Perfume: Not for the Weak

In case you didn’t know, later this month is National Celebration of the Senses Day. As a Taurus, known lovers of sensual pleasures and luxuries, I will be honoring this holiday to the extreme. For those of you that are a little less inclined to overindulging your senses, I offer a guilt-free alternative. Watch Perfume.

What, you’ve never heard of this movie? I’m not surprised. It’s entirely possible the only reason I know about it is that in college we made a habit of looking up Alan Rickman movies (for Alan Rickman movie night, duh). The full name is Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. It is based on a book, but I only brought myself around to reading it some time after first seeing the movie. I didn’t particularly care for the book. I believe my friend Jenn prefers it though, so don’t take my opinion as a reason not to read it.

Perfume is an interesting movie. I shy away from terms like “good” for this one, but there are things about it that I find very compelling. There are also parts that are a total mind screw, just to warn you. I happened upon a post the other day that notes Perfume “both suffers from and subsequently plays with the fact that film is still a medium that cannot engage all of our senses, such as smell,” which I consider both remarkably accurate, and one of the main reasons I (somewhat) enjoy the movie.

The main gist of Perfume is that there is a character, Jean-Baptiste, who has such a heightened sense of smell that he experiences the world in an entirely different manner from the rest of us. He fears losing wonderful smells, and becomes a perfume apprentice in order to learn how to capture scent. His goal evolves to try and create the perfect perfume.

While this is an interesting premise, I can’t say the storyline is the draw for me. That’s probably why I didn’t really care for the book. What I find fascinating is the way the movie tries to get the viewer to experience what Jean-Baptiste experiences. Obviously, we can’t. We can’t smell things through the tv. What they do instead is use visuals and audio to pull us into the same mindset. This is what I so thoroughly enjoy about the movie.

The other interesting aspect of the movie is the ending. While I’m not going to give away any spoilers here, we used to make people watch Perfume just to see how they reacted to the end.

This is a movie that I feel like everyone should watch at least once, and then I’d enjoy discussing it with them, but there’s a good possibility you may dislike it or be morally offended. So since I like lists, here are some reasons to either watch, or not watch it.

Reasons to Watch Perfume

5. Dustin Hoffman wears a wig. What, that’s not a good enough reason for you?? His scenes are plenty great without the wig, but it’s nonetheless a source of delight.

4. The dark humor is amusing if you like that type of thing.

3. The visuals (in my opinion) are stunning.

2. If nothing else, it raises tons of great questions about life, meaning, beauty, sociopaths, and so on and so forth.

1. Alan Rickman portrays potentially the fictional world’s best father (Liam Neeson is probably winning that contest); very appropriate as Father’s Day is also coming up.

Reasons Perfume May Traumatize or Offend You

5. There’s violence.

4. There’s nudity.

3. There’s a casual disregard of humanity.

2. There are religious references and some religious figures involved in unseemly behavior.

1. The ending, pardon my French (that’s a joke by the way, since the movie is based in France. I knew you didn’t know that so I was nice enough to clarify), is a total “what the f*ck” experience.

This will take on a whole new meaning...

If you do watch it, or have watched it before, please find me (that can be virtually, we don’t need to get into a stalking scenario) and tell me your thoughts! I will say this, the movie left such a strong impression on me that I spent several subsequent days with trash cans placed in front of my door. This is actually my friend Jenn’s top reason for why you should watch Perfume, and it will make more sense once you do!

Happier than Dracula Volunteering at a Blood Drive

Because I'm obsessed with TVD.

My mother and I are both easily amused. We love the movie Zoolander, like all the awesome new toys for kids, and are prone to having laughing fits in public places (typically department stores for my mother, and really just about anywhere for me). I’ve always considered this a positive trait. When things aren’t great, it helps to be easily amused. Sure, awesome spring rolls, mini gummy bears, and my favorite commercial may only provide momentary happiness, but you take what you can get.

Yesterday I was just describing my favorite commercial to a friend. It’s the Geico commercial with the blood drive. And aptly enough, it reminded me that today is World Blood Donor Day, which I decided I want to talk about.

I have very complicated emotions around donating blood. I think it’s a great thing to do. While I appreciate when everyone bands together and donates after some sort of disaster leaves the banks a little low, I am mildly annoyed that more people don’t donate more often. My friend Erin talked last year about being a good citizen. Well at some point I’m going to take that a step further to just being a good person, and I think donating blood and other such things is tied to that.

