Confessions Of A Splenda Stealer

Don’t get me wrong. I love Halloween. I usually find it fun and entertaining to read recipes for punch with eye balls, cupcakes adorned with bats, or photos of people dressed as burritos to get free food at Chipotle. As far as festive Halloween goodies, these will suffice.

But I must say, that if you aren’t witty enough to think of a tongue-in-cheek festive treat, I suggest you leave it to the pros.

Inspired by a recipe posting I just read, I have never had such a gut-wretching reaction to the title of a Halloween party snack. I think it has ruined my appetite for the rest of the day.

Posted on Gather.com, is an article for (I can’t believe I’m typing this) vomit dip.

Seriously?? Really?? You can’t think of anything more clever?? I couldn’t read further than when I saw cottage cheese listed in the ingredients. Oh wait–nope. It gets better. Listed in the directions after the ingredient list:

“Choose your favorite veggies and dunk in the vomit mix and eat. Crackers go well with this too.”

Hmmm. Saltines, perhaps??

I don’t blame you if you don’t want to click on the link. Thankfully, there is no image, but with a title like that, do you really want one?

I mean, come on people…

Oh Dunkin Donuts. First I love you with your 99 cent latte afternoon deal, then I hate you with your eight cent tax. Then, I love you again for being my wake-up call at 2pm on a Friday afternoon in an incredibly over-heated office (narcolepsy central), and now I hate you again:

Um, hello?? Where’s the foam?? Is this what a recession latte is really like? I’ve heard how many establishments are cutting down on ingredients or making portion sizes smaller to keep costs down, but come on…was it the fact that I gave you $1.07 in pennies that pissed you off??

New Yorkers are a quick breed. We enter subway turnstiles with card in hand, throw exact change without a blink when we get our morning coffee, order in code at the deli around the corner for our usual. In and out. Done and done.

Though I have been guilty of sidewalk rage with slow walkers (I will actually bare my teeth) sometimes, I really feel bad for the out-of-towners, who, especially in the morning rush, don’t have a prayer.

Enter scene: 9:06 AM in the Old Bridge Gourmet (ha) Deli on 41st and Lex, across the street from my office. While their coffee isn’t great, for a medium it’s only $1.50 which is the cheapest deal in my block radius. And, from 7 AM to 10 AM, you get a free buttered bagel with a medium coffee! I digress.

It’s one of those delis where the Asian women are yelling NEXT! NEXT! ONE-FIFTAY! NEXT! TWO DOLLAH! NEXT! God forbid you have to stop for a second to find a penny or give them your charge card. It was intimidating at first, now I welcome the challenge. I’ve gotten really fast–I don’t even ask for a bag. The only words I use to communicate are SESAME BAGEL! NO BAG! NO BAG! Yes, I have even grown accustom to repeating my words.

Ever wonder what it would be like to see a bunch of Brits in the middle of this mayhem? It’s not like I have had dreams about this scenario, but think about it. On the whole, they are a very polite people. This morning, in between the shuffling, pouring, tab flipping, (Splenda) packet opening, straw stirring craziness that takes places at the counters of the coffee island, I hear:

SORRY, SORRY! OH, DEAR, I’M SORRY! I JUST WANTED, EMM, THE BA-NA-NA CREAM COFFEE-OH SORRY, SORRY…as they spun around in circles with their empty coffee cups in hand.

As I watched from the quick moving line with my own coffee and quarters in hand, while I definitely found this hilarious, I wasn’t sure if I felt bad for them, or if I was secretly gloating about how I have the system down.

Some say that New Yorkers are rude. Some say that we are intense.

And thanks to George Costanza, sometimes I just think we see the world as a giant Frogger game, with an infinite amount of lives.

We all have one.

You know. That number.

That one number we all keep to ourselves and secretly and instantly compare with others should we ever learn of someone else’s number from a tipsy conversation or a truth or dare moment.

It’s the number we continuously try to justify, asking ourselves, “Am I normal?” or “I’m in my 20s, I’m having fun, so who cares?”

The other day, mine slipped out. And to tell the truth, I was horrified.

The other night I was showing an email to my roommate and, naturally, I had my Gmail open. And then it happened. She saw it—my number, my inbox number—and I think she had palpitations.

Apparently, having an inbox number of 459 messages is a huge “no-no.”

She put my computer down, took me aside, and lectured me on the appropriate use of “archiving” and “labeling” and the fail-proof methods of using them. Of course, there is such a thing as human error, but I can always go back into my trash file to set it right.

It wasn’t so bad. I am wiser now. No one ever told me. Sure, we learned about the early days of email and computer usage back in the day of “computer class” in middle and high school, but methods were so archaic back then, and you could never act like you were actually interested in what the teacher had to say.

I am happy to report that my Gmail inbox is now clean of spam and junkmail, and I am now down to a healthy inbox of 45 messages.

So now that I have shared, I implore you—take care of your emails! Your life is told though your inbox. What does yours say about you??