{ candy land }

You know those Lindor chocolate truffles by Lindt that sit in bins at the desk at Barnes & Noble and such? The tiny little chocolate globes wrapped in colored foil and filled with soft, whipped chocolate?

Well, as luck (?) would have it, there's a Lindt outlet store about 7 miles from my house. I'm still not sure whether it's a curse or a blessing, but there it sits, on a little corner in Exeter, New Hampshire.

One of their number one customers, despite the fact that she lives in a different time zone, is my sweet mother. And on her most recent visit, when she requested that we "stop in" to the Lindt shop, I was rightfully concerned.

The woman bought out the store.

In all fairness to any red-blooded, living, breathing homosapien (my mother, in particular), it's mighty hard to resist -- the store is a chocolate-lover's dream. Aisle upon aisle and bin upon bin of those pretty little foil treats, priced obscenely low, are begging to be purchased and enjoyed; however, leaving with so many that one is unable to take even 1/4 of them home on the plane is a bit excessive, even for my Costco-junkie, bulk-minded mother.

But she did.

And my house is now full of chocolate.