Now, having just said that, I must confess I haven’t donated blood in YEARS.

I used to donate fairly regularly. I actually had two separate donor cards as I donated both at home and in a different area when I was at college. I was never as awesome as my friend Kevin and asked to donate extra amounts at once, but that’s probably to be expected as I’m tinier and certainly not the healthiest person in the world.

Donating blood for me is very similar to how some people feel about the gym. I hated the experience, but I liked feeling good about it afterwards. Oh, and how I hated the experience. It’s not just the whole “there’s-a-freaking-needle-in-your-arm-thing” (although I don’t like needles, and sometimes they wouldn’t cover it so I’d be sitting there staring at this needle poking out of my arm… ick). It took FOREVER and a half. Seriously. I’m not even talking about the lines. Sometimes I’d go with other people. We’d all be in the same place in line. We’d all make it onto the cots around the same time. They’d finish, and get to go have a snack. I’d have to sit there and watch until finally 10-20 minutes later I was done. This is not even an exaggeration. My blood apparently refused to fill the bag at a normal rate.

Luckily it’s hardly ever the same workers, so they didn’t realize the problem was me. They kept checking the bag, and the line, convinced something was broken. I just sat there and looked innocent.

I prepped for days in order to give blood. Since sometimes I had some trouble passing the anemia test, before a blood drive I’d chow down on vitamins and extra meat. I’d drink fluids out the wazoo. I made sure I had clothing that either exposed my arms or was easy to move out of the way.

Then during college I ran into my first serious issue. I was giving blood and it was actually going pretty quickly. It looked like I might even be done near normal person time. I was sitting there pretty thrilled with myself, when all of a sudden I realized I was about to pass out. I was hot, my vision was blackening, and there was a loud buzzing in my ears. I tried to alert the person and I suppose I was successful, but I couldn’t tell you what I said because everything seemed to slow and my words were incomprehensible.

A bit later, I woke up. Sure enough I had passed out. Not afterwards, mind you. Not walking over to the snack station. Nope, lying there in the midst of giving blood I had passed out. Even better, apparently I hadn’t woken up right away. No, apparently several minutes and quite a lot of cold water was involved before they could get me conscious. My person was totally freaked out. They basically told me they couldn’t use my blood to donate but instead would use it for testing purposes, because something had to be wrong with me.

It’s unclear what exactly the first issue was. After this experience I felt horrible for a few days. I almost passed out again every time I had to go to one of my classes on the 4^th floor. I slept like mad. I didn’t really feel like myself again until about a month later, and eventually the decision was I had some sort of virus.

So a few months later I tried giving blood again.

Now since we had decided I was sick for the last fiasco, I was mildly nervous but not too bad. My blood was going slow as usual which seemed like a good sign. Then wouldn’t you know it, I started getting dizzy, losing vision, and became crazy hot. Luckily this time my person was able to spin me around and start holding cold cloths to my face before I actually passed out. It was a close thing. And again, this was during the donation process, not afterwards. This time there was a new fun problem as well. As I started to feel better, they realized no new blood was going into the bag. Apparently my blood clotted in the tube or something and they couldn’t get anymore out.

I decided to give it one more attempt when I was back home. Granted I didn’t actually pass out, but it took somewhere between a half hour and forty minutes before they gave up on getting a full bag of blood out of me, and I could barely walk for the rest of the day.

Sooooo…… I’m kinda nervous to try again.

It’s been years since these experiences, and we all know I’m much healthier now! I’m eating somewhat better, and I jazzercise more than a sane person probably should. Considering I’m 0+ (for those not in the know, people with 0- are more awesome than me, but I out-awesome everyone else) I feel like it’s my duty to try again. But to be safe I probably shouldn’t drive myself there, and being me, I don’t really want to ask someone else to drive me either.

You can see why I have unresolved issues over this. I want to donate, but I don’t want to be half-dead because of it. I want to encourage people to donate since it’s World Blood Donor Day, but that seems hypocritical. Maybe I’ll celebrate by just watching my favorite commercial again. Every time it finally reveals the vampire volunteer I just cackle. Ahh… good times.

Pick the Lie

Marilyn Monroe wasn't even her real name, Charles Manson isn't his real name, and now, I'm taking that to be my real name. But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best.

