Hot Chocolate

So the other day, my good friend Kirsten gave me a bag of chocolates, which I've been studiously ignoring for a week.

Alison, however, asked for two of them. No, she didn't want to eat them. She's still firmly in the "anti-chocolate club." (I don't understand it either.)

But she wanted to take them to school. I thought she wanted to give them to her friend, Ty, who like most normal people, does love chocolate. When I picked her up, I asked her how he liked them.

"Oh, I didn't give them to Ty. I raffled them off at my lunch table."

I almost stopped the car. At Christ the King, the kids aren't allowed to trade food. If someone forgets his or her lunch, the kids are allowed to volunteer stuff they don't want from their own lunch to the hungry kid, but otherwise, it's keep your lunch to yourself.

"You did what?" I asked, bracing myself for the conduct cut to come.

"I raffled them. I had each of the girls give me stuff from their lunch for a chance to win them," she said. "Madison won."

I forget what all she got, but it involved Skittles and hard candy, I think. She said she even convinced Madison to shave off parts of the truffles to share with the other two girls at her table.

"Why didn't you just share them with everyone to begin with?" I asked. I didn't have to look in the rear-view mirror to see the eye-roll. Her amazement at my naivete filled the interior of the car like one of her father's flatulent episodes.

"Duh. You get more stuff if you raffle."

I fear my little liberal is turning Republican. Please send help. I think there's time to save her.

PS: The photo today is of Jeff wearing a tee-shirt Alison made when she was about 2and still a staunch Democrat. See how her little green handprints have grown? She'll be 11 in a few weeks. I'm still liking her even more with every year. I might still like her if she changes political affiliation, but I'm going to try to get her back to my side before it comes to that.

I don't know if you've ever noticed, but Easter is a very chocolate holiday. It's hard to find stuff for Alison. Her basket contained some Peeps, (not that her braces really allow her to have them) a couple of iTunes gift cards, jelly beans and a musical card, along with a little cash hidden in some plastic eggs.

She forked over her folding paper to settle a prior iTunes debt with me, and later in the day, she helped Jeff with our annual Indians ticket distribution to earn more money, shaving off one week of her iPad debt to her father. She's been paying him off for her portion of the Christmas gift with her allowance. (This, of course led to her indebtedness to me.)

She has two more months to go to pay off her iPad. She's been on the installment plan since the morning of December 25. Her birthday will get her a little more booty, so don't feel bad for her. Come to think of it, her grandfather sent her a 10-spot with her Easter card. She didn't volunteer to pay me back until Jeff reminded us of it this morning. I haven't seen that ten-dollar bill since.

Ooooh. She IS a Republican.