life, the universe, and everything

About a hundred things to say or share

So much, so much, but I don't, because my head has too much energy for the rest of me to use. I don't know if that made sense. Here is some blather, broken up by stuff to make it seem less of a chore to slog through.

Toward the end of February, I contracted a virus. Well, a boy did first. He was the sickest of his life, at age 15, and I actually took him to the clinic on a Sunday, where we learned he didn't have the flu, just one of these things you get now and then that sticks to you. And as he was getting better after needing more serious attention than he has in over a decade, I fell ill. Well, I seem to every year at the end of winter, actually, but anyway. It took him over two weeks to be better, took me over three. But now it's been over six weeks, and I'm still not right. It's because of weak lungs, asthma, etc. I need a stretch of two or three days in warm dry sunshine, then I'll be fine.

In the meantime, so much in my head, and I've been sewing, doing puzzles, watching French and Japanese movies, listening to opera, having mini existential crises, and planning a duo of paintings in a similar (though poorly similar, and that's okay by me) style to a few early ones by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, to put on my living room wall.

And someone recently mentioned he'd finally read a great long 19th century piece of literature, which got me thinking.


I make a general goal each year to take some time to appreciate good stuff or go back over great stuff to see or hear it all with a current perspective. But very general, not like when I was 17, or maybe 18, and my brother said I should make a list of good books I never read, and read them, and I sat in a tree in Loose Park with Emma and a bag of almond croissants and fell in love with Mr Knightley. Because I got through only about half the list after that. I mean, directly after that. It's a certainty I've covered it all by now.

Only there's so much else I haven't covered! I'm still lousy at Italian; every time I tackle it, I start reviewing French, instead. Whenever I try to read Ukridge, I find myself back at Blandings Castle. Things like this. So I am making a real list, and I'll make neat lines through it as I go along.

I imagined whistling through the parking lot of Home Depot, as I do, the Habanera aria from Carmen, and someone from the web would call me a poseur, only whatever the word is in 2014 for that, and I'd have to sing it aloud and annoyingly in order to shut them up, but that one line that goes, "Et c’est l’autre que je préfère—Il n’a rien dit mais il me plait" has this rhythm I can't quite get. And I could never match the sheer incredibleness of this, especially at 1.49 or I forget, thereabouts.

 

Still, that should be on the list, even though the internet, fortunately, tends to stay where it is and not follow people through parking lots.

But look, I have read Ulysses. I get why it's a thing and all, however, I didn't get any pride from it, and on the whole, I'd rather just listen to Kate Bush, only not very young Kate Bush. So the list is just for me, not anybody else, or so I can check off more boxes at a Buzzfeed page and be scored on how very, very special I am, indeed, or almost! if I just try a little bit harder.

Probably I should reach farther, though, is the original point. My comfort zone is wider than many, but not actually much or any deeper.

 
The conversation after the short bit of rehearsal we are shown amuses me.

So anyway. I'm making a list. Stay tuned.

Faire votre connaissance

That's what was running through my mind over and over again when I awoke after some silly dreams; typical dreams for me, wherein very interesting things are just about to happen, and then are inexplicably and interminably delayed.

Then suddenly this song was in my head. I've never been a great fan of it, but it has lasted, hasn't it?

As I was turning on the lights in my little plant box, I was thinking about that, and of course the name Mungo Jerry came to mind, and before one of my kids could say, "Bob's my uncle," Mun-go Jerrie-and-Rum-ple-Tea-zer came wandering into my brain.

I haven't written about Werther yet, because he might be right; it's the best one we've seen. In a way.

But it always comes back to Frank, and I expect he plans to sing this song to me all morning.  

This weekend I hope to see two movies; The Wind Rises and The Grand Budapest Hotel, and I hope to shore up the plastic greenhouse so I can put a heater in it and start using it, and I hope to make a little marmalade and also write down more stuff and work on my quilt. We'll just see about all that.

Mais, d'apprendre à me connaître dans le matin nécessite de l'energie, n'est ce pas? Only when the sun is shining...

has the dam broken open? also, a French TV show.

It's been a long strange winter, and I want to share all about it. But in no particular order. I might write 16 posts or 3 very long ones or change my mind and keep writing with pen and paper to no audience. But here's something.

