The Extinction Theory

I’m not a big sweets person, for whatever reason. Add the fact that I was just in a wedding in Houston where I had to wear a satin dress (did I mention the dress was made of satin that shows every wrinkle and bubble and roll?), and I wouldn’t have been eating that many sweets and treats anyway.

Yesterday, I spent about three and a half hours sorting and hanging clothes for the local elementary school’s rummage sale. Yes, I know I don’t have any children in elementary school yet and I’m overcommitted, so what am I doing spending what little free time I have doing this? Well, this elementary school has graciously volunteered to split their take with Mister Man’s preschool and the elementary school near his preschool (which is very low income, high ESL) if we provide volunteers for the rummage sale. Considering that they took in around $18K last year, I’m doing all I can.

What does this have to do with sweets? I’m getting there.

At the very end, I was leaving at 7:15 having eaten nothing since some of my Mideast Pita Salad at lunchtime. I was starving. There was a bag of mini candy bars on the signout table. Including mini Twix bars.

While I’m not a big sweets person, I could munch on Twix bars all day long, except for the part about how that would probably make me puke and grow several sizes. Neither option sounds appealing to me, for whatever reason. A single Twix bar though, with its cookie that is so yummy and crunch and the caramel that I can eat off first or leave until the end… mmmm. So I took one and ate it.

After dinner last night, I was still hungry – probably from the small lunch and single lemon chicken kabob that was left. So I got one of the little ice cream cups that I have for the kids for special treats and ate that. I didn’t think much of it at the time.

Today, I went to Camp PTO. Yes, we really have such a thing, and it was quite helpful actually as I start to transition to my new PTO President role. And they served breakfast. I’d already eaten my granola and yogurt before I went, but they had these tiny muffins with cinnamon streusel on top and caramel filled middles. Anyone sensing a theme here with caramel? So I had to have one. Then I had to have a second one as I was walking out to my breakout session. Fortunately, I stopped there. They were sooooo good. I’m actually going to look for a recipe to recreate them this weekend. Let me know if you have a good one!

Then I headed to the office to work (fortunately, I’d started work at home at 6:30am before I headed to Camp PTO at 9). After I ate lunch, I was still hungry and felt like something sweet. Lucky me, I’m on the fifth floor, and the cafeteria is on the first floor. However, there’s a vending machine in the copy room. On my way back from filling up my water cup, I perused the selections trying to figure out what I wanted. Mostly candy candy or gum or cookies, none of which held my interest. As for the candy bars, most had nuts in them or were peanut butter flavored. I know it isn’t American to not like peanut butter, but … call me un-American. I don’t like it. M&Ms aren’t my favorite. So I passed on the vending machine.

Tonight I had dinner with a friend who works near my work. After we had our sushi, I was tempted to order some green tea ice cream, but I had to run because I was going to be late for my babysitting co-op meeting. At the meeting, food is always served. The pizza like appetizer and the cheese ball were of no interest. I ate several strawberries. And then there was the plate of brownies. I passed them over and sat down for the meeting, oh so proud of myself.

Then the meeting ended. I headed back over to those brownies and peered at them closely. Hmmm. Yep, those were definitely nuts. So I passed up the brownies.

But wow, look what happens when I have just a single Twix bar! Everywhere I go, I want more more more more more! I’m trying to decide now if I should have one of the special truffles that were part of the favor from my friend’s wedding (yes, I’ll share pictures – if you notice, I haven’t exactly been home lately!) to satisfy my desire or if I need to go cold turkey for awhile to stop these unusual cravings.