Carrying the grocery bags into the house, I stopped just inside the door, smiled, and took a deep breath. The whole house smelled of my handiwork.
I wanted to just stand there and savor it, but I had so much to do. Only half my party decorations were up, and while yes the house was taking on a wonderfully creepy feeling of macabre, the end result would be so much better. I needed to finish pulling the cotton cob webbing across the door frame corners, I had light bulbs to change out in half my lamps and the dry-ice fog machine was not working right yet.
At least I had the graveyard in place. The PVC iron fence was freshly painted flat-black, and I had gotten it placed around the two sides of my front yard. All the Styrofoam tombstones were in their normal spots, I had touched up the stone gray paint on them as well.
Now. Back to work in here.
Sitting down the bags on the counter, I saw my sons "crap" all over my island. And, of course, I could see where inroads had been made into my
finished
boxes of candy.
"ROY!"
I was answered by a distant "Yeah, Mom?"
"GET YOUR BUTT DOWN HERE!"
I tried to make a guess at what all had been plundered while I waited for him to show up. There were a half-dozen chocolate-covered cherry mice gone. My Pop Rock
acid
pops were also showing signs of candy snatching.
The pumpkin fudge!
The boy was lucky as hell that there was a knock on the back door just as he arrived. Not that seeing the pimply- faces of his friends Zane and Jeffery, standing there when I opened my door, was any better. Jeffery showing up was guaranteed to cost the party a handful of white chocolate pretzel haystacks and Zane ....
Zane, I just didn't like.
While it was nothing new for a guy to be looking at my boobs when he talked to me, it really creeped me out when it was a teenager ... a punk, greasy-haired, smelling like he bathed in AXE, teenager. He wasn't three feet in the door when his eyes took up permanent residence on my breasts. Like the horny little fucker had never seen anything bigger than a c-cup before. I eyed both boys, and my son too for that matter, with mild disgust when they looked at the dozens of boxes of candy sitting around the kitchen and dining room. If it wasn't sex it was food. Teen fucking boys!
I gave Roy a look while his friends piled their own "junk" on the island next to my son's "crap" making an even bigger pile of "stuff" in my way. Enough is enough.
"Mom can we ...?"
"No. Not a chance. Don't even ask, I'm already mad at you." I pointed the finger-of-death at my son and then turned to the other. "And you two, even more so, no. Enough already. I have twenty-five guests coming here tomorrow night, the house isn't half-finished and I am going to need all that I have made so far, and then some, for the
Treat
bags I make for my guests. No more candy till after the party." I picked up an armload of my candy making ingredient, (various tools, and boxes of confectioners' sugar, chocolate bark, edible glitter, caramel cubes, and powdered ready-to-mix colored icings) and all but pushed their mess off my counter. "I want all of you out of my kitchen, and certainly out of my candy boxes, for the rest of the night."
"That's what I was just about to ask about," said Roy defensibly. "I wanted to see if I could go hang at Zane's tonight ...."
"Get! I don't care, so long as you're out of my hair." With a final look at him, I went past the other two other teen boys in my kitchen, avoiding Zane's attempt to be enough in the way so that my boobs might brush him in passing. Fuckin' scummy-smelling, hormone-driven, little toad. His trying to get either a peek or a "brush-feel" of my breasts at least once per visit was getting so damn old, so damn fast. As I went out the door, to retrieve the rest of my supplies from the car, I knew the horny perv's eyes were on my ass.
Out at the car, I stopped and took a deep breath. "Rick, you fucking prick I need you." I cussed my ex-husband, Roy's father. Leave it to him to decide to have a midlife crises--and run off with a twenty-year-old convenience store clerk who smiled at him--just as his son hit the difficult mid-teens. In the three years since the divorce my son, my once so loving son was getting out of my control so quickly. He wouldn't listen to me anymore, talked back more often than he listened, and to make matters worse was more and more often hanging out with little punks like Zane.
As I watched the three of them, laughing and pushing each other, walk out to that battered up old Mustang--with it's too big wheels and crappy as hell flat black paint job--I wished I hadn't snapped at Roy back there. Telling him I didn't care what he did was worse than anything I could do but I was just so frustrated with him. Half the time he didn't even seem like the same kid I raised.
I sighed and shook my head when the garage door twenty feet from me started to open and I saw my neighbor, Gabriel Cooper, standing there with his weed eater. Suburban warrior ready to tackle his lawn, yet again. For at least the next four, un-muffled-gas-powered-yard-tool-after-yard-tool, hours. I looked to the trees, mentally wishing for all the golden and red leaves to suddenly drop at once, so that maybe ... please maybe, this would be the last time I would have to hear his fanatical levels of yard clean up for the year.
