We have a few rules about candy around our house.
Number one: No candy after six pm. Unless you've been really good and let mommy relax for 30 minutes in which case she'll cave on everything.
Number two: No candy if you haven't had dinner. Unless dinner is turning into some sort of epic nightmare of scorched pans and last minute substitutions, in which case mommy will again cave to try and buy time for dinner plan B to come together.
Number three: All individual candy, after a suitable period, becomes community property and is tossed into a "share candy" basket. Of course it has been picked through so much by now, there's hardly anything left worth having.
But my most sacred rule (so sacred it doesn't even have a number) is the Holiday Expiration Rule.
Under the Holiday Expiration Rule, any candy remaining from a previous holiday must be disposed of before the arrival of the next big candy-producing holiday.
Halloween candy has to be eaten or tossed by Christmas. Christmas related candy has to be gone by Valentines. Valentines candy hearts and accompanying cards have to be melted or missing by Easter. While there are a few stragglers (most often the lollipops for some reason), we stick to the rule pretty well.
Which leads me to the problem with Easter. There is no real impetus to get rid of Easter candy for nearly six months, basically until Halloween.
For months I'd come across a random Easter candy and wonder if I should save it for that last desperate sugar request. It was as if I'd become a slave to the Holiday Expiration Rule and without an upcoming holiday to drive disposal, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of the peeps or jellybeans.
Fortunately I won't have this problem this year. I have now figured out exactly what candy gets eaten around here and was successful in conveying this to the Easter Bunny. No lollipops, no hard candies, no miniature boxes of tart circles and squares even if they featured a cute animated character. It was all chocolate, gum and gummies this time out.
As a result, we are already scraping the bottom of the basket. At this rate nothing will be left by Sunday!
This is not good. We've gotten used to the perpetual presence of candy through summer. So if you just happen to have a few lollipops in the shape of bunny head, give me a call. I'm in the market.
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