Some things about me: My forever love of chocolate and sweets -or- Dope Body: The Unofficial Guide on Living 'Till 45

My parents have this thing for store-bought vanilla cake.  They love the stuff!!
My birthday, Annapolis, 2002 I think. 

I eat sweets everyday.  I may have been doing this for the past 25-30 years (I can't quite remember for how long.  My memory is sugar-fogged.)  I do remember regularly riding my bike into downtown Annapolis expressly to visit a bulk candy shop.  I'd get chocolate malt balls and maybe something else if I was feeling indulgent.  I would also walk to my local Rite Aid for Symphony or Hershey bars.  I ate those big Symphony bars for a really long time.  I remember when the regular-sized bars cost 47 cents.  Depending on my cash flow, I would get as many small bars as I could afford, or I'd spring for the giant bar if I could swing it.  I actually preferred the (forgive me, I hate this word) "mouthfeel" of the smaller bars.  Something about the smooth flatness made the chocolate pieces melt in your mouth luxuriously.  The larger bars weren't quite the same, the pieces rectangular and taller.  But, I guess the addict in me didn't care too much.  Quantity trumped mouthfeel.

I remember winning some class spelling bee in third grade.  My teacher presented me my option of prizes: a stuffed animal teddy bear, or a giant-sized Hershey bar.  I took the bear, thinking its lasting presence would be rewarding.  At the time this decision was one of the most difficult in my 8-year-old existence.  I should have gone for the chocolate!! (You know what, though?  I was probably thinking, I could get one of those myself later from Rite Aid.  Take the bear. He's cute. I love him.)

I was notorious for eating my chocolate while reading books and would often get little chocolate dabs on my white comic pages (my Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield collections are flecked with them).  I'd feel bad if I got some on my library books.  This still didn't stop me.  I kept my chocolate right under my bed for easy access.  I remember reading Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and thinking I would never have the resolve Charlie did to only eat a square of chocolate every day to make his candy bar last a week or so.  To this day, this remains a truth.

Oh, I also had a monstrous mouth full of cavities as a child.  Hmmm...

During my junior year of college I had a crabby roommate who was in the Airforce.  (His name was Eric, and his unoriginal nickname was "Airforce", since we also roomed with another Eric whom we called "Westy," who was from West Virginia.  For the record, I did not assign these names.)  Airforce would often travel for the weekend on assignment to this place or that place, flying planes - duh.  We never got close, but he came to treat me as an irritable older brother-figure.  I would bug him to bring me back something from his travels and he'd refuse, asserting his autonomy from me in a mean way ("Why would I get you something? I'm not getting you anything.").  

But for once.  One day, after he came back from a trip to Germany, I was sitting on my bed and he looked through the crack of my ajarred door to see if I was in.  He abruptly barked something to me and from the door an object was hurled at my head.  This thin brick ricocheted off the wall and landed on the bed.  It was a Rittersport bar.  It was chocolate.  It was sweet European bounty.  If there was ever any unspoken love between us, here it was.  I probably thanked him with unwanted physical attention and I imagine he militaristically punched me off him.  I probably asked where the rest was.  As I write this, I am two squares away from finishing a Rittersport, milk chocolate with cornflakes.

[Apparently, if you want me to remember you forever, just get me some chocolate.  (Garry Boyle, I'm looking at you. I think you started me on Symphony in 4th or 5th grade.)]

Fast forward: my first real job post-college.  I work as a drone proofreader reviewing government documents in my beloved hometown among a clan of quirky, cantankerous retirees.  One day each month we celebrate our collective birthdays of that month with cake, baked goods, and a short break from the workday.  Usually in the afternoon after lunchtime.  For my birthday I make hinting suggestions that cake should be had a.s.a.p.  Word spreads like wildfire and I hear Richard, our most cranky, most sourpuss cohort, across the room blurt out, "Cake at 10 in the morning?!"  I think he's annoyed b/cs it coincides with his hourly smoke break.  Shortly his furrowed brow is replaced with a mouth full of the stuff, positing, "This cake is pretty good."  

Damn straight, cake at 10 in the morning.

My DLR going away shindig dessert table.  I see at least three acceptable chocolately things presented.  Let's hope that was a tin of cookies on the left.   Oh, and those plates are way too small. Annapolis, 2003.

I am sure there is a better picture of this somewhere, but you get the idea.  I think we had different flavored layers of cake.  The marble was pretty good.  
(Oh, and he did NOT smash any cake on my face, b/cs I would not have tolerated any flagrant cake-wasting.)  Annapolis, Oct. 27, 2007

When I travel I seek out bakeries and candy shops to sample the local offerings.  I was going to say I especially like chocolate, but really it's that and cookies and pastries, which basically covers the sweets gamut.

These were giant press rollers for cookies.  
Outside Mont St. Michel, France, April 2009

Pastry shop in France.  Overseas field trip, April 2009  
(Photo by a student, not me)

I did not purchase these, but Ben did.  My Irish/UK candy bar of choice is the Crunchie, which are slabs of manufactured honeycomb coated in milk chocolate.  
A pure blast of sugar.  Ireland, August 2009

Some cakey snack.  Ireland, August 2009

Fooled! Yuck! (These cupcakes were actually candles.)

  Mandy is humoring me here, since she would never really eat a cupcake. 
(She does not like cake! My parents would be mystified.)  Ireland, 2009

Finally something I can sink my teeth into.  Still Ireland, 2009  
(Look at Kara trying to eat some now and save some for later.)

Bakery, Annecy, France.  Feb. 2012

Annecy, France.  Feb. 2012

French Macarons. Chamonix, France. Feb. 2012

Chocolate cake!!  Kara's looks more like a mousse.

I was never good at "saving some for later."  Polishing off the box.  
Chamonix, France, Feb. 2012

Torino, Italy.  Feb. 2012

Lyon, France.  Feb. 2012

Talloires, France Feb. 2012

Saying goodbye to Talloires via a stop by the bakery.

The next day: trying to crack open a safe in Geneva.  Those are bars of Swiss chocolate, right?  Feb. 2012

I am fortunate to live near two cupcake shops.  The farther one has maple bacon cupcakes, which may sound odd, but are excellent.  

Bethany Beach, April 2012.  I also love ice cream.  I shouldn't really eat custard b/cs I'm allergic to eggs, but Kohr's is quite good.

My lovely niece with her favor from Sara's baby shower.  
I ate mine immediately. July 2012.

Also in my hometown there was a killer bakery next to our local fish market.  My desert of choice was this deathly rich and super dense layered chocolate cake that was topped with gold dust.  Gold Dust!!   You can't get more indulgent than that.  Sadly, that shop is long closed.  That cake is like my white horse, my white dragon.  It's the beast I chase, the high, my memory of sweetness and love and knowing how fucking awesome life can be as I ingested the sugar and let its magical chemicals transform my mind and body, if for a moment and for my lifetime.  

My siren song is a goddamned chocolate cake.

I'll keep eating all this other stuff until I find it again.

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Oh, I was also addicted to soda when I was a kid, but that's a story for another time.
My kitchen, before my First Communion, circa 1986/7