Another Loser-Ass Stepsister

The prince is scraped up off the ox-cart-path and revived. He continues his frantic search for the elusive Cinderella. He is told by the village idiot that there is another sister in the house he has just left, and that perhaps he should try again.

After knocking at the door, no, wait, after having his royal servant knock at the door, and then having several royal servants wield pitchforks to drive away the still whimpering St. Bernard-faced bitch Splenda, he goes inside.

Sure enough, as is often the case in kingdom families, there is a beautiful daughter. One who got lucky and sidestepped the inbreeding. She glides into the room with such grace and elegance that the prince initially fails to notice that she is frighteningly small. Tiny. Her head barely reaches his belt buckle, and for all the seedy thoughts this proportion injects into the prince's mind, rules are rules. The glass slipper must perfectly fit the tiny beauty.

He places the slipper in front of her, realizing forlornly that it is obscenely too gargantuan for her eenie weenie foot. Way, way, way too big. It would be like asking her to use a saucer sled for a diaphragm.

The petite beauty begs for a chance with the slipper. She puts her entire body down into it, both legs stretching into the toe of the precious slipper, and she holds onto the glassy sides like an Olympian in a bobsled.

The prince is heartbroken. He dumps her out of the slipper like a scorpion out of an army boot. She is a Smart One and she knows what she has lost.

OK, that was a poor segue, but here's the story behind the story.

I bought some Smart Ones desserts. Also known as Weight Watchers. While rummaging through the frozen food aisle, I found Key Lime Cheesecake. That sounded wicked good. Not too many calories, still definitely some sugar intake, but nothing to break the glucose bank.

The problem:

THE SERVINGS ARE TINY.

The two little round cheesecakes were the size of half dollars. It makes perfect sense that they don't house that many calories. Most of the entire serving gets caught in your teeth and then brushed out and spat into the sink. I've put cucumber slices on my eyes that were bigger.

I will admit, the cheesecake was really good. Of course, I was desperate. I was like that old painter guy in the movie Lawrence of Arabia who got thirsty enough in the desert that he drank his paints and dropped dead in the sand.

However, tasty or not, when I want a dessert, I want a dessert. Don't hand me some insultingly diminutive little cakie about as satisfying as a single Junior Mint and think I'm going to be happy. It's like giving me the Good without the Plenty. All you will do is honk Candy off.

So yes, Weight Watchers, take your piss poor pittance of a dessert and ram it up your Fergie ass.

The Ugly (and Woefully Inadequate) Stepsisters

Life has lowered the boom on me and my sugar-glutton self and I can no longer dive in and indulge in desserts like a happy, wallowing hog. Thus, I have searched for alternatives. It has been less than successful.

Let's pretend that the handsome prince is searching for his lovely Cinderella. She'll be, say, a big honking square of tiramisu, glowing in multi-layered goodness. The prince enters the humble cottage where he hopes to find his fair maiden. Instead, there is a grievously ugly, cheap-perfume-wearing, St. Bernard-faced hag in Cindy's place. We shall call her Splenda. The prince recoils from her, from the fake and bitter sweetness radiating from her, grabs the precious glass slipper and runs out into the busy ox-cart-travelled path and is run over and flattened.

I will elaborate. While I was in Arizona with my boyfriend, who also happens to be the best guy in the universe, we searched for options that might satisfy my infamous sugar cravings. He brought home some Breyer's No-Sugar-Added Chocolate Ice Cream. Brimming with Splenda. We each ate a bowl of it. OK, he ate one bowl and Miss Heifer had to have two. A couple hours later, we went to bed. So far, so good.

The boyfriend, who rarely, rarely, gets headaches, woke up early in the morning with a blasting one. I, on the other hand, had heart palpitations pretty much all night long. They kept waking me up, my chest pounding like a monkey humping a mongoose.

I googled "splenda side effects" and guess what? That shit is straight from the bowels of hell. About a zillion people have left detailed descriptions on a message board, some of them having gone to the E.R. for what they thought were heart attacks. And many had seethingly bad headaches. There was a whole long list of maladies seemingly caused by Splenda, including the stubborn plateau-ing of weight loss. I will never eat that nuclear pus again.

There have been other forays into the strange land of dessert alternatives. More on these other stepsisters as our tale unfolds.

The Futility of Attempting to Escape the Debbul

I had to get away for something that resembled a vacation. I admit it, I was running. Like a limp dick fugitive cowering under the sad umbrella of a homespun witness protection program, an underground railroad away from the beast that hunts me day and night: SUGAR. Luscious, taboo, tasty, forbidden candy, cake, big 32-ounce convenience store cups of fizzy, icy Pepsi.

And of course since I was not vacationing in a cave in Northern Borneo, there was no escaping that sweet crystally debbul.

Everything got to me. On the 3 and a half hour plane ride to Phoenix, I had one of the cursed middle seats, trapped in that cramped limbo of being unable to sleep, unable to go pee and stretch my legs without waking the friendly-as-a-corpse tall guy next to me. And of course, unable to partake of my usual carry-on snacks: Reese Cups, Twizzlers, candy corn, because I can NO LONGER HAVE SUGAR. In my purse were healthy snackies. Almonds, raisins, an apple. Fuck.

I tried to focus. I read from one of the new textbooks I'm teaching with in the fall. Head down, elbows planted on the tray table, I read. For as long as I could take it. I did OK. I was focusing.

My neck started to hurt. I sat up straight. I glanced across the aisle, up 2 rows. A sweet little boy was coloring. It was cute. I watched him take out each cute little crayon, and do that cute tongue-in-the-corner-of-the-mouth thing that kids do when they're concentrating. Awww. He's so content, I thought. Then, with no warning whatsoever, before he had even finished coloring his picture of a tree with a panting dog sitting next to it, the little fucker pulled out a Nestle's Crunch Bar. And he started eating it. I couldn't move. It was like I had been watching a happy rodeo clown stomping around in his big zany yellow shoes, and then suddenly he started performing a vivisection on a pony. But I couldn't take my eyes away. The horribleness of not being able to have that candy bar was bad enough. But when the boy managed to cover most of his fingers with melty, intoxicating chocolate, I wanted to leap from my seat, knock the little bastard back to the exit row, and consume the last chunk of the Crunch bar, foil and all. And then I would dig into the little shithead's Spiderman backpack to find the rest of the stash I knew he was holding out.

But I did not leap. I sat there. Hating, once again, all people who are allowed candy. All who have not been exiled to No Candy Island, which I believe is just a quick boat trip from the Island of Misfit Toys. We are freaks, we islanders. And we'll join forces one day soon.

Irrational Anger Toward Fruit

I wasn't going to admit this. But I must sacrifice my dignity for the others of my kind. Those who are trying to give up sugar.

Tonight I was eating fruit. And more fruit. I was told that this could help the sugar cravings. I had an apple, and then a banana. (This after a healthy dinner of chicken breast and brussel sprouts.) An hour after the banana I was still jonesing for sugar. I walked into the kitchen to my sad array of fruit. Next on deck was an orange. A happy little bright fruit all eager to be my friend. I threw the poor little bastard against the wall. Hard. There was no satisfaction gained. Just a boring thud and a few drops of orange juice splattered onto the drywall.

I knew at that moment that if a large Cadbury Milk Chocolate Bar showed up in my living room, I'd peel off its wrapper, tenderly at first, then urgently, and I'd ravage it. There would be no foreplay, no small talk, just me saying "You filthy little chocolatey boy. WHERE were YOU last night?" There's no law against ravaging a candy bar.