Confessions Of A Splenda Stealer

Ashley from effyou.org, a fellow blog about the daily happenings of a 20-something, left me a comment that made me laughing out loud:

…When I came across your blog, specifically your blog title, I suddenly understood why my former district manager had such an issue with putting Splenda on the condiment stand. I had to repeatedly assure her that yes, we do keep it on the stand, and no, people do not pocket it/our location does not go through an excess of Splenda.

HAHA. What made this even more funny was that I had just drafted a post about this very subject. Lately, I’ve noticed that more and more coffee shops and stops have been keeping Splenda behind the counters so that you have to specifically ask for the packets of yellow. This has actually made me cut back, because I can’t bare asking for as many packets that I usually put in my coffee in the privacy of my own kitchen.

This situation leaves me with a mix of emotions:

1) a sigh of relief because I’m not the only person who “borrows” extra Splenda,

2) guilt that I’m at direct fault for hurting the bottom line at my usual coffee haunts. What’s next? My face plastered behind the counter, with a WANTED: DO NOT SERVE TO THIS MOOCHER?

Did I help lead this frugal trend, or am I just a follower, subconsciously mimicking the behavior of the Splenda Stealers that came before me? Nature, or nurture??

June is always the “Grads and Dads” month. Given the spirit of all the graduations that occur during this time of the year, I would like to announce that I have one to celebrate as well:

I have graduated from taping my fingers to wearing a splint on my right wrist.

No, they did not have any nude-colored ones at CVS. I checked. I may try to bedazzle it though, the black and the yellow letters that spell out FUTURO like a neon sign aren’t really my thang.

Apparently, I really do have a blogging injury. I have what is called ECU tendinitis, diagnosed by my mom’s friend. (Thanks Brenda!!)

ECU Tendinitis is a condition common among people who play racquet sports or basketball and involves an inflammation of the tendon that runs along the back of the wrist on the pinky side. Baseball pitchers may suffer from this when their throwing mechanics are deficient.

Any repetitive action from a non-ergonomicaly correct position that entails twisting or backward flexing of the wrist—like returning a tennis ball or shooting a basket—can put strain on the ECU tendon to the point of tenderness, pain and actual tearing. Malposition of the hand while using a mouse or computer keyboard may also be a contributing factor. –DingDingDing.

I tried to do some yoga with the split the other night, which was a tremendously bad idea. If you haven’t figured this out by now, I’m an extremely impatient person. But, it no longer hurts to type with my splint of a friend, so you may all breathe easy that the Splenda Stealer will keep up with her posts.

Feeling philanthropic, I decided to chop off my hair and donate it to Locks of Love. I left the salon with my creepy ponytail in a pink shopping bag. I just need to fill out the form and send it off.

Here’s the Splenda Stealer, and little lighter and ready for the summer!

A decade ago, it was en vogue to show your lack of appreciation for someone, as the great Smashmouth once sang, “…with her finger and her thumb in the shape of an ‘L’ on her forehead…”

Nowadays, my finger and my thumb have adapted to the times, becoming trigger fingers, mutating, aka, self-stream-lining themselves to fit my everyday obsession with copying and pasting links to my friends through email and Gchat. Command copy, command paste. Command C, Command V. Over, and over, and over, again.

Swimmers shave their legs to reduce friction in the water and increase speed. My fingers chose to exert its tendons for speed in awkward positioning (I was never good at typing with the home row) that I am now sporting athletes’ finger; my wrist is freaking killing me. On a whim, I scotch-taped my pinky to my ring finger and oddly enough it helped the discomfort. When I whined on the phone to my mom, an occupational therapist, she felt bad and sent my dad to work with this blue tape I could use to wrap my fingers, which I happily dropped by his office one morning to pick up.

She said its the same material football players use to tape their fingers. I’m just a dork with a blogging injury.

Regardless, if copying and pasting links has given me an injury, they must be quite a find. I thought I should share with you some of the gems I have found. Enjoy.

DailyLit: I can’t allow myself to go into Barnes and Noble or other book stores because I will just stomp and pout because I will want to buy every interesting title. I do have a library card, but the library in Hoboken is small and limited. This site allows you to receive short book installments by email or RSS feed and you can choose the days and times you want to read.

Photojojo: This site’s newsletter features some of the coolest projects I have seen with photography. I don’t even have one of those tricked out SLR’s, but I can try and fake it with their tips.