Chocolate

I went to about 5 different grocery stores before Easter searching for Cadbury mini eggs. Nobody had them! I am telling you, I drove all over Pittsburgh. Turns out, all the mini eggs were stockpiled at the ghetto Giant Eagle in a shady neighborhood near our house. I popped in there to buy some stuff for a road trip and was affronted with $.99 bags of the mini eggs. I bought 5.

Then I hid them from my husband, knowing he eats as many of them as I do. Which is a lot. I've been doing my best to ration them out, to only eat a few per day. But this has been one of those weeks. I have been eating so much of the chocolate. I just cracked into my last bag. What will I do til next spring?

To try reserving the precious mini eggs, I've been supplementing my chocolate cravings with Trader Joe's dark truffle chocolate bars. I force myself to eat only one square at a time when things are rough. I put the screaming, napless baby in a jumperoo or in his room and sink into the sofa, slowly enjoying my one square of dark, dark chocolate while I breathe and count to 10. Or 11.

What is it about dark chocolate that has made it so valuable to me in these 9 months of parenthood? I honestly don't think a single day has passed where I haven't had at least one square. If a day did pass, I'm sure it was an unpleasant one. I guess that makes me pretty addicted. I'll take it. I haven't had any beer or wine to speak of since I got pregnant in 2008. And I smoked my last doobie around then (two wonderful puffs to last a lifetime...).

I think I convince myself that I need and deserve the dark chocolate because I abstain from all of these other pleasures, like caffeine. To be quite honest, I greatly prefer this to even a good Belgian wheat beer with dinner. If chocolate is my new vice, I'd say I'm not doing too badly.