I found this show on Acorn TV called Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie, and watched the first episode last night, "Les Meurtres ABC." The first eleven episodes of the show are set in the 1930s and star Antoine Duléry and Marius Colucci. Here's the Google translation of the Wikipedia.fr page: "The main characters are the Commissioner Jean Larosière, fifties seducer, poet and Epicurean and Deputy Inspector Émile Lantern, thirty, shy, bumbling and awkward, but very endearing."

Acorn TV has six of their eleven episodes available, and one from the newer series which began last year, is set in the 1950s, and stars "A new born duo: Blandine Bellavoir in the role of Alice Avril, a journalist Voix du Nord (that's a newspaper in Northern France where the series is set) and Samuel Labarthe in the role of Commissioner Laurence Swan."

Knowing that, I have mixed feelings. I wonder why they were released this way, instead of in two full sets with the second including the replacement cast, and carrying on from there.

Anyway, I didn't look too deeply into it, but apparently Duléry said it was time to move on while things were still swell, which is what they always say, and fan reaction was exactly the same as everywhere else, from the emotional "Oh, no, it will be terrible now!" to the pedantic "I have faith in the writers' creativity and will continue to watch."

I know what I'd have thought. "Oh. Labarthe isn't nearly as…well, maybe. We'll see."

So the show is very good. The production values are rich and thoughtful and thoroughly satisfying. I saw a couple of English language reviews stating "This isn't the real thing, sniff." Well, in a sense, it's more real than the adaptations we've seen lately, to be honest. I think Agatha Christie would be rather more pleased with these interpretations of her stories than she would be with, for example, the bizarre 2008 Murder is Easy, even if Benedict Cumberbatch was a somewhat inspired choice for retired policeman Luke Fitzwilliam. I'm not saying it's terrible. But a purist would hate it.

The ending of "Les Meurtres ABC" struck me as a bit too entangled and even more improbable than the original ABC Murders ending, until I thought it over. I believe the subtitle translation influenced my view of it, and so now I also believe the writers actually made a little more sense of it, rather than less.  And I think Christie'd have preferred the somewhat gratuitous (but not actually! it was a power grab! and kind of hot...) love scene between the deputy inspector and the substitute commissioner, to the perpetual BBC notion that every single unmarried woman of a certain age in her stories was a lesbian.

I wish I could just watch without subtitles, but there's too much I'd miss. You have to immerse yourself in a spoken world in order to pick up the speed and rhythm of speech, and I've never had that opportunity. I think possibly I read French well enough that I could follow closed captioning instead of subtitles, with a certain amount of pausing, but that isn't available.

Here, for my Twitter/Tumblr friends who have not seen it, a talk show segment with Antoine Duléry and Jean Dujardin.
 

Why do they forget the way?

If this were a true essay, I'd quote to you from this linked one at The Atlantic: Does Prince Charming Really Need to be Reinvented? and cite sources and things, but I mean, it isn't. My head is too crowded this week to say all I could truly say on the subject, anyway, so here's kind of a quick response.

I appreciated the thoughts in this essay; it's just the sort of thing I wonder over from time to time. It's too complex and there's too much to unravel to just soundbite agree or disagree in a comment field, which is why I'm typing this here and not at the magazine or Google Plus: Bark-Examining Society. 

I was a child in the 70s, a time when girls could do anything, but as girls. Jane West, the girl cowboy, Nancy Drew, the girl detective. Only the three divorced moms wore jeans, but a girl could say she wanted to be a doctor instead of a nurse. A woman doctor, I mean. Women lawyers were straight-up Angry Feminists, you know. Airline attendants were still stewardesses, of course, but no longer glamorous. And women ran things, but if it was a big thing, she still wasn't listed on the board of directors. She might become a woman politician, though, in the following decade.

In the 80s, when I was growing up, many women emulated men kind of by the book for awhile if they wanted to be on top of the game. For women like me, it was weird and actually disappointing. And it created a huge divide between two distinct types, with a huge middle section working too hard to be both. Their lives didn't all turn out like the Enjoli ad. But we're slowly moving past it now. Apparently, men are less frightened of sharing control, and hopefully, most of the younger ones don't even see gender in that way. At least their sons won't. (There are still "woman engineers," though, and that is a whole ball of wax that's got to be discussed and melted.)

