Have I introduced you to Norbert? Can’t recall and don’t feel like searching to find out. Anyway, this is Norbert. He’s one of my guardian dragons. The other, Humphrey, left for a sleepover at L-squared’s desk. He’s wearing an adorably cute sombrero Izzybella brought him from San Antonio. He promises to be good and share it with Humphrey. Humphrey doesn’t really care, as he prefers pooping on my computer screen to wearing sombreros. Humphrey doesn’t like Norbert very much (I think Humphrey’s a Slytherin, which would explain the pooping on my computer screen), so usually one of them is on L-squared’s desk and the other is here. Anyway, he looks so cute in his little sombrero I thought I’d share it with you.
I saw these when I was about to pay for my Vitamin Water and a trashy magazine. They’re carnival flavour Skittles! Bubble gum, cotton candy, green slush, red licorice, and candy apple flavours! Very yummalicious. Of course, if you’re a veg*n, you won’t want them because as I learned when I read the label afterward, they contain gelatin. 
So I enjoyed them in my blissful ignorance, but won’t buy them again. If you’re not a veg*n, though, and the flavours sound appealing to you, give them a try. When I opened the bag, it was like an instant trip through time back to the county fair in Georgia when I was a kid and Jimmy Carter was running for president and all the booths had huge stuffed peanuts wearing big toothy grins as prizes. The flavours are strong, but realistic enough that I felt guilty every time I swallowed the bubble gum flavoured ones. Which is funny in and of itself, because I swallow gum all the time, if I don’t happen to have a handy trashcan or tissue or piece of paper or anything in which to expel it, because I can’t stand chewing gum for very long, unlike when I was a teenager and chewed copious quantities of grape Bubble Yum. The stronger the flavour of the gum, the less likely my parents were to notice the booze on my breath when I got home from a date. Oddly enough, I drank a lot more when I was underage. Once I got old enough to drink legally, I was LDS by then and had quit.
Wow! How’d I get from Skittles to underage drinking?
So how do you eat candy like Skittles or M&Ms or Jelly Bellies, anyway? Do you just grab a handful and toss it in your mouth? Do you eat them daintily, one at a time? Do you mix colours or separate them out? If you separate them, do you eat from the largest colour to the smallest, or vice versa, or in no particular order? Do you save your favourite flavours for last, or eat them first?
I don’t like mixing flavours or colours. So I separate them out, eat two of my favourites to get going, and then I eat them from the most numerous down to the least numerous, but saving my favourites for last. That probably sounds a little obsessive-compulsive or just plain goofy, and I will admit to being goofy about how I eat foods that I consider to be treats. And the way I eat them is at least 50% of my enjoyment. I know, because one day I didn’t eat a Snickers by eating off all the outside chocolate first, then the bottom layer of nougat, and then the rest; I just bit and chewed; and I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much.
What has that got to do with anything? Absolutely nothing! I’m feeling a little giddy today. Can smelling too much dead rodent make you insane? Um, -er? Or else it’s just from unloading all my angst yesterday and getting a good night’s sleep and knowing that Joe’s coming home tonight to remove the dead rodents. Or else I’m a complete basketcase and everyone knows it but me.
Joe called me a little while ago. He still has about 500 miles to go. He was telling me that he’ll get me a plane ticket to go visit for a weekend while he’s in Beverly Hills. Not that I’ll be visiting in Beverly Hills, but we’ll go see his brother’s family in Yucca Valley. That’ll be good–I haven’t seen them since Joe’s last godson got married, and they’re already divorced, so it’s been a few years. (The godson and his wife are divorced, not my brother-in-law and his wife)
I’ve got to be a lot more diligent about reading labels. I wouldn’t have bought that candy if I’d known it had gelatin in it. There are animal products in so many food items where one would never even think to look! I need to slow myself down a few paces. Not that I ever do anything slowly, because I don’t. But that’s important enough to me that I need to make the time.
Okay. I’ll stop. I’m in one of those moods where I could sit here and babble all day.
