I’ll Suffer With Splenda

The only problem with being in Maine the first two weeks of September every year is I miss Lynn’s birthday. We are the kind of friends who can celebrate on any day, but I hate to go too far past her birthday. We tried for Monday, but it did not work out so finally today I was able to do our traditional Thai Cafe Birthday so she could have coconut cake.

We practically had the place to ourselves which is good so we can catch up on all the comings and goings that went on while I was away. I hardly bothered any other patrons as I let out a large gasp upon hearing shocking news. Not that shocking. Just fun with Lynn.

There was only one problem at lunch. I ordered my standard Iced Tea, extra lemon and when the sweetener was placed on the table it was all yellow. Shock and horror. I looked in my purse for the zippered Marblehead hand prints blue and white canvas pouch where I keep spare sweet n’low, along with band aids, dental floss and aleve. I found almost all the regular stuff, plus a trial sized tube of hand lotion and some tums, but no sweet n’ low.

So I reached into the depths of my woven Bali purse my sister had given me 15 Christmases ago. Certainly there must be a spare sweet n’ low packet floating around amongst the faded receipts and random coins. My fingers lingered over something that was more than a slip of paper. I pulled it up from the inner sanctum of the bag. No. It was a tag from a vineyard vines belt I had bought in Boston to keep my pants up.

Six weeks of being on the road had depleted my sweet n’ low supply. It seems fewer and fewer places are offering the pink packets in favor of only offering one brand of sweetener.

I reluctantly looked at Lynn and said. “I am going to have to suffer with Splenda.” This tickled her. Oh what difficult lives we have when the worst thing we face is no sweet n’ low. Keeps our minds off the universal hell of the daily news in America.