Purge

I was sick of it! The sneaking, the smuggling, the whining, the sticky wrappers behind the couch.

"No more!" I declared. "Today is the last day of Halloween candy."

My children were perplexed by the statement, and downright shocked as I proceeded to dump all four buckets of candy out into the middle of the kitchen table. It was 8 am.

"Eat up," I say. "Whatever you don't eat by noon, goes into the trash."
Kate embraced this. She's the number one offender of sneaking candy anyway. She began shoveling the sugar into her mouth as fast a she could open packages. Collin was more suspicious. He'd never encountered this mommy before. He needed many questions answered and still throughout the allotted time needed permission to indulge. He even quietly asked, "What about breakfast?"

"This is it, ," I say as I hand each of the twins a dum-dum. Joe strolls through about this time. He's been listening to my rant from the office, and has a smirk on his face.

"Quite a way to start off Thanksgiving break," he comments more to himself than me.

An hour later, the twins are in bed and Collin has disappeared, but Kate is still parked at the table, sticky candy residue clinging to her chin. "Kate," I say, "are you trying to eat all of that candy?"

"Yeah." She seems to be speaking and moving much slower than usual.

"What's going to happen when you do?"

"My stomach's gonna hurt real bad, and I'll probably throw up."

"So why are you doing it?" There's no response from my daughter; she's staring off into space with a lollipop in each hand.

No one complained when "lunchtime" came, and I scooped the rest of the candy into the trash. No one wanted any lunch either. Weird.