-Marilyn Manson

Today is Get A Different Name Day, yet another of those random holidays ever so dear to my heart. Who even knew there was a whole day devoted to getting a new name for yourself?

Personally, I find this brilliant. There are so many people stuck with names they hate because their parents are either too boring or too original.

My name has plagued me for years. My first name, Jessica, was THE most popular name for girls the year I was born. Apparently my mother is a sheep and just follows the trend. She had main naming rights; my father was only allowed to do my middle name. My middle name is much more acceptable, but I’ve never felt comfortable going by it like other people I know that randomly tell you their middle name as if it’s their first name.

Going through school, there was at least one other Jessica in every single one of my classes. I had to laugh when my friend Kyli posted this link about 90s life and it mentioned the Jessica thing, because it’s TRUE. Many Jessicas were clever and went by shortened versions of their name such as Jess, or Jessie. Ironically enough, the entire reason my mother named me Jessica was so she could call me Jessie, and then she decided she didn’t like it. I personally have never felt right introducing myself as anything other than Jessica, so that’s generally what people call me.

Now I’ve since been told that when I introduce myself, I actually say my name oddly. Supposedly instead of saying Jess-I-Ka I say something more along the lines of Jess-Ka. Crazy. I don’t even hear myself saying it that way (same idea where I can’t hear myself saying muse incorrectly but everyone tells me it’s wrong so I’ve just stopped saying it at all).

It always really bugged me that half the other girls in the world had the same name as me. This meant I was relegated to being either the “nice Jessica” or the “short Jessica” or some other designation that I didn’t always like. This also meant meeting people and hearing things like “you don’t look like a Jessica” or “huh, I’ve never seen a Jessica dress like that.” I was so frustrated by this, one of my college application essays was all about how my name drove me to excel in life to separate myself from the Jessica pack.

So in theory, I should be renaming myself today. Except I CAN’T. How do you choose a new name? How do you redefine yourself and make it stick? Fact, I struggle just naming things like stories or characters. I have several baby name books somewhere in the house just for when I’m writing and I’m stuck on naming my characters. Not that the books actually help when I’m stuck on a name. They do however inspire stories sometimes where I see a name and just instantly get a character.

The only things I’ve ever enjoyed naming were my mixed CDs. Yes, back in the day when I still made CDs for the car instead of plugging in my iPod, I greatly enjoyed giving them interesting names. Since all my CDs were completely random mixes of music, the name didn’t really matter as long as I could remember it. This is how I ended up with gems like “Sugar Sweet Exposure,” “Beware Closing Doors,” and “Don’t Microwave the Monkey.” Oh and don’t forget the frequent passenger favorite, “Tie Me Down & Go GRR.”

The Penis Mightier

The end of November is quickly approaching. We are right in the midst of the holiday season between Thanksgiving and your December holiday of choice (Hanukkah, Yule, Christmas… whatever your flavor) where people eat and shop a lot. This is also when I start my yearly debate over whether or not to send out a holiday letter.

Now on another topic, before we move into December, November is National Novel Writing Month. It also has a lot of random holidays for writing such as “I Love to Write Day.” This wonderful emphasis on writing, combined with my internal argument over sending a holiday letter, has made me realize that I have never yet explained to you folks WHY I am occasionally (I swear I’ll get better) writing a blog.

I do love to write. I’ve been writing fanfiction off and on since early high school. I’ve written quite a few short stories, and started quite a few novels that I will probably never finish. During college I had my assignments to write personal essays, David Sedaris style, and I realized those were my new love. Because there are two big problems when it comes to me and writing:

1. I have absolutely no discipline when it comes to writing. I like to write. I can write short things. However, when it comes to writing anything too long I don’t have the focus to come back, make myself sit down, and just write. I could complete stories for college because they were due for a class. Now I have nothing due, and it doesn’t really matter if I finish something or not. I really hope to work past this at some point. I have ideas I’d really like to get out there someday.

2. It may seem strange, but I have no confidence in my voice as a writer. In fact, I had the fear for the longest time that I did not have a voice at all. I felt like anyone could write what I wrote. They were just sentences on a page, with no life or meaning.

Considering my dream was to become a decent, semi-famous author, that was totally quotable and eventually had a movie or HBO series based off my books, I should have a good writing voice. Think of the “Pen Is Mightier” category on Jeopardy. You recognize quotes from books not because you memorize the entire book (unless you're lame and have no friends), but because the voice of the quote or character stands out.

