8180/21100
My kids got a ludicrous amount of chocolate and shamefully did not eat it all before breakfast, like I used to do. They seem to be able to stop eating chocolate when they're had too much, a trait they must have inherited from their mother.
I am not sure I've ever had an Easter egg that has survived Easter Sunday and as a kid I almost always celebrated Jesus' escape from his tomb, by symbolically releasing all that chocolate from the tomb of my stomach, by rolling back the stone and puking it down a toilet.
I thought I'd kicked chocolate this year (again), but my no Solero month sent me spiralling back into the treat drawer and I fell off the wagon and started eating it's chocolate wagon wheels. I was hoping to use Easter Sunday as the line in the sand - I'd have some chocolate today, just a little bit, I can stop any time, and then never touch the stuff again (unless it was 90% dark chocolate).
To be fair, I didn't have loads. Catie had bought me a dark chocolate, flat Easter egg (what will they think of next?) which was very rich, but I only ate half of it (because dark chocolate doesn't count as chocolate) and I nicked a few bits of the kids mini eggs Easter Egg (because I needed to find out what chocolate with mini eggs embedded in it was like) and I also ate half a small Easter egg that Ernie had left unwrapped on the stairs and Catie said he couldn't now eat because the cats might have licked it (no they wouldn't have and who cares if they had - you can't throw chocolate away, unless you're puking it into a toilet. Oh and I had some of Ernie's maltesers after lunch.
So hardly any chocolate at all.
For some reason I was a bit off my food, but also still ill and exhausted (I fell asleep on the sofa at my in-laws) so had an early night. I woke up at one minute to midnight, just as Easter was about to end, my body knowing that I'd missed something. I was still basically asleep, but I think recognised that I might be about to puke and found myself in the bathroom with the taste of vomit in the back of my throat. I hadn't fully thrown up, but good to see Easter was still capable of making me throw up in my own mouth. It was just a tiny bit, but suddenly I realised that I wasn't really able to breathe. I was making a weird gasping sound. It went on for four of five breaths.
Is this how I die? Was it a Final Destination for having survived the steep grass bank? I have to say in the moment I was pretty concerned (spoiler alert- I didn't die). I was, it seemed choking on a tiny bit of vomit. Some entertainment figures have done this after taking drugs at an orgy or drinking themselves into oblivion. Was I going to die as a a result of eating half a chocolate button Easter egg that might have been licked by a cat?
I am pretty sure I will die in an embarrassing and/or humiliating manner, but choking on stolen chocolate button Easter egg vomit at the age of 57 would be hard to beat. I don't think they let you into Valhalla for that one.
Luckily I had woken up and was able to cough and within a few seconds my breath started rasping and I was just left with a throat burning from chocolate acid and retching.
Sometimes something happens in your life to make you change your ways, probably only for a bit, though. But this not-really-very-near death experience and thinking of my kids finding my corpse and then (more traumatically) finding out how I died, made me determined to kick this terrible habit for good. Or until Easter eggs are back in the shops.
I went back to bed, worried that a proper tide of half-digested chocolate might snuff me out as I slept. But like Jesus, the Easter weekend had tried to do me in, but I bounced back and am now immortal.