I think twisting the hero prince story in Frozen is cool, if maybe a little mind-bending for some seven year-old hearts. A reaction that says it's cool specifically because no girl should dream of an old-time fairy tale prince is kind of narrow and clenchy, though. And already a cliché. Plus we have the teen movies later on telling us the boy we might really want is the hero's sidekick, right? We evolve, yet we're not all the same, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

I've been in love with nearly every character Jim Garner played, because I always liked my heroes to have an edge and sometimes an air of reluctance. But would I actually marry the cowboy instead of the pharmacist? Well, I always knew I wanted the real man himself, who was all of his characters but in fact, none of them. What a person.

I know I'm the product, the result, of an anachronistic pocket in a chaotic time. At least, that is what I am often told, (because of the lack of dollars it generates) and therefore I am required to believe it. My truest self, though, has never had a problem with "lady truck drivers" or preschool teachers who are male or physicists who happen to be female. I just always thought they should go, do, be themselves, however they wished to. And not ever did I wish to be a princess. That wasn't what I grew up with; I read the fairy tales but saw cowboys and detectives on TV, and wanted to be one of those, or the sidekick of one, as I didn't actually want to rescue or be rescued. I wanted to go along for the ride and tell stories about it later.

I think the huge princess phenomenon that developed in the past couple of decades was a sort of backlash to all the fantasy having disappeared under the weight of life management. (this needs another paragraph of development for people who weren't there.) But what those girls see in every day life is what counts in the end. Hopefully, they're shown something more of life than just the series of financial traps most of us find ourselves in. Then they can choose to be their best selves, and fantasize about whatever they like at the same time. You know, I do believe in fairies. Why not?

Oh, books, you know

2014 book series release dates to look forward to. There should be links but there are not. I will (no, really) add some in soon.

Flavia De Luce—Alan Bradley January 16
Sebastian St Cyr—C. S. Harris March 4
Molly Murphy—Rhys Bowen March 4
Charlotte and Thomas Pitt—Anne Perry March 25
Gaslight mysteries—Victoria Thompson May 6
Her Royal Spyness—Rhys Bowen August 5

I'm also looking forward to more from Louise Penny, my favorite current writer; head and shoulders above most of the rest (one exception is Alan Bradley, who is also a big fan of hers,) Deanna Raybourn's Lady Julia series, and Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily series. Raybourn has been writing stand-alone stories; I'll probably get to checking those out when they're discounted a bit. I hope there is another Captain Lacey book by Ashley Gardner (Jennifer Ashley) in the offing.

I keep meaning to have a look at Charles Finch's Charles Lenox series. He's terribly young to have written so many books, and I'm slightly jealous.  

I'm sure I've left some out. I wish Diana Gabaldon would write another Lord John Grey book, but she tends to be busy with her 1100 page Outlander cliffhangers. Oh, and Cara Black's Aimée Leduc, only up to 2010 with her.

I'm working through Phryne Fisher by Kerry Greenwood right now. Uneven, but kinda fun. Only today I suddenly had that "must read at least back half of Gaudy Night" sensation that comes around regularly.

Absolutely nothing of interest, just let me indulge myself with blather

These are my indulgences.

For the next couple weeks, Saturday is the new Thursday, in terms of weekly hair and nail care. I got a new shampoo, Organix Hydrating Macadamia Oil. Can the excitement be borne? I have already been using the Organix Renewing Moroccan Argan Oil Intense Moisturizing Treatment, besides my sort-of monthly olive oil and coconut oil goop treatments.

Probably I'll redo the toenails with the same green as before, Essie, of course, "vested interest." Don't Google it yourself, because there are all these hands polished with it, holding the bottle? And I honestly think it looks terrible on their hands. Truthfully, I don't think darker green or blue looks good on anyone's hands, but on the feet, many more colors can work. At least their cuticles were all right. You can do the most perfect job shaping and painting your fingernails, but if your cuticles are dry, and peeling or cracked, It's like you frosted just the top of an old stale cake.

I haven't bought any of this year's winter colors, but I'm thinking of trying "mind your mittens" next week.

There will be no weekly home spa treatment cocktail tonight, though, because I am having only bland eating for the next few days. Here is what a cocktail might look like, were I to have one.

