We live in a neighborhood with lots of kids (all of them pretty well-behaved, possibly because there’s a great local school system, possibly because it’s a real neighborhood, possibly because the working parents care about their kids).
So, of course, even though we don’t do Xmas decorations, we do at least minimal Halloween decor (just a big spider web and a skeleton, but we’ll look for those 5-foot spiders next year…), and we do have an adequate supply of candy to last 6 to 9 p.m. or so. (And we have a stupid “scary sounds and stories” CD, obviously digitized from an old stupid scary sounds LP with no extras–it’s one 57 minute cut, but it was cheap; we play it when kids are at the door.)
And, being sensible folks, we buy candy that we like; in this case, one of Target’s medium-sized bags each of M&Ms, KitKat bars, and Reese’s Cups. (“Medium-sized” equals 28 to 36 snack-size servings.) My wife–who doesn’t much care for candy, really–sometimes likes M&Ms, sometimes Reese’s; I have a fondness for KitKat, but only eat them in early November…
But my wife has also taken to eading Lindt bittersweet chocolate bars, one bar over the course of a week or so, and I’ve found my perfect level of chocolate–Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate (from Belgium, 58% cocoa solids, three 1.75oz. bars for $1.29; I eat one-quarter of a bar each workday, 57 calories worth).
So last night, we do the usual (the wife wears an all-black outfit and has a witch’s hat; I hang around in the background; we put a flashlight-lighted plastic pumpkin in the front window), drawing a pretty good crowd. The kids really go for KitKat, digging through the other two candies in some cases (offered in another plastic pumpkin)… But we wound up with maybe five KitKats, three Reese’s, and six or eight M&Ms. So I figured I’d have one KitKat last night and keep two for later (we take the rest in to work…where they disappear rapidly). She figured she’d have one Reese’s and save two or three for later.
A funny thing happened to both of us. We didn’t enjoy the treats. They were just too sickeningly sweet.
Who woulda thunk it?
