my favorite time of year

if you know me at all, you know that i love summer. in fact, i live for it. those 97 degree days with 98 percent humidity, when you are stuck to yourself and you can barely breath? I LIVE FOR THAT. all the other seasons are nice and all (except for you, WINTER. i bite my thumb at you!!), but the thought of a beautiful, hot summer day keeps me going all year long. i have but one exception to this rule, and that is HALLOWEEN. ok, you say, halloween is not a season, and duh, i know that, but see, october is associated with fall, and after fall comes the dreaded winter, so see how i don't want my happiness over halloween to be associated with that which preceedes the dreaded winter. anyway, i don't really even care all that much about halloween, whoopie, get dressed up and knock on strange people's doors and ask for candy (really, would you do this on any other day of the year??? no. because it would be considered creepy and strange. so why does doing it on october 31st, dressed up like a goon, make it ok???), or have strange people come and knock on your door. that's really not the point. the point is that halloween means CANDY CORN. and candy corn is the reason (other than sweating my own skin off in the summer) that i was put on this earth. every year, the only consolation i have for kissing my sweet love summer goodbye is knowing that one lover will soon be replaced with the next...and that lover is candy corn. if sugar was considered an addictive drug, i swear, i would be in rehab ten times by now for my sick, sick addiction to candy corn. you love it or you hate it, but there's no inbetween. and when you love it like i do, you see a bag and all you can think is, i want the entire contents of that bag in my stomach. NOW. sick, right?? there must be some sort of 12 step program for people like me, because even after making myself absolutely ill with sugar and getting pretty damn close to my body shutting down, the very second that i realize i'm not going to throw up, don't you know, i want more candy corn. MORE. this is the only reason that halloween has any excuse for even existing...because it means i get more candy corn than my system can handle. i have NO CONTROL over the amount of orange and yellow triangular goodness i consume. none. i even find myself a little thrilled with thanksgiving (though, given its proximity to the dreaded winter, it's hard to maintain focus on the candy corn) now, because they throw a brown tip on the candy corn and they say, "ta-daaa!!! autumn candy corn!!" and i say I AM TOTALLY OK WITH THAT. and let's please PLEASE not forget the beauty that is the candy corn pumpkins...you know what these things are, yes?? it's like 3 pieces of candy corn melded into the shape of a pumpkin and it is like HEAVEN IN MY MOUTH. candy corn sort of gets pushed to the side with christmas and all the chocolate and peppermint and fruitcake crap that floods the isles of CVS, but along comes valentine's day and what do you know...PINK AND RED CANDY CORN!! easter?? PURPLE, GREEN, AND YELLOW PASTEL CANDY CORN!!! i hardly have to live without it anymore. this is a blessing...this is a curse. one of these days, you will turn on your tv, and you will see me on A&E, on that intervention show, and my teeth will all have rotted out of my head, and i'll have thin wirey hair and i'll be standing in my mother's kitchen, barefoot, with a wifebeater and pajama pants on, screaming and ripping through the kitchen cabinets, furiously searching for one more piece of candy corn. just one more. this is the way it goes with addiction. it's love and it's hate. i am loving on you, candy corn. you don't always love me back, but you love me sometimes and it's enough. it's enough to keep me going... summer comes with sunburn. you come with elevated blood sugar levels. but this is why i love you both. you nourish me. you destroy me.

if this all seems like a sugar-induced rambling, that's probably because i just ate 3/4ths of a bag of candy corn. so it's entirely possible that i have no idea what i'm talking about.