A Peepsaholic Odessey

The 4/21/14 post from my blog, www.ailantha.com

    Easter has come and gone, and all those Peeps-permeated  weeks are thankfully behind me.
    No more having to steel myself every time I step into a store then avert my eyes and hurry past those ubiquitious Peeps displays without a glance, trying to freeze out of my mind the sensation of biting into that soft chick or bunny, the sugary marshmallow texture, the rush of hyper-sweetness.
    Before the first package  hit the shelves I made a promise to myself not to eat a single Easter Peeps this year.
    Because the truth is that I can’t eat a single Peeps;  if I eat one Peeps I have to eat  at least six or eight.  I could easily eat the whole package.  I have eaten a whole package of Peeps at once, and not just one time.  
    So for me it’s a matter of either avoiding Peeps altogether or eating ‘way too many of them.
    So this year I decided to avoid them altogether.
    I likewise  took the pledge not  to eat any jelly beans or any other form of Easter candy, as for me any kind of Easter candy is just the  gateway to Peeps.
    But it was hard. 
    Nor did it help that every day for past month prior to Easter my siblings, their children and my children had been exchanging peeps jokes via email with photos of Peeps doing funny things. But  the absolute worst  was having to gaze upon this photo of my brother Joe, a retired podiatrist who has found a second career as a baker at Dunkin Donuts (he has to be at work at 4:30 am and appears to be thoroughly enjoying himself, as you can see from the photo below), holding this tray of fresh  Peeps-topped donuts (a Dunkin Donuts Easter special item).

   My brother Joe the baker standing proudly with a tray of Peepsnuts he made himself

        This photo was the worst for me because my doughnut addiction is right up there with my Peeps addiction. 
      The whole Peepsnut concept took my craving to a completely new level.
    As I said, it hasn’t been easy.
    But did I succeed in my quest to be, the day after Easter, clean and Peeps-free?
Was there not a molecule of  sugar-coated marshmallow or even a trace amount of pink, yellow, blue, turquoise or green in my blood?
    The truth is...almost.  I almost made it across the finish line.
    And here's the grand irony to this whole story:
   Last Friday afternoon, wanting to get a head start on today's blog, I started writing about how I'd made it through this Peeps season without succumbing to my Peepsaholism. 
    I wrote until I got as far as the photo of my brother holding the tray of Peepsnuts.
    That was the moment when all this writing about Peeps and doughnuts, all this  thinking about Peeps and doughnuts started getting  to me. Then my craving for a Peeps and/or a doughnut really started getting to me!
    Still, I think I would have gotten through it, the craving would have passed, if only it hadn't been necessary for me to go to Krogers  to buy ingredients for my contribution to the Liszkay family Easter dinner taking place the next day at Tom's sister Mary Jane's house in Amherst, Ohio.
    One last  time I had to go into the supermarket and face down those little chick and bunny faces in all those tantalizing colors.  But this time there was a sugary little voice in my head whispering to my brain:
    "What's the harm in one or two little Peeps?" 
    "They taste soooo good!" it reminded me.
    "This is your last chance for Peeps!" it warned, "YOUR LAST CHANCE!" 
    I stared down at my little marshmallow demons and they stared back with their sweet little chick and bunny expressions.

        This time the Peeps won.  I tossed a package into my cart.  Then another one.  Then another one.  Then one more, so I'd have one of every color in the store.
        And  by some perversity of fate,  one of the only existing Dunkin Donuts in the Columbus area is about a mile from my house and I had to pass it on my way home from Krogers.
    Three guesses what happened next.
    These two little Peepsnuts, though considerably  less attractive than the ones on Joe's tray, were soon staring up at me from my kitchen table. 
Like Eve with the apple, I'd bought two Peeps in order to entice Tom into sharing my nutritional transgression.  It worked. ​

    Were the Peepnuts delicious? 
    Oh, yes. They were.  Despite their off-putting appearance, these  bad boys really were  delicious, and so satisfying that they actually quenched the fire of my craving for any more Peeps at that moment.  Which was a good thing, right?  I mean, eating one Peeps-topped doughnut had to be better than eating four boxes of Peeps, right?
    In any case, the four boxes of Peeps sat on my kitchen counter for the rest of the night.
    The next morning, Saturday morning, there was little time to think about the Peeps on the counter as  Tom and I with Tommy and our nephew Kevin  had to leave Columbus  by 10am for Amherst for our family Easter Saturday dinner. A fine time was had:
     Durinig dinner,

...and after.

     Until the desserts were brought out and I saw:

    I swear I wanted to pull the Peeps off every cupcake and eat them all!
    But I didn't.  I  ate only one, the one on top of my own cupcake  (moist carrot cake cupcakes iced with creamy cream cheese frosting, oh, so yummy!) then compensated by stuffing myself with the remaining non-chocolate dessert options:

Vanilla lamb cake, fruit salad, strawberry cream-cheese cake.
For the chocophiles (in whose number I still am not) there were chocolate-chip cookies, and chocolate-chip cream-cheese bars, as well as those little tiny foil-wrapped milk chocolate eggs, none of which tempted me.

    But then my niece Stacy took one of the Peepscakes, removed the Peeps, bit off the head, then proclaimed that she hated Peeps.
    Appalled, I asked her why she was eating it, then.
    Stacy shrugged and said she didn't know what else to do with it.
    I then told her that I liked Peeps so much that I'd eat that Peeps she was holding in her hand, even with the bite out of it.
    She proffered me her headless Peeps.  I ate it.
    That's the kind of thing a Peepsaholic does.
    It always amazes me that there are people out there who don't like Peeps.  But, in fact, I know there are many who don't.  In fact, I believe that more people hate Peeps than love them. Three of my four children hate  Peeps.  The fouth inherited my Peeps addiction.
    In any case, though the Peepscakes were much admired, only about half of them were consumed at the dinner, so Mary Jane offered me to take a couple home, which I didn't want to do, but, of course, did anyway.

   On Easter morning I woke up with a promise to myself that I'd eat one, only one,  of the Peepscakes, which wouldn't be a problem because I knew I could count on Tom to eat the other one for me.  And  I'd toss out the four packages of Peeps still sitting on the counter.
    I promised myself I'd toss them as soon as I got back from church, from whence I knew I'd return home feeling renewed and fortified in spirit.
     But at the beginning of the sermon our Pastor was making  a point  and as a prop he pulled out a box of : 

See the little yellow box?!

---

   See the little yellow box?!
  That little yellow box wouldn't stop staring at me for the rest of the service.
    So of course, I had to rush home after church and eat lunch so that I could lay into my Peeps-topped cupcake!
    Which, fortunately, like the Peepsnut from two days before, had the effect of calming my need for more Peeps.
    Then at that moment when I was Peeps-satiated, that one moment when I could easily have pulled those  those Peeps out of those wrappers and tossed them into the trash can,  I choked. 
    Instead of tossing them out I ran them down to the basement and put them on a high shelf.  And, except for one box that Tommy offered to take into work  - he didn't want to take more than one, he said they once had a discussion on the subject and most of his co-workers are of the Peeps-hating persuasion -  on that basement shelf is where they sit right now.
       So what do I do now with all  those Peeps?  Keep them down on that basement shelf as an exercise in resistance and self-discipline until the moment I crack and tear into the cellophane wrapper and eat a whole pack?
        Throw them away?  Give them away?
        Does anybody want to come over to my house and take them away for me?
        If you do I'll throw in two boxes of Girl Scout cookies stashed away on the same shelf for the same reason.