And Now For Something Completely Different

Having spent the past two days doing the wake-and-funeral thing, which was not only emotionally draining but which has also engendered a great deal of thought on my part as far as my wishes for my own death...anyway, having done that for the past two days, I feel a need for one of those embarrassing-foibles posts. And I've got a doozy.

I'm fairly sure I've mentioned, in the not-too-distant past, my affinity for Little Debbie Swiss Rolls. Little Debbie Swiss Rolls, for the uninitiated, are small, "chocolate"-covered snack cakes, rolled up jelly-roll style with "cream" filling. Some people think of them as low-budget Hostess Ho-Ho's ($1.25 for a package of 12 Swiss Rolls vs. $3.49 for the same number of the Hostess brand), so much so that between Tim and I, we have evolved a shorthand of referring to them as "Ho's". To my mind, however, they are far superior, for reasons I cannot pinpoint. Maybe it's the price thing.

Tim, though he professes loyalty to Star Crunch Cakes, has lately joined in on my Swiss Roll food-fad, to such an extent that in order to keep any for myself, I've created a small secret hoard in a drawer of my dresser. Tim knows of its existence, but doesn't know where it is, and anyway he wouldn't dream of invading my space to THAT degree. However, any 'Ho's not in the hoard, placed out in a public and visible area of the house, are agreed to be up for grabs.

Owing to my continued joblessness, my sleep schedule is completely wrecked; I have taken to indulging my night-owl proclivities, to leaving the TV on, to falling asleep with an open book on my chest and the light still on. I'll have to un-learn all this in the unlikely event that I ever get another job, but in the meantime it's been kind of like an extended summer vacation, only in winter. And so, a few nights ago, very very late, I was watching TV in bed, as is my habit, when I was struck with a taste for one of my snack cakes.

Snack cakes, as you know, come in packs of two, and I will admit--to my everlasting humiliation--that I've got a snack-cake-eating ritual--first peeling off the outer "chocolate" coating and eating that, then unrolling the cake bite-by-bite, and last of all, nibbling away the center core of cake and filling. *

But apparently, I was a little sleepier than I thought.

I woke up a couple of hours later, from a dream of hanging on to something--a pole or a chain, something I could wrap my fist around--to discover that something WAS, in fact, in my fist. And when I awakened, I was trying--and almost succeeding-- to shove it into the pocket of my pajama pants. Groggily, I raised my hand to where I could identify it...

...as a fistful of mangled cake and chocolate, with cream filling oozing out between my fingers. And not only was my fist full--my pocket was full, and my shirt, and a decent-sized area of my sheets, and almost everything else in a two-foot radius.

After performing the next logical act--licking my palm clean--I brushed off my shirt as best I could, consigned the pajama pants and the bottom sheet to the laundry hamper, and went into the closet for some cleaning rags and the vacuum cleaner. In about thirty minutes, my room and my person were once again devoid of snack-cake detritus, and I was able to go back to sleep.

I'm sure there's a moral here somewhere, but I'm not up to ferreting it out at the moment; however, I have removed the snack-cakes from the immediate environs of my bed. Better safe than sorry, after all. (Or, as Tim phrased it, "Sleeping with 'Ho's only gets you in trouble.")

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*Yes, I AM ashamed of myself. After all, I'm THIRTY-SIX YEARS OLD, for Pete's sake, and this is more the work of a not-too-mature eight-year-old--on a par with smooshing your ice cream into mush with a spoon, which I also do. My only defense is that I was never allowed to play with my food as a child--never allowed to make mashed-potato volcanoes with gravy for lava, or to flick peas off a teaspoon at my father--anything like that. And that's a weak defense, at best, so maybe I'll just stick with brash defiance: I like 'em that way, is all.