Thinking about reducing

My sons have helped me determine that I must exercise in a more focused way to lose the Ohio weight because my diet is generally wholesome, balanced, and so forth. But there is a divide in our thinking wherein I can't seem to relate to this "exercise for the sake of exercise" business, which they say leads to a feeling of accomplishment and therefore a drive to do more, but I say leads to mass thought, eventually forming a fascist political party run by a character played by Edward Arnold in pince-nez.

And after all, it's winter, and it's been years since I could just bowl several times a week for free or almost nothing, and I live in Camazotz now, instead of a place that's alive all year round and has a walking culture. (Walking to places, not just in a circle around the block or on a treadmill.)

Well, in my head, my mini golf average is 37. What good does that do anybody? I think the boys understand the point of virtual satisfaction from mindless exercise as they get a lot of mental stimulation from video games, which I've never liked since my mother was addicted to Ms Pacman and I had to watch her play for half an hour on one quarter everywhere we went, because that game was everywhere.

In reality, my bowling average is still over 170, if it didn't require driving to an awful place and paying $4 a game. And I want to weigh what I did in New Jersey where I bowled a lot and also was less afraid to ride my bike on the road. In Cincinnati, they seem to aim cars at bikes frequently. They expect you to drive for miles and then get out and ride the bike on a path, or else be prepared for a trip to the ER and possibly a mortuary.

I like to dig in the garden, and mow the lawn, too, but I didn't do enough of that this summer. And swimming, though as I favor the backstroke pretty heavily but also rather casually, the benefit is probably limited.

In the winter, I'm required to take my exercise indoors because of some reasons, so here we are back at virtual fascism. 

Oh, dear. I just realized someone from Google Plus might read this, maybe the wrong someone. I seem to attract such a linear sort of person there. Thinking I mean things in such a distressingly literal sense. It quite drains me of energy.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Exercise. I must take some. I know all the right kinds and so forth, of course. But just weighing whatever I did two years ago or five years ago, better still, is hardly enough incentive for that. I like myself much too well to need to rely upon a dress size for emotional satisfaction. On the other hand, there are some dresses in my closet that require the more extreme shapewear and a certain amount of will when it comes to zipping them up; a consideration worthy of notation.

Other people might both blithely and earnestly say regular exercise, even indoors in winter, is good for your brain and the aging process and what-have you, and that would be incentive enough to hit the mat and the hand weights and the bike-on-a-trainer every morning or afternoon. Well, that's a sound reason, but it isn't incentive. I feel it's analogous to finding humor in The Big Bang Theory, though I'm not sure I can vocabulary why.

But don't you worry; vanity will eventually win out and I'll be on the path to broader (by which I actually mean narrower) dress choices by the time Mahler's Fourth hits the Music Hall in late February.

Keeping Christmas

I miss my daughters. Here are some good and bad photos for them, of decorated bits. The tree in the window and the one in the second photo are both made from tomato cages. Aaron put up the porch lights and Theron helped me decorate the tree. The ornaments on the floor were on the crabapple tree last year. I haven't decided whether to do that again. And then we have to hang the wreath. This neighborhood is Big on wreaths; it would be like the boy bouncing the ball out of rhythm to not have at least one, preferably several.

For lack of things to say, holiday dinner planning, miscellanea

Here's some stuff I wrote down just now, to organize my thoughts a bit.

Green BEAN Delivery: produce (they always have good seasonal lineups prepared)
Jungle Jim's: turkey, bread for stuffing, wine
Kroger (posh:) flowers

also to buy:
aluminum foil
bourbon
butter
cake flour
shortening
frozen bread dough
maple syrup
sour cream

to make ahead:
orange marmalade
pie crusts
chicken stock
banana or apple bread
pumpkin pie filling

to do:
organize refrigerator
clean dining room floor
check up on Christmas ornaments
call for dishwasher repair

Whenever we've had dishwasher trouble, it's been at Thanksgiving. When our freezer died, it was Christmas Eve. It's just like that in my life, so I just factor it into my whole "doing things the hard way" system.

Because like, I usually buy orange marmalade for the turkey. And then I made a couple kinds of marmalade a few weeks ago, realized how shockingly easy that is, and thought, "why on earth have I been buying it?" I'm kind of a condiment junky, anyway. It makes better sense to just make enough to use, instead of adding yet another little jar to the collection.