This issue with my writing voice is why I write this blog, and why I used to send a family Christmas letter ever year.

The Christmas letter was a huge issue in my household growing up. It was something my parents decided I should do, and thus something I fought bitterly against. It normally ended with me being confined to a chair in front of the computer until I typed one out.

They weren’t long letters. Just one page announcements about my family and what had been going on for the year. Of course I felt like we had fairly stagnant lives. There’s only so many ways to say we’re all working excessively at our various jobs that haven’t changed. It was with the Christmas letter that I first started to feel like I had a bit of a writing voice, because I tended to write it different ways to keep myself amused. And the response was overall positive. Everyone in the larger family started clamoring for the yearly letters and said how much they loved them. I have to admit when I moved off on my own and my mother started writing the letters, it just wasn’t the same. I then decided I should continue to do letters for my own adventures, and have done 2 so far since moving out.

However this year, I’ve been blogging. I started blogging because I was impressed with my friend Erin’s witticism and thought this would be a good method for continuing to improve my written voice. This was a chance to write short entries (good for my attention span), but write consistently (good for building up writing stamina), and discuss whatever I want. So far, it’s been mostly a success. There are certainly posts that I enjoyed more than others, but if my goal is to further develop my voice I think I’m starting to get there. One of the best complements I’ve gotten so far is that my friend Callie has told me whenever she reads my posts, the whole time she just hears me speaking in her mind because it sounds so much like how I talk. So perfect!!

Of course there’s still more work to do in my voice training. Once one gets a voice, you then need to be able to change the expressions and tone to achieve different results.

I think I struggle with this so much in writing because I DON’T have this issue talking. I know I’ve discussed before that apparently I cannot tell a good story. Well the truth is: I suck a bit at conversations, but actual story telling? I excel. I have a very expressive voice. The voice itself still sucks, but by god when you hear me speak there are emotions and nuances and funny voices all over the place. I want that in my writing. I want to keep the reader involved and entertained. And I know I can get there eventually if I finally just knuckle down and practice.

So that, my friends, is why I write this blog.

Of course how is this tied into this year’s argument over whether or not to send a holiday letter? Well, if I’m writing the blog, I don’t really need the practice of also sending out a holiday letter. Plus, I feel like a large portion of the people I would send it to are actually reading this, and they know a lot of what’s been going on this year. But I do so like sending out pretty cards with the letter… hmm.

To end though, I thought I’d give you a little early holiday present. If you haven’t ever watched the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy skits (we watched them A LOT in college, you have no idea), here’s one of my favorites where Sean Connery isn’t quite clear on the aforementioned pen category. As Sean wisely says, what matters is, "DOES IT WORK?" I think this is an excellent mindframe for writing as well. Does it work? The final result should be - yes!

The Day the Metabolism Died

“We're women. There is nothing above bottoms on the crisis scale. Bottoms are our natural enemy.”

-Sally Harper, Coupling

Today is Gorgeous Grandma Day, and you know how I love me some random holidays. Today I want to start by talking about my grandmother on my mother’s side. She was totally a dish back in the day. Obviously I didn’t know her back then, but I’ll say that she looks like quite a bit of a vixen too. I’d bet you $5 she would have had you wrapped around her finger and begging to carry out her every wish. Of course she probably was also a bit of a tease, as she’ll tell anyone sitting with her no matter what age range that she hates sex. Does not like it. No thank you, sir.

Anyway, so not only was my grandma super sexy back in the day, she aged really well. I would never dare to say her actual age (I want to live!) but she has always looked much younger. And this despite a totally unhealthy diet avoiding all the essential things doctors think you need. Go, Grandma!

Of course, as much as I wish for this genetic legacy, I’m pretty sure it’s going to skip me and go to my brother. The lucky duck. But he has far more of the other traits from that side of the family than I do. Including the butt. Yes, the butt.

My mother’s side of the family tends more towards voluptuousness. These are all hot, curvy, sexalicious women. Now for some of us it’s more bust. For some, like my mother, it’s all in the rear. My mother has quite a butt on her. And when she was a young, sexy thang, she showed it off. Short shorts, boots, and dresses that are ridiculously short. This is why over the years she’s earned nicknames like Buns and Mrs. Lumpy Bottom.

