caff update

[fflo]

First 3-cup day in over a week. An accident, cuz it's free, and I had two toot-sweet first thing, so the third was already dispensing into my gorgeous-blue Baltimore Symphony Orchestra mug when I realized it was #3 & I'm trying not to do that so much.

Funny that the day I wrote of caffeine last was April 12^th. April 12^th is a caffeine-related holiday. That's right: it's not just David Cassidy's birthday. It's also the date in 1989 on which I bet Tina Randolph that I could go a year without diet Coke.

In college I had been a drinker of TaB (in addition to Dr. Pepper & Mr. Pibb), and, as a mixer with vodka, of Fresca, but when diet Coke came along (late in my sophomore year?), I became a fiend for the stuff. Just crazy. Drank at least 8 or 10 cans as many days as not. B&W-photographed a can of it centered, solitary, in the frost-filled (not -free) freezer of the dorm suite fridge, and the reverent altar feeling of the shot was no coincidence. I swear, that liquid concoction has something in it that makes you want to drink more of it. Makes you thirsty, and thirsty in particular for more of it. Tina was right to scoff at my assertion that I could give it up.

But I'd done some playing with going "off" habits during Lents, as Denise was rather into Lent, and I had a hunch I could do it. 'Sides, I wanted to. The stuff seemed evil. All that money to show how safe aspertame was, v. saccharin, and just the pointlessness of soda as a regular beverage---particularly diet pop, which is just (as I used to say) chemicals and water. (Of course, so are we, but that's beside the point.) This was before my thinking much on global economies and capitalism, but I had managed at least to pick up on the consumerism surrounding fizzy beverages.

So the winner of our bet was to win being taken to the movies by the other---catch: in any city in the U.S. of the winner's choosing. I said I'd pick New York. I said I'd even drive, and pay for the gas. (She was a student.) And indeed, I won, but we never did get it together for the cashing in. I could go on about the taste & smell of diet Coke when you're on it vs. off it, and how dangerously quickly the "off it" state reverts to the other, but I'll skip that business here. I've already gone on rather very. Let's just note that, apart from a test sip here & there, I've been off that sauce ever since.

Wonder what happened to ol' Tina. I just tried to Google her, to no avail. Tried "Bettina" and "Battina," too, it suddenly hitting me that her given name was something like that.

She was a good egg. Fun. A little buck-up(-even-if-forcédly) eager to be up/on/goofy, or something like that, and thus hard to be serious with, but that was okay. Well, there was that VERY serious time we couldn't get served in Sanders' Corner, up north of Towson---a chagrinning white privilege/ignorance realization moment for me. And she was a serious basketball player when we took on those sisters and (nonetheless) got our asses kicked, and our breasts elbowed, and our matching red T-shirts. Yoke! Zeug! That's just a little reward for any of ya'll who are still reading this stream-of-c.

Comments

[madush69.livejournal.com]

I adore the new Diet Coke with Splenda. The other one upsets my tummy, but Splenda is splendid.

[vachementmoi.livejournal.com]

you're right about the diet coke. it makes you thirstier, but only for more diet coke. i only got off of it when i got pregnant, because i already knew the shit was bad. but i don't think i could have stayed off of it if i hadn't moved to france. but right now my mouth is watering for it...(slobber slobber).

but i don't know about this splenda diet coke business of which madush69 writes. i know about splenda, but not as a sweetener for diet coke. seems ironic putting something supposedly natural in a chemical concoction like diet coke.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

'Shell! Hey there. Every once in a while, like in the summer mainly, I still get a hankerin' for that strange thin taste of the diet C.

The thing they say in advertising Splenda is that it's "made from sugar." Like that is somehow reassuring. I mean, we don't know anything about this stuff apart from what they tell us, and we know what they tell us is crafted primarily to get us to buy the stuff. I've known several people to sing the praises of splenda, though a good number of them did so because it's okay in the Adkins diet.

Wonder how long it took them to come up with appending "-a" to part of "splendid". I tell people sometimes about the ad that was---briefly---on TV when aspertame was introduced. It had a slo-mo shot of milk being poured over sections of banana in a bowl, and then the voiceover told us NutraSweet had the same DNA elements as bananas and milk. Might have even said "What could be more natural?"

[homovegetarian.livejournal.com]

i remember that ad and it DID say 'what could be more natural'. poop is more natural and i'm not eating either of them.

splenda is made from sugar but it is turned into other things including chlorine. it's like saying veal is good because it's made of baby cows -- it misses out on some critical intervening processes.

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

It's all bad stuff. I say this as a person who is trying to get herself off of diet soda by cuttting it down to 1 or 2 a day. I just can't seem to do without that taste and the carbonation first thing in the morning. But I'm getting there. Of course, I've been drinking a lot more coffee at work, so I'm still getting tons of caffeine, but I figure I'll worry about one bad habit at a time.

Hell, I haven't had a drink in over a year, I haven't smoked a cigarette in at least 6 months, and I've gone back to exercising on a pretty regular basis for 3 whole weeks now even though my heel spur is killing me. If I can get myself down to 1 or 2 Diet Pepsis a day, I'm not going to worry about the caffeine habit for a while. It's kind of funny--I've almost become the "goody-two-shoes" everyone thought I was when I was younger.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

So funny to me, one of the geeks who saw you as the cool rebellious get-away-with-anything wild child, to think you were perceived (other than by teachers, maybe) as a goody-two-shoes. Anyway, if any of the negative connotations of that idea of not being baaaad are cropping up in association with being good to yourself, fie on them!

Hey, check this---after I read what homov wrote above, I snooped about for recollections of that ad campaign, and stumbled across... The Rumsfeld Connection. Guess who led the charge to get the additive FDA approval? Yup. None other. I mean, sure, there are some crackpots posting crazy shit on the internet, but there are (what at least look to be) a variety of sources citing this part of Rumsfeld's career history.

You hang in there with the good to your body stuff! I'd sure hate to be dogged by a heel spur. They sound horrible. IHope you can turn the corner on that again, somehow, without having to scuttle the momentum of working out.

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

So funny to me, one of the geeks who saw you as the cool rebellious get-away-with-anything wild child, to think you were perceived (other than by teachers, maybe) as a goody-two-shoes.

Yeah, but you knew me in college, when my "wildness" was a lot more out in the open. Back in the early days, I managed to put up a pretty good front for the adults and that carried over with most of the kids (except, of course, for the select group that got to see me do things like pass out and puke and drive like a maniac, etc.--good times, good times . . .).

As for Rumsfeld--what can I say--he's one of the scary monsters from the box, you know.

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

hey,
i'm not susceptible to diet coke at all; however, an ex (a new one, fflo) said she was extremely addicted to it, and she noticed when she bought diet pepsi instead on sale, that she could make one can last for hours and hours, whereas she was hoovering up the diet coke. where i have issues is coffee. majorly. i've had to stop drinking caffeinated coffee, and it's a sad thing, i tell you. i looooove coffee. good coffee, that is. but to think, i didn;t like it at all, until i started drinking it in grad school. i would stay up late at night in the waffle house in bloomington, in, smoking (!) and drinking horrible coffee and grading papers.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

smoking??? i'm trying to picture it! have to say i'm shocked. wow. s. *picking jaw up off floor*

i've been using coffee too much lately. decided (not unlike sandi) that i'd not worry about that one, give myself that vice in these days of daze and confusion. but i'm kinda coming to now & ... well, i'm not sure i've really articulated it to myself. somethin' about caffeine.

i'd say sorry to hear about a., but i don't know that that's entirely appropriate. perhaps we could talk this weekend? i'm pretty booked tomorrow---maybe sunday eve?