Sweet like Chocolate

The wagon is back on the wagon!  I am once again, turning my back on chocolate.  Well, not completely, that would be silly, but I am seriously cutting down again.  Saturday morning I bought two (it’s a treat!) large packs of those giant chocolate buttons.  One of them was free; there’s will power and then there’s martyrdom.  I put one bag in the veggie bin of the fridge and “hid” the other one. And for the first time in my life I used that once laughed at, handy re-seal thing all the chocolate manufacturers think is the best thing since sliced bread.  It does work.  Well, it sticks to the bag, whether or not it will keep me out of it for the rest of the day is an experiment too big even for Einstein I reckon.  But I’m on a mission. This just has to be done.   And I’m also cutting down on the coffee.  Once upon a time a jar of coffee would last the best part of a month in our house.  I used to be a tea drinker.  Still am but having a cup of coffee was easier to drink as I didn’t need the chocolate treat to go with it.  It was impossible to sink a cup of tea without sugar and I take my tea and coffee black so the sugar had to come in the form of chocolate.  Then I grew fond of the coffee and pretty soon it was more than one cup a day.  There was one really cold day this week and if I had one cup I had 15.  I emptied the jar by three quarters.  (Dam!  That proves it.  I always suspected I was a jar half empty kind of person!)  Add all that coffee to the mountains of chocolate I consume and there’s a whole lot of caffeine going on.  It can’t be good.  It just can’t.  So I am cutting back.  I didn’t do too badly over Easter, only put on a pound.  And last week managed to stay the same, I didn’t gain and I didn’t lose.  But I could do so much better.  At least most of the chocolate from Easter has been consumed.  However, there is a new enemy in town.  I’d say it’s bigger than an ostrich egg.  The Screecher Creatures were delighted to be informed that they won the Easter hamper in J-One, Emily Square.  Paws, the Easter bunny teddy underneath all that cellophane, was clutching two chocolate bunnies, one white, and one milk chocolate.  Not very threatening as chocolate bunnies go. The little kinder sized gold wrapped eggs in the front were just plain old cute.  It was the rugby sized, extra thick, larger than life egg the bunny rabbit teddy bear was trying to hatch that whipped the lads into a frenzied state.  On taking it home and freeing it from its plastic confines, it was clear that a hammer will definitely be needed to crack that shell open.   One half could be shared between the four of them and there would still be some left over.  I saw 6 month’s worth of Rice Krispie buns flash before my eyes.  Screecher Creature No. 1 didn’t get his sweet tooth from the ground as I spent Saturday afternoon answering the “when are we opening it?” question and trying to distract him from the dinosaur egg under the stairs.  Chocolate clearly talks to him too!   Seemingly it talks to us all.  I do this “thing” where the Screecher Creatures aren’t given chocolate until they were at least a year old.  I have mellowed with Screecher Creature No. 4 on certain issues but I held my ground on the chocolate.  This Easter he was given his first taste of white chocolate buttons.  Just one or two.  A miserly couple of weeks later, he now goes into a semi hypnotic sway when he sees the packet coming out of the fridge.  Once he even clapped his hands and said something that wasn’t unlike “nom nom.”   He has also made a lunge at a Screecher Creature who was silly enough to under estimate their little brother’s determination, and didn’t pay enough attention.  They paid the hefty price of having their treat snatched out of their hand.   So, you see, the chocolate embargo has to be implemented for my kids’ sake.  I have been guilty of opening the fridge door at 8 o’clock of a morning, sticking my head inside and keeping it there to scoff chocolate unbeknownst to the Screechers.  Now that’s bad.  Mister Husband has asked me if I keep the stuff in the cistern.  It’s not for my good, you understand.  It’s entirely for theirs. It is important that they see me gearing up for a run every other day of the week and equally important that they don’t see their mother stuffing her face with junk.  The spirit is strong and the body is weak but in my case, piss poor would be a better description.  But I’m going to try.  I am going to try and keep the chocolate binges for when they go to bed!  Dontcha just love it when a plan comes together?