I glaze the turkey with orange marmalade, but it's also basted with a sherry-orange juice butter. I forget who I got the original ideas from, which I just got to combining over the years to suit my tastes.

And there's a bit of orange zest in the cranberry sauce and the mashed sweet potatoes, so I am having oranges sent with the produce delivery this week.

Certain flavors always to be expected if you eat my Thanksgiving dinner: maple, and orange and almond. The green beans (and sometimes Brussels sprouts, but not, I think, this year, as it's a tinier group than usual,) are sauteed with garlic. In this manner, I prepare traditional American holiday foods with a hint of the Mediterranean ancestral memory built into my brain. 

The boys voted on cherry pie with the pumpkin pie for this year. I have cherries in the freezer, so that's a happy thing. Probably I will do the sour cream crust recipe I got from Bon Appetit for blueberry pie around 20 years ago. Cake flour is made with a softer wheat and is a good thing to add to pie crusts containing butter. This is baked at 400º for 50 minutes with a filling made from 2 lbs of fruit.

And then they prefer the flaky shortening crust for pumpkin pie, rather than the buttery tart-style ones I tend to use otherwise. The cherry pie is flavored with almond extract, in reminiscence of my mother. She bought canned cherries (not the pie filling,) and cooked them to a rich thickness with almond extract, sugar, and flour. The scent wafting through the house was magical.

So I do much the same thing, but with frozen cherries instead of canned.

I miss my faraway daughters a lot right now. However, I like to make things as great as I can for my sons. It would be crummy of me to put in only half effort for half the family. Thanksgiving dinner has always been my special gift for them, and hopefully they'll all always have good memories of that.

It's a basic menu, but all fully homemade except the dinner rolls, and the bread for the dressing.

Orange-glazed turkey with sherry cream gravy
Sage and onion dressing
Orange-spiced cranberry sauce
Sauteed green beans
Maple mashed sweet potatoes
Raised dinner rolls
Pumpkin pie
Cherry pie

Waving my cane at "holiday" candy

I've always had a problem controlling my sugar intake. When I was old enough in childhood to walk to the store, I'd spend all my dimes on paper dots, lollipops, whatever new oddities were being introduced at the time, and there were a plethora of them, or I'd buy a Butterfinger or Heath bar. I loved Heath; it was so much better back then before Hershey bought it. Anyway.

Some treats were available only at certain times or in certain places, so they were more valuable, rare treasures to be sought after or longed for. Like movie candy. My favorite movie candies were Junior Mints and Cherry Dots. I liked regular mixed flavor Dots, but getting a box of nothing but cherry felt amazing. Well, back then, you almost never saw movie candy outside of the movie theater, and we didn't go all that often. Once in a great while, we'd see a box of cherry Dots, and Mom would get them for me. It felt like winning a prize in a drawing. I savored the first few, though, then crammed them in until the box was empty.

I had no discretion with holiday candy at all. I would gobble it all up, no matter how much I told myself to let it stretch out for awhile. I am pretty sure no one really thought this was wrong, as it was a happy treat, I ate my dinners pretty well, and was always extremely thin.

But really, candy to me was like beer to my dad. If it was there, I ate all of it until there wasn't anymore. It has taken many years for me to partly conquer that problem. The worst thing is those gelled spearmint leaves. If we're at the grocery store, my son can hold up a bag of those and I will literally start shaking. Yes, I said literally. I am physiologically changed at the sight, almost at the mere mention of them. Right now as I type, I am experiencing the sugary coating, the way a piece looks and feels as you bite into it, and the strange leafy aftertaste. I can smell them, though I haven't opened a package in years. So, I don't eat them. Ever. I know I could just eat one or two now, if someone else was holding the bag, but it would never satisfy me.

When I was 13, I was told I had hypoglycemia, and was immediately put on a no sugar, low carb diet. You should know that was in 1978, long before people got really confused about low fat, low carb, low sugar diets and the fake foods they wrought. I couldn't even have ketchup, because it had sugar in it. And this was before every food had high fructose corn syrup in it, but my doctor was already convinced that stuff was a menace. I mean, you can easily say that it is, in the sense that all kinds of foods were sweetened with it starting around that time; foods that were always strictly savory before. Mom and I had to read labels and work to avoid everything that ended in -ose. There were compromises; I could drink milk, but not eat grapes.

