You Know What? It's Saturday Night, And I Think I'll Eat One Of Those Chocolates I Won From Andrew Leon! (A [Mostly] Photo Essay)

I won a contest.  Well, I co-won a contest, me and Rusty Webb sharing the honors as GREATEST WRITERS ON THE INTERNET YAY!, (pretty sure that was the award), and as a reward for writing this story here about a Seal Team that has to fight a bunch of sentient numbers and carnivorous grapes and such, Andrew Leon sent me four chocolates that were billed as "the best chocolates in the world."

When you get something that great, I figure you have to do something special with it, like the time I got a pack of cards brought back from Las Vegas by my then-boss and I used them to teach myself how to do card tricks.  Or like wagons.






I don't know how it's like wagons.

It's late.

And I am exhausted.

Everyone here has had the flu except me, and so now, at 7:38 p.m. with Sweetie and Mr Bunches back from the hospital where they had to get medicine and fluids, they were so bad, and them asleep and Mr F jumping on his minitrampoline, it is time I broke open the first of these chocolates.

And photographed myself eating it.

It's really quiet in the house now.  I actually wrote all that foregoing stuff an hour ago.  It has taken that long for me to get my pictures to upload so that I can post the pictures that are supposed to make up this picture story.

Mr F is now in bed, and Mr Bunches has been asleep for an hour, almost, a tiny amount of chocolate and a smidgen of milk untouched by his bed.

The doctor said he probably shouldn't drink milk right away because it's "hard on the stomach," and Mr Bunches, from 6 to 6:30, bravely tried to drink a glass of water, but it was making him cry because he really wanted milk.

So I gave him a sip of milk at 6:30, and a little more at 7, while Mr F had his bath.

Then, at 7:30, Mr Bunches was asleep so I carried him up to his room and put him on his bed.

"Can I have milk and chocolate?" he asked, and I said, "Sure" and got him some, putting it on the floor next to his bed.  I closed his door and heard him say "The sky is falling" as his movie started and he was out.

And then I came down and ate that chocolate:

That chocolate.

I'm into black and white these days.

It seems classier than color.

This is the chocolate I picked out to start with.  I picked it at random, because there is no key on the box.

Or maybe there is.  Who knows? I didn't read the box.

The chocolate gave no hint as to its flavor, or its greatness.

This:

is the setup for eating the chocolate.  Yes, that is my own blog on the screen.  I was going to add to a post I'm working on.

This:

Is the wind-up dinosaur I got Mr Bunches at the drugstore when I went to pick up his and Sweetie's anti-nausea medicine.  You know what? Why is that not available all the time?

From 6:30 to 2, Sweetie and Mr Bunches could not stop being sick.  They couldn't even drink water.  I finally had to take them to the doctor because Sweetie was passing out.  And at the hospital, they gave them a pill and like magic they stopped.  They're not fine, not yet, but they haven't been sick at all since then and each of them could eat something.

WHY IS THAT NOT AVAILABLE ALL THE TIME, that pill?  Why are we spending days throwing up when we don't have to do so?  Screw doctors. I'm glad I vowed never to go back to one myself.  YOU HAVE A PILL THAT STOPS PEOPLE FROM THROWING UP, but you don't tell anyone?

Throwing up is the worst.  And I can say that because I have broken my neck, slipped a disc, sprained an ankle, broken a wrist, had a lazy eye, and had a heart attack, plus nearly died by bee sting.  I would rather have all of those things happen to me at once than throw up even one time, ever.

So at the drugstore, Mr F got a wind-up frog and Mr Bunches got a wind-up dinosaur.  When I asked him what the dinosaur's name was, and I am not making this up at all, he said:

"Rory."

WHICH IS LIKE ROAR-Y.

Mr Bunches is already more clever than me.

Here I am taking a bite of the chocolate:

I thought long and hard about putting a picture of me up on the blog, but then I thought "You know what? Just do it.  How bad can it be?"

ANSWER: pretty bad.  MY GOD THE BAGS UNDER MY EYES, which are not caused by today.  They are always there.

On the other hand, I've lost like 10-15 pounds since September.  I used to have to notch my belt on the first hole.  I can get to three now.  Three.

Three.

One bite, down.  It is chocolate inside other chocolate.  I've always wondered how they do that.  The inner chocolate is more melty or soft than the

HOLY MACKEREL IT'S HOT.

I wanted to give you an idea what it was like to eat the chocolate, because Andrew said it would be "chili" in one of them and I thought that might be a typo, but no, it's hot, and I'm not sure I like it:

But you know what? It is chocolate, after all, and I earned this.

'BE CAREFUL!' Rorysaur might be saying

but it's not that hot, Rory.

(Seriously: Roary.  He is a genius.  I'm sitting here in awe of him.  With a mouth that's still a little hot from the chocolate.)

That's the chocolate after two bites.  It kind of looks like a frog, doesn't it? Maybe I'm overtired and over chilichocolated.

I can't show you a picture after three bites because I ate it all on the next bite.

I ordinarily would have just popped the whole thing into my mouth in one bite, but it's a special chocolate, remember? You've got to make that last.

It was very good.

Also: I gave a lot of props to Mr Bunches in here, because, seriously, Roary.  Oh man, I'm laughing now and winding the dinosaur up as I type this.

But Mr F was awesome today.  He and I were a well-oiled machine.  While I took care of Mr Bunches and Sweetie, Mr F took on the important role of not acting up at the hospital, which is really hard for him, in that he hates hospitals and thought at first we were there for him.

But he settled in, and didn't make trouble, and even helped me at the drugstore when I asked him what kind of wind-up toy Mr Bunches might like.  We only got in one dispute all day, and that was when we had a bit of an issue about whether we should be sitting down on the toilet when we are supposed to be pooping.  I was on the side of "Yes, that's what civilized people do" and Mr F was on the side of "Go away," which is not an argument, but it had been a long day and we got through that, too.