So, right now I am on vacation with my mom in Hershey, PA. Basically, if not the land of milk & honey, it is the land of chocolate - tons of it and as a decades long confirmed chocaholic (one of my former email addresses had chocaholic as part of my user name), being here just 3 months after surgery is a HUGE challenge for me.

So far, I think it has been going well. I haven't gorged myself on chocolate but haven't feel deprived either because I have had some chocolate but much smaller amounts. My first day here, I had scheduled appointments at The Chocolate Spa at the Hotel Hershey for a whipped cocoa bath and a chocolate facial for both my mom and I. Such a wonderful experience but also a little tempting, a bath of chocolate scented water with mounds of foam ontop dusted with dark cocoa & the deep dark chocolate fondant facial. I was surrounded and engulfed by the scent and texture of chocolate but I didn't go crazy, I didn't gorge. I had a few (less than 7) Hershey kisses and a mini chocolate muffin during my spa visit. Today, I did a chocolate tasting: tasting 7 samples of melted chocolate drinks from chocolate from around the world. Each sample was 1 ounce but I only drank two fully and just sipped from the other 5.

I am reminded of an old fairy tale where a human girl falls into a fae circle where the fairies give her a taste of fairy food and drink which causes an incurable desire for the food which cannot be sated by human food or drink so she begins to waste away. Her sister sees this, goes to the fae circle and is tempted by the fae with their food and drink but does not eat it. Instead, it is smeared on her cheeks and lips. When she is freed from their circle at dawn, she stumbles home where she lets her sister have a second taste of the fae food from her cheeks and lips. The stricken sister is cured.

I am cured. A small taste is enough, no more gorging.

I am SATED.