Chocolate Road Map

While Rocky Road is my favoritest of the ice cream flavors, and if someone came up with an ice cream called "Rocky Road to Dublin" that was regular, awesome Rocky Road with a swirl of Irish Cream flavored ice cream in it I would eat enough to swell up to elephantine proportions, this post has nothing to do with ice cream.  Except for that misleading intro that is.  The rest shall be reserved for discussion of the traditional box of chocolates.

Exhibit A: One box of Russell Stover Assorted Chocolates

This is a box of chocolates that appeared in my office 'round about Ash Wednesday.  People giving up chocolate for Lent?  I don't know, but I certainly intended to benefit from the anonymous generosity.   While See's candy will always be my favorite of this genre, specifically the Nuts & Chews (in case anyone in California wants to send me some...) I really appreciate Mr. Stover's attempt at giving me a guide to the box of chocolates, because even though what Forrest Gump said about life is mostly true, I would actually like to know what I'm biting into.  A box of chocolates, like life, is frought with dangers if you are like me and don't like all the foods.  While I don't consider myself a picky eater, I do have... preferences.  Strong ones.  I like my food in certain ways, and while I'm open to new things, I'm not necessarily open to trying the same old things that I didn't like last time just to see if my taste buds miraculously changed.  No, to discover that fact* I would have to be tricked, dared, or paid to eat the offending food and most of the time no one really cares enough about my not-necessarily-narrow food selections to go to that much trouble to broaden them.  No one was around to do so at the time this box of chocolates presented itself.  So, I was left to the careful picking and choosing of chocolates so as to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

So many wonderful options to choose from.  Maple Nut Butter?  That sounds lovely!  Molasses Chew?  Sign me up!  Vanilla cream, coconut cream... I'll take one of each!  I wouldn't know a Roman Nougat from their American or French brethren, so I think I'll pass on that one.  I was diligent.  I followed the guide.  I even had a sample chocolate to make sure the box didn't get somehow turned around... seriously, when it comes to designing the little nesting places of chocolates, an asymmetrical approach to layout would be appreciated to save me from having to do such quality-assurance type things.  So, there I was... carefully picking the tasty treats (butter cream caramel, chocolate truffle), and what did I wind up with instead?!?!

This!  This pink hideousness that is probably a strawberry cream or the afore mentioned Roman Nougat instead of my non-fruity cream of choice or the Molasses Chew I was so excited about.  Eeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwww... Don't mess up my chocolate by putting funky fruit flavors in it!  I like chocolate with my chocolate.  Or butter, or sugar disguised as butter...

Blech!

Somehow all the things that I wanted to eat had been switched with these funky fruit imposters, and not a single tasty chocolate was to be had.  Thus ends my tale of woe.

The end.

*which I have evidence for that such a thing exists... convoluted sentence structure aside, in that my husband who hated guacamole now likes it after years of trying

Delayed Monday Syndrome

Delayed Monday Syndrome© (DMS) is a real thing that I just made up* as a way to explain those crazy weeks when Monday goes swimmingly, only to have another day crash down around your ears in a spectacle of mediocrity.

DMS usually occurs on a Tuesday, but has been known to make random appearances all throughout the week, so don't think that making it past the hump grants any kind of immunity. It does not. Your day can go from "marginally crappy" to "unredeemable without enlarging the broadness of your backside" in less than 5 minutes.

Tuesdays are almost always harder than Mondays to begin with. They're not Monday, so you don't really have a reason for all the dragging, sluggish feelings--sort of like Monday leftovers. And it's not Wednesday, so you don't have that happy, "hump day," half-way to the weekend feeling. It's the forgotten middle child of the early week. And that's a normal Tuesday, so you can imagine how much worse DMS makes things.

An example:


Petunia's** day started with a feeling like this: lazy, worthless woman who can't get out of bed and in to work at a decent hour, thus depriving her hardworking husband of the comfort of a home cooked meal. This is a classic symptom of DMS--the nagging feeling that you left your awesome in your other pants, right next to that tube of chapstick that you ran through the wash resulting in a slightly greasy pair of pants with a suspicious stain you don't want to attempt to explain anyway. However, we all know that one symptom doesn't lead to a diagnosis (otherwise, we'd all be ADHD/OCD/sociopaths with tumors and endocrine disorders... at least, I certainly would be).

Another symptom of DMS is the inability to process minor changes with any semblance of grace or skill, which leads to a heightened emotional awareness that borders on paranoia, with the fervent belief that everyone can see all the flaws of your life like one of those ill-advised lighted make-up mirrors that can turn a confident 29 year old woman into a quivering mess thinking she's only one step removed from the Crypt Keeper and no amount of moisturizer with SPF and eye cream will make her pass for a normal, attractive female... not that I would know anything about that.

But back to Petunia. Less than an hour later, after an uneventful commute where she felt persecuted by the drivers who failed to grasp the concept of merging traffic (it's like a zipper people!!), a frantic search through the crud in her purse looking for the key card to the office so she could climb to the 4th floor only to realize she forgot to take her multi-vitamin and was certain that osteoporosis and cancer were at that very minute creeping into her system, and a phone call that should have been benign, but instead left her feeling like this: useless woman who doesn't understand the basic concepts of modern commerce, thus failing her husband who asked her for help in the first place, because he was busy solving important problems for people with a nationally recognized brand name and thus bringing home ye-olde-bacon so she should stop being a nagging harpy and do things the right way the first time and fix the problems (none of which her darling husband ever said, she just read between the lines--i.e. made stuff up).

A nutritious lunch is passed over in favor of a half-stale bag of mini-marshmallows, where she shamelessly disregards the warning to eat them one at a time.

Sadly, there is as yet no cure for DMS. Hopefully a heightened awareness of the crippling disorder can help suffers identify the early warning signs and ensure that enough butt-broadening substances are near at hand to reduce the likelihood of complete implosion due to the high-pressure suckage at the nougaty center of the DMS day.

In extreme cases, DMS may develop into the more serious PMS (Prolonged Monday Syndrome©) which requires chocolate, salty foods, a tear-jerker movie, an electric blanket, and hopefully some furry beast to snuggle with.

*I even googled it to be sure.

**Names have been changed to protect the identities of the poor, bewildered sufferers of this tragic affliction


Disclaimer: DMS is often confused with the Sneaky Hate Spiral, which Allie Brosh at Hyperbole and a Half was so kind as to inform the world about. Without her research, DMS may have gone undiscovered so trot on over there and tell her how thankful we all are.