I had to eat special peanut butter and learned to enjoy it on apples. I couldn't have jam, or most of the breakfast cereal I liked, or even the same bread. I ate a lot of sunflower seeds. It was a tough diet, but I didn't cheat, even at school, where my daily lunch had formerly consisted of a chocolate frosty and a basket of french fries. (To this day, I'm not much of a french fry fan, because they aren't like the ones I had in junior high.) The diet began right before Easter, and I wasn't allowed to have a candy basket. And the thing I missed most of all was Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs.

They weren't sold individually yet; they came six to a package, and were available only at Easter. Also, they were always sold out, so if they weren't bought early, that was too bad. One year, my mom bought several packages and secreted them away, giving them to me for my birthday in early June. Those I did try very hard to spread out, and for me, they lasted awhile, at least a couple of weeks. Because I knew I wouldn't have any again until the following spring.

They were better than regular peanut butter cups because of the superior chocolate to peanut butter ratio. Peanut butter cups were in fact a disappointment by comparison. But of course, those were available year-round.

I avoid peanut butter eggs now like I avoid spearmint leaves. I will buy them for my kids at holidays but not eat any myself. Five of my six kids can eat candy like a normal person. One of them seems to have the same inherent problem as me, but was at least taught from the beginning to work at being mindful of it.

I felt much better on that very strict diet, but it was extremely difficult and ultimately unsatisfying, which meant I never sustained it for long periods of time. But I still have the problem. I have to limit myself in ways I can manage, because I react poorly to sugar just as I did when I was younger, and as I'm no longer underweight, am yet more susceptible to diabetes. I must now work to never be overweight. These days, I rarely eat candy, or ice cream, I never drink sweetened soft drinks, and I can refuse dessert after a good meal. Sugar has just got to be purely a treat for me, and not part of continual intake. I still have more than I should, but far, far less than I used to.

Before the past twenty years or so, we all looked upon desserts and other highly sweetened foods as treats, and only a few people like me took unholy advantage of them. Before syrup-laden lattes, before foods crammed with sweeteners to make up for the misguided desire for "low fat," before everything was available everywhere all the time, and people didn't have food at their desks, sugary treats were a rewarding pleasure at special times or after a special meal.

Alcohol converts to sugar in the blood; I take rich pleasure in a cocktail I've crafted, but keep to a strict weekly limit. And a piece of cake and an Aviation on the same night would drain my energy for the next day. It's one or the other, and not every day. For many people, though, sugar has become a part of every meal and every snack in a day. It does no good to claim you're okay because you eat only fake sugar. Why must everything you eat or drink be sweetened in the first place? This limits your flavor palate so that you seek out other ways to make your vegetables and grains taste satisfying, like topping it all with cheese...and I would be willing to lay down money that people who consume a lot of fake sugar are also consuming a lot of starchy foods like pasta, tortillas, hamburger buns...

This Halloween I gave out Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins. They were the big hit, the first candy we ran out of. But they were sold individually at the grocery store beginning in August. And look what I saw when I was at Kroger this morning.
The moment Christmas is over, the eggs will appear, for a three month "Easter season." That special treat once available for a few weeks each spring is now in the stores at least six months out of the year.

I made sweetened treats from fresh fruit this weekend. But the great thing I've learned about making them for myself is that they feel so special, I have only a little, only occasionally, making the most of what I created. One of my best personal rules, not a rule but a general pattern, is to not eat any pre-made sweet that I could make myself. It all has a much higher degree of value that way, and I'm finally grown up enough to treasure that, not be a glutton about it. 

It isn't possible to set the clock back to a less convenient time in order to monitor our food intake better. And actually, most of us have far more access to truly healthful foods than we once did. But more and more people are becoming diabetic, not because of an inherited family trait, but because their diets were bungled nearly from the beginning. I read an article recently that admonished parents not to tell kids to eat their vegetables "because they're good for you," because a kid will think good for you means "tastes bad." That bothered me a lot. I preferred Sesame Street's idea of calling sweets "sometimes" foods. I told my kids that dessert is a special thing you have sometimes after your tummy is satisfied with what it needs. I don't know if that really stuck. I don't know what will. But being bombarded with holiday candy year round surely doesn't help matters. If there are peanut butter flags next year for July 4, I won't be surprised.