Halloween is in the Hiz-ouse

We buy a lot of stuff in bulk. Important stuff that we consistently use a lot of, like butter sugar bacon toilet paper, baby wipes, and multivitamins. So we have a Sam's Club membership, which is worth every penny of the $40 yearly fee - because, I mean, you never know when you're gonna need a case of individual oatmeal packets. Or a package of 200 ballpoint pens. Or an economy-sized bag of limes.

Of course Sam's Club, like any other store, is saturated with holiday-themed stuff months before the actual holiday. At this time of year, obviously, Halloween is at the forefront since it's only a month away. And when we walked in, we were met with a towering display of Halloween candy. I'm not talking little bags here, y'all: these bags were the size of, like, an overstuffed queen-sized pillow. A pillow that ate the person sleeping on it.

"I need some for the candy dish on my desk at work," Curtis rationalized, and began piling these huge-ass bags into the cart before I could say anything. Stack. Stack. "Plus," - stack - "we'll need it for the trick-or-treaters."

"Yeah, in a month," I protested weakly, but the cart was already half-full. Snickers! Kit-Kats! 100 Grand! Almond Joy! Nestle Crunch! Reese's! Twix! M&Ms!

We do get a ton of trick-or-treaters in our 'hood. Generally I buy the Halloween candy every year, and I tend to get things I don't like (stuff like Butterfingers, Baby Ruths, Whoppers, and licorice) just so I won't devour it all and leave the little costumed kids emptyhanded. Because I totally will. I have a definite love/hate relationship with Halloween candy in the house. Because yay! 24-hour access to all the chocolatey deliciousness I can handle! but boo! no self-control and big thighs. When we do get candy I like, I try to put it up in a hard-to-reach place and promise that I won't touch it. But I swear, I could put the damn candy into a shoebox and then into a locked vault and bury it under the concrete floor of my garage and surround the garage with electric fencing and armed guards and a freaking alligator-infested moat, and I'd still get into it - that's just the way I am.

I'm jealous of people who can practice portion control by eating one little candy bar. "Fun-sized," those little candy bars are called. Really? Fun-sized? How much "fun" is half a candy bar? You know what's fun-sized to me? A candy bar the size of my head - now that's something I'd have fun eating. Whee!

As of this writing (it's Friday evening, but this post won't go up until Monday), we've had the Halloween candy in our house for approximately four hours. And I have consumed exactly *coughcoughsevencoughcough* of the aforementioned fun-sized candy bars. That's almost two per hour.

There are, like, 800-something hours until Halloween.

You do the math.