Ah, fall, my favorite time of year.
The colors are magnificent, the yard needs less maintenance, I get to convert my closet into providing the array of my favorite selections and there's that exciting chill in the air.
These pleasures don't come close to my real passion:
Halloween candy.
Sing hallelujah and praise the sugar gods - my taste buds are alive again; can I get an
Amen?
Reese's, Butterfinger, Twix, SweetTarts, Milk Duds, Pixie Stix (the small ones packaged in paper, not the big plastic ones), Hershey's Miniatures in all varieties - O, rapture! The Clark Bar can be had once again! Mounds, Almond Joy, Snickers, Smartees and Babe Ruth - O, paradise found!
Who needs a fresh, nutritious apple as God intended when you can eat one covered in caramel, as surely only the devil envisioned? Cover it with nuts and I'm rendered catatonic.
Popcorn balls! Take a perfectly innocent whole grain of pure, air-popped goodness and glob it together in a sticky mass of Karo Syrup with a little artificial red dye #6 and I'm a child once again, glued to the tube watching first-runs of
Gilligan's Island, without a care in the world.
The mere thought of caramel corn makes me shudder with anticipated passions heretofore untold to man. Add nuts to this joyous mix of butter and brown sugar heaven and I'm simply aglow (yeah, I've got a weakness for nuts).
The best part of October is that the sugar parade doesn't stop at the end of the month, oh,
no! It only gains momentum with the piece de resistance,
the pumpkin pie. Every year I make an extra pie, and I spend Thanksgiving Day through mid-December eating the entire thing - yes, all by myself. I never share when it comes to pumpkin pie. No whipped cream, that's scandalous. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade just wouldn't be the same if I couldn't watch it with pumpkin pie and coffee for breakfast, cuddled up on the couch in front of a blazing fire. No protein to balance out the sugar rush - that would jade my Christmas shopping frenzy!
Which, in all its budgetary nonsense, can only be justified by claiming temporary insanity, induced by an overdose of sugar. The more sugar I eat, the more money I can spend! O, consumerism! The glory and rapture is once again mine as I buy a gift for my husband, buy two for me! Buy a gift for the kids; let's see, that's three of them, so six more gifts for me! What could be the harm in overspending? Think of all the flight miles I'm earning! Think of how much money I'm saving, buying extravagances that are on sale and only available at Christmastime: The singing fish, the rotary nose hair clipper and the automatic tie organizer - things essential to urban survival!
Reality has a nasty way of sinking in by January. We're fat, broke, and our homes are cluttered with useless items none of us really wanted. Sure, we've got lots of flight miles, but we've got no money left to go anywhere farther than Limon.
Blame it on the Butterfinger. Oh, but it sure was good.