Confessions Of A Splenda Stealer

HOLY YOGA PANTS!! The foot is better!! Although I had to cancel my plans for The Great Saunter, held last Saturday, which was to be a 32 mile hike around the edge of Manhattan for 12 hours, I believe I will be ready to kick it this Saturday for SELF magazine’s Workout in the Park, a day of fitness classes and goodies in Central Park. I cannot wait.

A whole day of fitness outside, in the park of all parks?? Yes please! I’m fairly confident my foot will behave, as I have laid low from jogging and power-walking for over a month now. It’s still a teensy wheensy sore when I wake up, but after some stretches it’s much better.

Behold the break-down of the event:

Join us at the year’s coolest clean energy movement! It’s an explosion of power when thousands of high-octane women in your city hit the park for knockout workouts, beauty treatments and product samples.

All events are 11AM – 3PM. Rain or Shine!

I also took a peek at the line-up of classes, and there is one class that includes the use of mini-trampolines. All I have to say it that everyone better move outta my way for that line, though aren’t events like this supposed to encourage that pound your chest, hear me roar synergy?? I can’t help that I get competitive in crowd situations.

What will also be nice, compared to the free Women’s Health Are You Game event last July, is that this event is only open to those who buy tickets. While not free, (I know, I know, but it’s only $15 and that includes a magazine subscription) it will ensure that lines to the smaller classes or free goodies won’t be an hour+ long. Maybe we’ll also spy some celebrity babies, like last time. Who knows.

I’m tossing my new Victoria Secret yoga pants, some sunscreen, and a water bottle into a backpack. And maybe a granola bar or two. The only thing I have left to plan is which classes to choose. Since I’m going with a few friends, to rid the day of nail-biting indecision, maybe we can just take turns choosing a class, every 35 min. It should be fun.

As an additional note, I wanted to add that this free, 45 min yoga-plus video on the Exercise TV site really kicked my ass last night. By the end of the 45 minutes, the instructor, Elise Gulan, pretty much left me sweaty, curled up in fetal position, assuring my sacrum that it was a good workout and that I will get stronger. It was an amazing workout, even if every five minutes I had to call out, HOW THE F IS SHE DOING THIS??!? I highly recommend.

I’ve decided to plan a trip to New Zealand. I know, I know. I bitch about paying $8 for a box of Splenda but I’ve decided to embark on an adventure where the round-trip airfare alone costs over $1,000?? But please, let me explain: one of my best friends (who am I kidding, it’s Ms. Ball O’Sunshine, a regular on this blog) is moving there for about a year or so, so I will have a place to stay and hang out with when I arrive in the southern hemisphere, and how many times will I ever know someone in New Zealand?? I think it’s safe to say there’s a slim to none chance (so you’re saying there’s a chance??…sorry, I couldn’t resist the Dumb and Dumber reference) that will happen again.

At this point in my life, I’m still in that frame of thought where I really don’t care where I stay/stash my stuff/catch some zzzz’s, as long as it’s cheap. When I traveled abroad in the UK, when I was traveling outside of my home base of Bath, you could find me in a creepy hostel bunk-bed complete with an 80’s-themed cartoon character comforter for 12 euros a night, or on a sofa of one of my other friends studying abroad like me in another country. The young are resilient that way. We may wake up with a slight kink in our necks, but we’ll sleep anywhere. Bathtubs, cars, a corner with a pillow or balled up jacket for a pillow. As long as it’s cheap or free. And, you usually get a great story out of it, or if not, in the very least, you can at least sound like you lead a crazy life by always referring to that one time you were woken up by a fleet of drunken Irishmen sticking chips from McDonald’s practically up your nose at 4am, or to the site of an old woman drying her unmentionables by an open window next to your head in 32 degree weather. (I really thought it was a youth hostel when I booked it, I swear).

When you’re older, it’s a different story. You’ve grown accustomed to the finer things in life. When you vacation, you want/need that chocolate on your pillow. To get away from home is a plan to pamper yourself away from work, the kids, etc. Also, by then, perhaps you have arthritis or sprouted a new allergy of dust and you honestly can’t curl up in your friend’s dog bed. You could also risk looking cheap if you never spring for a hotel.

Lucky for me, I am 25 and still don’t really care where I sleep, though sleeping on the floor makes me all stuffy. And my hip always hurts in the morning. Is my body trying to tell me to grow up a little??

