Harry and David and Bubba and Casey

You know how sometimes, you're digging through the closet when the seasons change, swapping out coats for jackets or sweaters, and find MONEY in a pocket? Yeah! Sweet! FOUND MONEY! It's like Christmas, except you're getting something you can really use, and not a Dollar Store candle or a calendar full of lighthouses.

Yesterday, I found something even better. FOUND CANDY! My heart races with the memory.

Let the record show that Thevictorians are not all OCD about cleanliness. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then we may not be the heatheniest heathens at the end of the good-intentions-paved road, knock-knock-knocking on Not-Heaven's door...but we're third or fourth in line.

We don't have weeds sprouting from the dirt on our kitchen floor, and we're not treading on discarded pizza boxes. But we're kind of lax in our housekeeping habits. When I lived alone, I was a neat person who used my Bissell sweeper once a month whether I felt like I needed to or not. Once I married Hick, I saw the folly in trying to keep up. It was enough that I dumped his toenail clippings out of my (Dollar Store) candle on the mantel, and dug his banana peels out of the cushions of the La-Z-Boy. You can't really blame Hick for his slovenly habits (heh, heh, did I REALLY just type that) because growing up with two brothers, his mom was always in the hospital, and his dad was blind. I don't really think he had a notion of how houses were cleaned, other than his dad sweeping the floor barefoot so he could tell when he was done.

Anyhoo...enough of setting the scene to prepare you for the shocker that I am about to reveal. You know when Christmas is, right? Uh huh. It was LAST YEAR! December! Five months ago!

We have a gift bag that has been sitting on a kitchen stool under Hick's cuckoo clock since Christmas Eve. Oh, don't start tsk-tsking and cutting eyes at each other and fanning yourself with a dainty lace hanky! It's not like we have rats running around gnawing a hole in that gift bag. It has stuff that was won at my sister the ex-mayor's wife's Christmas Eve party games. Stuff from the Dollar Store or Big Lots. A dollar limit per item. She puts them all in different gift bags we recycle every year, and we play a game where they get passed around, and then you can trade yours for somebody else's IF you can remember what they had.

This bag on the kitchen stool is a bigger bag, with a couple of those items in there, and also my gifts that I just haven't put away. The main one is a bunch of assorted liquid soaps from Bath and Body Works. They're just going under the kitchen counter a few feet away. AND they were saved from the clutches of Genius when he was here last casino trip, and wanted some soap since he moved from his college house into a college apartment. So I was smart leaving them there, see?

Anyhoo...I don't even know what possessed me to look in that bag yesterday. I'm sure I had no intention of putting the stuff away. It's only APRIL, you know! I think I was looking to see if The Pony had left a gift card in there so I could put it in this week's letter. And I found THIS!!!

Sis knows the way to my cold, cold heart is over the lips, past the gums, into the stomach with sweet yum-yums! And apparently she thinks I'm pretty dirty. But hey, I like my soaps, and I really, REALLY like my chocolate-covered fruits!

Of course I grabbed that bag and rushed downstairs with it, leaving the soaps for another year day. I showed remarkable restraint, though. I did not rip open the fruits (see how healthy that sounds) and begin feasting. I propped the bag for a picture, right there with my bubba cup full of ice water, and my old Casey's insulated cup with a bottle of Diet Coke to add to my 44 oz as it weakens during the day. Let the record show that the Casey's cup was never MY soda cup. I had a huge one, the size of the bubba cup, but I don't know where it is. I think this little shaver used to be my dad's, and he used it for coffee. But it's just the perfect size to slide a cold 20 oz bottle of soda. Or can.

After PEEPSfeast '17, I have to be careful of overdoing the snacks. That would be an unwise choice. So I am limiting myself to one fruit of each color per day. I think Sis would be proud to know that I have made her treat last for six months.

I don't plan to tell her.