudden it’s almost 10:00 pm. I don’t know what happened. What about my plan? I thought it was a pretty decent one, as far as plans go. So now here I am, obviously a little more hurried than I had prepared for, and I want to get something down.

So what did I do with a whole day off by myself? Yeah, I probably should’ve mentioned that it’s not a regular day off, it’s a Monday. I mean, it’s a legitimate day off, but working at a restaurant, I often find myself with days off completely to myself, because everybody else is working. Especially on days like today, where I decided to skip showering and grooming, I always wonder if my neighbors think to themselves stuff like, “What’s this guy’s deal? Does he have a job? Why is his wife always gone but he’s always out walking his dog in his pajamas?” I want to wear a custom t-shirt that say, “In case you’re judging me, I’ll have you know that I work irregular hours at a restaurant, sometimes during the day, sometimes at night.” But to put all of that on a t-shirt? The font would have to be really small for it all to fit. And so if the neighbor that I’m imagining is judging me in his or her head, it’s probably from behind a window, not really close enough to read that whole message screen printed on a shirt.

But yeah, I went out to walk the dog in the morning. So that’s not really explaining where the day went. I drank a ton of coffee. Usually, and knowing that I know this kills me, but if I don’t start writing as soon as I feel the caffeine kick in, the coffee is just going to get wasted. All of that chemical fuel will just get spent wasting time on the Internet, or pacing around in a circle in the living room, something totally unproductive.

So I blew enough time to where all of the sudden I had to make lunch. The morning evaporated. I don’t know what I did really. I read some stuff online. I think I might have played a game of Internet Settlers of Catan. But then it was lunchtime. After lunch, which didn’t take long at all, I got this crazy idea in my head that now would be the perfect time to finally watch Prometheus which, for various reasons, none of them worth mentioning, I never got to see. But this was like one in the afternoon. This idea to watch a whole movie came out of nowhere, like I hadn’t even thought about this movie in forever. And not one part of my brain stepped in to interject an opposing thought. Nothing in me said, “Hey Rob, you know that movie is like three hours, right?” or, “Hey Rob, don’t you think you should maybe do some writing and then watch the movie?” There was no resistance. I thought about the movie, turned on my XBOX, rented the movie, and sat down to watch it, all within sixty seconds. It’s like my day was hijacked by Ridley Scott tag-teaming with my basest instincts of immediate gratification. And seriously, if you’ve seen the movie, well, I’m sure we all at least would have appreciated our money back, seeing as how it’s impossible to refund three hours of a person’s life.

And I had wanted to see this movie so badly that I couldn’t really consciously appreciate actually watching it until like two hours after it had finished. Of course, the movie ate up what should have been the most productive chunk of my day, and the next thing I know, my wife was home from school. “How was your day?” “Good, I finally watched Prometheus.” “Oh wow, didn’t you want to see that like six months ago? How was it?”

And I couldn’t answer. That was my first clue that something was wrong. I even opened my mouth to say something generic, “good, fine,” whatever, but my mouth was frozen. So I started thinking, did I like the movie? And I couldn’t answer that either, because I really didn’t know what was going on. So I went online to search for some basic answers to what I thought must have been elements that I had simply overlooked in the plot. But it turns out that everyone else who saw that movie shared similar frustrations. And in checking out everyone else’s critiques, it dawned on me that I was reluctant to agree with them only because I had been looking forward to watching it for so long.

So after I realized that the movie was terrible, I just kind of felt really deflated, bumming around the house. I was going to go running or something, but I didn’t. I still haven’t showered. I promised my wife I would cook something, because in the morning, before she left, I was all like, “Are you kidding me? I’m going to be so productive today! I have the entire day to myself! I’m going to write, I’m going to cook, I’m going to do the laundry!”

Fuck. Seriously, as I’m typing this out, I’m just now remembering that one of the first things I did in the morning was to throw in a load of laundry. But that’s all I did. I didn’t change it to the dryer. I didn’t get to any of the other loads. And I’m pretty sure that first load was our sheets, so they’re going to smell awful, just cold and damp all day long, and there’s no time right now to rewash them and wait for them to then go through the dryer. Damn.

Oh well, but I did cook. I went to the grocery store to make tacos. I was going to make pork tacos, but in the meat section I saw this package of chicken hearts. And I just heard them calling out to me, “You pansy. You wouldn’t know what to do with us. Keep walking, amateur.” And I was like, oh yeah?

So I bought them. They were like fifty cents. I think I rose to the challenge. I seared them real quick and then braised them in some stock. And I chopped them up and made tacos and told my wife it was just dark meat. I eventually told her, after we were done, but by then she had already finished, “And besides,” I pointed out, “you loved them. You ate every bite and loved it.” And she couldn’t disagree. Still she told me not to do stuff like that anymore without asking, but I don’t understand the problem. She’s living with a culinary mystery box.

So yeah, that’s it, Rob’s day off. Also, my wife bought three giant bags of Halloween candy, but we didn’t have any trick-or-treaters. Not even one. So today I ate all of it. It was the best. Just opening up the bag brought back vivid memories of Halloween as a little kid. But I don’t remember the stomachache being this bad. Maybe I just ate way too much today, heart shaped candies, taco shaped hearts, it’s all too much. Way too much day off with way too little to show for it. Except for this, that is. At least I got to write this. And at least you got to read it.