My father loves to tease her about her butt. Being impressionable children at one point and then turning to habit, my brother and I totally picked it up too. My dad sometimes hinted that I might expect the same thing to happen when I got older, but genetics loved me for once, and while I got a little butt at some point, I never got a rear quite like my mother’s. But to my endless delight, MY BROTHER DID!!

Yes, it’s as funny as it sounds. Sadly, I can’t find a really super awesome photo to demonstrate, but here is one example. My brother is to the left. Even in this picture you can see the curvature. Notice the huge difference from the random person on the right with saggy jeans, the guy norm. My brother’s got some junk in the trunk. Baby got back. And it is GROWING. This is an older picture. I’m fairly certain his butt is larger now.

I spent years cackling over this fact of life and telling almost anyone I knew about my brother’s butt. Unfortunately, I think karma caught up to me.

You see, in the past month or so I’ve become convinced that my butt is starting to get bigger.

Love this show.

Seriously, it's awesome.

Just to clarify, I am NOT one of those girls that constantly obsesses over their behind, like Sally from Coupling. My butt isn’t too big, or too small. It’s just there, so I ignored it. I didn’t dress to show it off, I didn’t worry about it looking too large.

All of a sudden though my clothes started fitting differently. I pulled out pants that used to fit fine, and now they’re unduly tight in the derriere region. I throw on skirts I used to love, and the hem’s a little too close to my unmentionables for comfort. Even my underwear is fitting differently.

But it’s a subtle change. That’s the problem. I’m not entirely sure if my butt is really larger, or if it’s all in my mind. After all, I hardly look at the thing. I don’t have it memorized. Maybe it was always that size. Maybe my dryer went rogue and shrunk all my clothes. I keep asking people I know if they’ve looked at my butt before and can verify, but they just think I’m crazy (story of my life).

There’s a legitimate reason for why I need to know if it’s getting bigger. I need to identify the cause.

See, I jazzercise now. Someday I might do a whole jazzercise post, but let me just say it’s amazing, and I love it. My tummy is firmer, my thighs are becoming bricks, and I have arm muscles for the first time in my entire life. So my cute lil bum should NOT be getting larger. Unless it’s muscle, which is what people have suggested. I think it might be perkier, but is it muscle?? I can't tell.

In which case, is this a sign that my metabolism has finally started to die!?!

This is what I need to know – the state of my metabolism. This is crucially important to my continued existence.

I’m not saying I have the best metabolism in the world. It wouldn’t win gold medals. However, my metabolism is totally a beast. I’ve never been super skinny, but on the plus side I’ve never been plus size, which I completely owe to my metabolism. Until jazzercise this year, I didn’t work out regularly. I disdained physical activity.

Not to mention the things I eat fairly often would probably cause someone with a normal metabolism to gain 5 pounds in 5 seconds.

Don’t believe me? Ok well, let’s give some concrete examples. I will eat cheese sticks (the fried kind, not that stupid string cheese stuff) several days in a row. I once ate enough icecream in a single sitting to give my tongue (mild) frostbite. Now that I’m older and trying to be slightly healthy, I limit myself to only a half pound of bacon at once. Yeah.

So if this is a sign of the times, and my metabolism is starting to die off, I need to know STAT. Then I might have to do crazy things like limiting how much I eat and believing in calories. Oh the horror… I’m not ready for this. I’m too young! I have too much to live for!!

The Evolution of Drinking

Tomorrow is National Iced Tea Day! I just made a fresh batch of iced tea to celebrate. I’m already drinking some, but it’s not really super cold yet. It’ll be better tomorrow.

If you told me 10 years ago I’d love iced tea in the future, I would have laughed in your face. If you remained serious, I probably would have taken you for a psych evaluation. I’d find it easier to believe you telling me that I would be the mother of the humankind’s last hope than that I’d grow to love iced tea. A friend tried to get me to drink tea when I was like 11, and the only way I drank it was with almost the same amount of sugar as tea. Seriously, the sugar couldn’t even dissolve.

Sure, tastes can change, but if you plotted out my taste in drinks over the years on a graph, it’d be a very gradual curve for about 20 years of my life. Adding tea as a plot point would create such a huge spike that if it was on a seismograph, all the scientists of the world would freak out and announce the end of life as we know it.

It’s very easy to track the evolution of my taste in drinks, because as I said, the change was minimal for the majority of my life.

