Chocolate Break Up

Originally uploaded by laundrylessons.

Two events in my day are as regular as the school bus arriving at 7:36: I start my first load of laundry at 6:45 and I eat two handfuls of Ghirardelli mega dark chocolate chips at 4:00. This week I gave up one of those habits and guess what? It wasn’t laundry. Although I’d prefer to hire a laundress over giving up my chocolate habit, that wasn’t an option. But deprivation of chocolate was.

I’m still angry at my scale because it hasn’t shared the number that is synonymous with summer. A few pounds in the winter don’t bother me, but in summer it is supposed to tell me a good number. That hasn’t happened. And why? Chocolate.

The afternoon lull was always bearable when I knew chocolate time was approaching. My pick-me-up was lurking in the cupboard and it seductively called my name. Unfortunately, it called too often. My 4:00 habit started becoming a 12:00, and a 5:00, and an 8:00 and even a 9:00 habit. Oh, yeah, sometimes I’d add pretzels and raisins to my handful of chips. Those were the days.

But now, I’ve been chocolate free for two days. Forty-eight hours. It’s like a bad breakup when you aren’t sure of all the reasons why you had to leave, but you just know it was time to be done. I stuck a rubber band around the package to deter me from calling. I’m in mourning and I haven’t decided if I’ll invite my mega chips back to my life. But I probably will because sometimes a little bad is good.

Yesterday I told my kids about a time I was bad. I started a food fight in high school. Yes, my honor-student girlfriends and I thought we’d been too good for too long. So the second week of school senior year we donned kelly green rain slickers and launched handfuls of apple crisp across the cafeteria. We were escorted to in-school suspension for the rest of the afternoon. My kid’s mesmerized faces stared back at me and I realized they never thought I’d been bad.

I told them that if they made it to senior year with excellent grades and no infractions to their permanent records, then I wouldn’t ground them if they started a food fight. Just like my mom didn’t punish me.

I don’t want my kids to think I’m perfect. I want them to know I’ve screwed up because they’re going to screw up. They need to understand discipline, and weakness, and how to fix things. Paige asked why I gave up my chocolate. She knows about it because every time I open the pantry I moan. A chocolate death cry. A wounded animal cry. And our trash can is in the pantry so I open it about 36 times a day. Showing my vulnerability helps the kids realize that moms aren’t always good and don’t always get what they want. And maybe if the scale talks nicer to me in a week or so, they’ll see how excited I get about reaching a goal.