He smiled and lifted a hand in greeting when he saw me.
I nodded, smiled back and waved. Why had I invited him to the party tomorrow?
Yeah, he was cute, in a salt and pepper gray goatee way. Yeah, he was single, a not too unattractive fact that I noticed more and more often of late. But he was also nutty as a squirrel turd! Since he had moved in last fall he had done more yard work that three landscaping companies combined. Every day, three to four hours per day, he would be doing ... something! ... a loud, noisy, or simply uber-obnoxious as hell at ungodly hours ... something.
"Hey, Lilibeth." His smile was an ear to ear grin. I saw his eyes dart from my nose to my toes and back quickly, he was one of those kinds of guys. Wanted to look, was going to look, but didn't want to look like he was looking. Men! "Or should I call you Mrs. Wonka? I've been smelling candy for days now. Any samples?"
His grin was infectious, and if I hadn't been dealing with teen thieves for days I might have been more susceptible. I shook my head. "I'm already behind in what I need to make. I'll have you a goody bag tomorrow night, don't worry."
He gave me a nod. "I'll be looking forwards to it. I think I put on twenty pounds last year because of your holiday candy. I'm going to need to do more yard-aerobics to keep in shape this season."
Oh, Joy.
With a nod that I had heard him, I took the last of my groceries out the trunk, shut it with a magical combination of elbow and hip, and headed inside ... to find they had raided my damn pumpkin fudge again!
Grabbing my phone, my thumbs flew as I texted an angry message, but then didn't send it. I sighed. Candy was meant to be eaten and they are just boys.
I looked around at the
raided
boxes, made a mental count of what I needed to make more of and went to work. As I heated the sugar I realized that was the problem, what had once been fun now felt like work.
Every year, year after year from the earliest days of my marriage to Rick, I had taken such pleasure in making candy for all of our friends and relatives. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas was the times of year I had looked forwards too. Now with him gone off to fuck a younger,
skinnier
, woman and me alone, with friends who seemed more and more to come more for the free treats than for my company, I wanted to throw all this out. But I couldn't. It was almost like an addiction by now. My eyes started going to recipe websites, my fingers started to ache when I walked down the baking aisles at the store, and I would smile when I thought about what new confections I was going to try to make this year.
I got a pot of coffee going; it was going to be a long day.
To cheer me up I spooned some of my purple decorative sugar into the coffee when it was ready, just to be more in the spooky season mood. I cranked up some "Ghostly" music and got to some serious candy making.
** ** ** ** ** ** **
~ "... bubble, bubble, boil and trouble. Something wicked this way comes!" ~
With my kitchen resembling an Oompa-Loompa wet dream, I sang along with one of my favorite songs off the Harry Potter soundtrack as I made magic. Letting all the stress of the morning slide, I suddenly found myself with more energy than I had ever known. In bursts and spurts I shot around the kitchen, going from one candy station to another, then to the stove and back. Making magic. Sugar boiled, chocolate melted and powdered sugar and shaved coconut got everywhere. And I mean everywhere.
All my worry and depressions over who was coming to see me and who just came to the parties for the candy faded. This was my meditation. My Zen. I wished I could just hover here in this single second forever. Let the world slip away, let time stop and let me make candy, a confectioners heaven of sinfully caloric delights.
This was me. I was, in an odd way that made such sudden sense to me, candy. I was sweet, no other word for it. I was a bit bad for you and, as my ex had showed me, you could get to the point where you've had too much of me and just can't take me anymore.
Looking over at the stacked boxes, I smiled. And then, after you dump me like I'm trash, I can still cost you a leg.
Giggling at my own humor, I poured melted colored sugar into cold water and laughed my delight at seeing the little hard ball forming as I pushed it around in the bowl. Taking the syrup to the counter I poured it over the popcorn, peanuts, and marshmallows. Working quickly, I got it mixed with my wooden spoons, and then hand rolling golf ball size popcorn balls, I shook them in orange sugar and set them aside to finish up with jack-o-lantern icing smiles ... later.
Ding!
Out the oven came my Dia de Muertos skull cookies. Setting those aside to cool. I filled a piping bag with the fancy icing ... also later.
Going to the dining room, I looked over the dozens of colorful clear plastic cups. I pulled out one of my rock candy suckers and mischievously stuck it into my mouth. Two weeks old and the vanilla rum taste, and the super sweetness of the rock candy, simply flooded my mouth.