This, of course, is only if you exclude when I was a baby. My mother alleges that as a baby/toddler I was quite normal and drank milk, ate fruits, and all sorts of things that I’m just not sure I believe. There is absolutely no evidence to back her up.

Now starting with my memories, which are clearly more reliable, you have only one main drink when I was young. That was water. Milk disgusted me. It still does. Chocolate milk was okay, but it started to wear out its welcome as that was about the only thing I drank, since my mother was willing to accept it as a healthy alternative. I wasn’t really big on juice. Certain juices were acceptable, but I had very particular tastes.

I’m not sure at what age this started, but eventually I started to love diet coke/pepsi. My parents drank tons of it, and what probably started as small sips morphed into a lifetime love.

We traveled a lot when I was young, and I always caused the old ladies sitting with me on planes to cackle when I ordered a diet pop (because I almost always was the family member abandoned to sit with strangers. 4 people have to split up when airplane seats are ordered in 3s. In retrospect this was probably a wise decision by my parents. I simply can’t imagine strangers putting up with my brother for hours, and having always been an independent sort they knew I didn’t really care). “Are you on a diet, dearie??” They’d ask almost every time. I’d pout, because that’s like my main response to life, and all offended say “no!!! I just like it better!” Which was true. But granted, it’s probably a little weird when the 8 year old in pigtails and Winnie the Pooh overalls is ordering a diet pepsi.

This continued for years. My mother generally didn’t keep pop in the house (probably fearing I’d find it and drink it all. We had other problems in our house with things like icecream and cookie dough mysteriously disappearing) but my father really liked to eat out, and I was allowed to order it when we were out.

This might have continued indefinitely actually, but 2 big events happened that changed my drinking habits.

The first was that I went and stayed with my aunt for a week or two. I didn’t see much of my aunts and uncles because we didn’t live in the same area, but somehow it got arranged that I could go stay with my aunt in one of those Carolina states. I had a lovely time. I was a pre-teen, and my cousin was an older, super cool teenager, so I soaked up tons of teen-life wisdom. I also switched to regular pepsi, as that was the drink of choice in their house. So again, while it was a change, it was a small change.

It was only a few years though until I switched back to diet pepsi instead. This was mainly because I was now allowed to have pop at home, and the sheer amount I drank a day made me start to consider the calories involved, so having discovered I still enjoyed diet pepsi just as much, I switched back. The big difference then was my preference for pepsi over coke. As a kid, while I drank both I was more of a coke fan. As a teenager, I could drink coke if nothing else was available, but by god if my mother tried to convince me to buy coke just because it was on sale, we had some problems.

Because I <3 pepsi

If you know me at all, you might happen to know that at this point, I can admit I was actually addicted to diet pepsi. No one really considers this a real thing, but then again most people don’t drink it the same way I did. I drank NOTHING else. Water, occasionally, but that’s it. The worst years were early college, where I can say without exaggerating that I was drinking about 10 cans/glasses of diet pepsi a day.

So how did I end up drinking iced tea? Well, it’s mainly because of the 2^nd big event – a routine visit to the dentist. After the dentist became convinced I was bulimic because the diet pepsi was rotting away all of my tooth enamel, I started to cut down.

You have no idea how hard this was. I initially cut down to 4 a day, and I got myself some stickers so I could track my progress on the calendar. If I drank more than 4 I got a red star, which was bad. 4 was a blue star, 3 silver, and 1 or 2 a gold star. There weren’t many gold stars involved. After a few months I cut down to 3, and this was so hard that I decided I’d allow myself to stick to 3 with no further cutting back.

Sometimes the future looked a little bleak to me. When you’re 22, it’s miserable to imagine years spent constantly monitoring pepsi limits. But I didn’t have the strength to quit completely until last summer, after I went on a cruise with friends and

A.     They pestered me about it the whole time (apparently most people think my diet pepsi habits are unhealthy)

B.     I had less available (because apparently the cruise ship didn’t think people drank pop at 8 in the morning, so they wouldn’t provide it until afternoon)

C.     I realized that while it wasn’t pleasant, I could in fact survive without drinking it.

So I switched to tea, because while I was willing to give up pepsi I sure as sugar wasn’t willing to give up caffeine. A few months later I discovered that I even liked iced tea. And the good news is that even when I do things like buy a rt 44 size of iced tea from Sonic, I know that it’s still waaaaaaay better for me than the same thing with diet pepsi.