Annnnyway, back to cheap travel plans, which is what this post is supposed to focus on. A few weeks ago I had a little get-away to Boston, a town (I can’t call that a city) that I really enjoy visiting. The twin is an admission counselor at a university and had to attend a few college fairs in Beantown and I was invited to go along for morale support. Invited, elected myself, whatever. The best part of the trip, besides bonding with my twin sis, was that most of it was free!! As an incredible mooch, I was the passenger in the rented car that my sis drove up to Boston and then stayed in her hotel room with her. All I had to pay was for food and booze.

Splenda Stealers can travel! The next time you want to take a vacation or get-away, write down a list of people whose company you really enjoy and then map them out geographically. In the fall I saw one of my friends, whom I studied abroad with, who now lives in Chicago. I got to see a new city and catch up with a great friend, and one of these days I’ll even post the pics.

Alas, here are a few pics from my trip to Boston with the twin:

We had a few more gems, but sadly, the twin lost her camera!! So I guess it wasn’t completely a cheap trip for her…

I am my own worst enemy.

I know I’m tired when I all of a sudden realize that my eyes are closed and my mouth is gaping open, while I’m sitting and facing my computer screen. Why am I so tired, you may ask? Such a simple question deserves a simple answer, and there is one—I didn’t go to sleep until 2am.

The next logical question would be to ask, what I was doing up until 2am, but then my answer gets hairy. I really have no idea. I wasn’t even watching television (though it was on in the background). I honestly just love that time of night. I attribute this behavior to my acute case of night owl syndrome that I have pretty much had since birth. I’ve never gone to bed early or at a reasonable hour.

I believe it’s a common thought that many little kids want to stay up because they think their parents have parties where party guests gorge themselves on cookies and cakes while wearing colorful feather boas and tiaras and stay up alllll night to run around and play tag or something. Not me. I just couldn’t sleep. Anytime my head hit the pillow, I had all these deep, serious thoughts about life and death and just could not drift off. It’s no wonder my nickname when I was little was Miss Serious.

Now that no one can tell me when to go to bed, I usually let my body tell me by staying up as late as I possibly can before my head just drops to my pillow, on my bed or on the sofa. I never plan for sleep. I just exhaust myself so that the sleep just captures me in one full swoop, til I wake up confused on the sofa at 7am with the tv and lights on, then tiptoe to my room for another half hour til I’m really supposed to get up. If I could, I would stay up all night because, sadly enough, I also love being an early riser.

I’m quite possibly the dumbest person alive. Who likes to be a night-owl AND an early riser? Yet, I feel incredibly independent during these hours and oddly enough, these prove to be my most creative hours. I find the darkness of night and the dewey air and pink skies of the early morning invigorating. If I had the choice, I would sleep during the typical, conventional, and non-alluring hours with direct sunlight from 9-5 pm, and stay up all night.

Think about it. When has anything remotely interesting happened during these hours? Yes, yes, anything business or finance or market related of course will happen during these hours, but what writer or artist has ever captured something thought-provoking or passionate or mysterious during 9-5? The best works of art or scenes in films or chapters in books happen in the middle of the night. Even photographers will tell you that direct light it the worst light to capture a subject in film. Of course, that is such an extreme and general claim and probably half-true, but you know what? I’m tired and I don’t care.

If I ever get to live out my dream, some may call me a hermit. Or a vampire. Or maybe they’ll think I just really hate other people.

I like to think I’m a team player. Go team Blair. Go Giants (or Redskins if my Dad is reading). Go Man U (if Matt is reading).

And now…GO YELLOW!!

From the NYTimes article in this week’s Dining section:

courtesy NYTimes.com

For the last decade the big three — pink packets of saccharin, aspartame in blue and sucralose in yellow — have fought to a kind of stalemate. But now a new player, dressed in green, hopes to shift the balance of power, opening up the $1.2-billion-a-year world of fake sugar to all kinds of changes.

The Food and Drug Administration agreed in December that rebaudioside A, an extract from the leaves of the stevia plant, is safe to add to food and drinks.

And: The makers of Splenda, which holds more than 60 percent of the retail market, have just introduced Sun Crystals, a mix of sugar and stevia that has five calories per serving. Sugar has 15 calories per teaspoon.

Confessions of a Sun Crystals Stealer? Confessions of a Stevia Stealer? I’m going to start sounding like patchouli wearing crystal meth addict.

This Splenda Stealer is getting nervous.