10:02 a.m. - Sunday, Aug. 10, 2003
Wasting Ms Leslie
Artificial sweetener comes in little packets of three colors; pink, blue and yellow. I own enough of all three combined to stuff a pillow. I didn�t intend to become the local sweetener baroness; it�s just the way I shop.

I should have a shopping accountant, not to count money but to follow me through the store with a list of the things I already have in abundance. Sure, I suppose I could make a list of things to shop for, but where�s the adventure in that? Instead, I make it my habit to thread my buggy up and down each and every aisle in the store while I examine every item on display and try to remember which items I need, which I want, and which I can afford. Sometimes I struggle too, with which items I deserve.

It occurred to me more than two years ago that I didn�t have any artificial sweetener. I had never had any artificial sweetener, so I felt pretty safe loading a box of the little pink envelopes into my buggy. I was at Sam�s club at the time. A pink box from Sam�s holds fifteen hundred envelopes. When I got home, I found a place in the cupboards of my tiny kitchen to stow the whole box.

On my very next trip to Sam�s club, I happened to wander the aisle that held artificial sweeteners. I was trying hard to lose weight and I immediately realized that there might be a place for artificial sweeteners in my plan, so I bought a box of the blue ones. A Sam�s box of blue holds seven hundred and fifty envelopes. When I got home with my groceries, I realized my mistake when I discovered the box of pink still unopened on its high shelf in my cupboard. If wishes were horses, they say, beggars would ride. If pink and blue individual servings of artificial sweetener were wishes, I�d be the harried owner of twenty-two hundred and fifty horses.

I managed to go for six months or more before my eye fell again on the sweeteners stacked on wooden pallets at Sam�s club. In a precipitous flash of insight, I became convinced that a box of yellow sweeteners would be the solution to my diet problems. So I loaded a box of seven hundred and fifty into my well-worn buggy. On the day I brought the third box home only to find that one whole cabinet was now full of nothing but artificial sweetener, I had used a total of less than a hundred of the little packets. I didn�t do the math, but it seemed obvious that I had enough of the powdery stuff to last me for approximately fifteen years.

So, determined not to spend another dime with the artificial sugar industry, I opened all three boxes and combined their contents in a bucket that I put on my counter in plain sight as a daily reminder that whatever I might need, I definitely did NOT need artificial sweetener.

Then one day, weeks later, I was frantically searching for some reason not to exercise. I found that day�s reason in the bucket of sweetener as I wondered what the difference was, really, between the contents of the different colored packets. So like a junior scientist, ecstatic to have found a good reason not to mount the hated air bike, I tore open two envelopes of each color and ate them in succession without benefit of tea or cereal or anything.

Well, the yellow was fantastic. It was even sweeter than sugar, and it had the same kind of crisp, clean finish that sugar has. Aftertaste it had none. With a lifetime supply of yellow, I don�t think I would ever need sugar. And best of all, heat doesn�t alter the sweetness of it. It can be used in baking.

Second in taste was the blue. It was almost as sweet and had no aftertaste either. The only drawback is the fact that heat breaks the blue down, so hot tea is harder to sweeten.

And then came pink, of which I still had more than a thousand packets. Pink is a poor cousin to the other two. When I ate it raw, I found that it�s actually quite nasty. It�s bitter and leaves a horrible aftertaste. It must be the reason the other two call themselves sweeteners while the pink bills itself as a sugar substitute. Yeah right. Like a history book is a sex substitute.

Well, with that information secured, I spent the rest of my exercise time separating the packets by color and then layering them in the bucket. The yellow packets I loved best were put on the bottom and covered over by blue number two. Then I arranged poor pink on the top in such a way that they would be consumed first, followed by the better brand and then lastly, the best. It�s the same principle that my depression grandma used when she made cookies for her thirteen children. She baked huge batches, a great many of which were burned. So she always put the burned ones on top in the cookie jar so that they would be eaten first. Of course the kids all knew this and dug to the bottom for their cookies, but to be caught doing so was to be sent outside to cut a switch for your own beating. My grandmother would not tolerate waste. She�s dead and gone now, and I�ll be honest, I don�t really miss her, but oh how proud she would be to see how I�ve learned the lesson about waste being purely evil.

I love Neutrogena Rainbath Refreshing Shower and Bath Gel. It�s expensive, but it cleans, softens and conditions skin with a fragrance that just never gets old and a feeling of pure luxury whenever I use it. I have a large quart bottle of it�. From Sam�s Club of course� sitting on the shelf in my bathroom, just waiting to be opened. But first, I have to use the remainder of the K-Mart brand Moisturizing Foam Bath I bought long ago. It stinks, makes no foam, and the two quart bottle cost me less than three dollars when I bought it. Still, I�m not wasting it. Every time I use it, I feel the anticipation of seeing the bottom of the bottle so I can get to the Rainbath I really want. It�s the sweetener principle and I�ve been living by that principle my whole life. I�ve been always trying to get through the bad stuff so I can get on with the good stuff. And the whole time, there�s something I needed to learn.

It�s nine-forty a.m. here. There is no guarantee that I will live to see ten o�clock. Today is just as likely to be my last day on earth as any day. No.. in fact, it�s MORE likely to be my last day than yesterday was. Every day alive simply increases the odds that the next one will be the last. The last day comes for us all and we truly don�t know which of our days that last one will be.

And so I learned it at last the other day while I was rubbing stinky cheap soap on my body and thinking of the wonderful soap that sat unused on my shelf. The real waste of that soap will be if I don�t take the opportunity to use it while I can. If I die today, I will leave behind a whole quart of something I enjoy and I�ll take with me the experience of punishing myself with something I hate. Is this what life is supposed to be? I think not.

It�s a quarter to ten. The universe has given me five more minutes. I wonder when I�ll ever learn to be really and truly grateful for each one of these gifts. I think I�m getting there. When I finish here, I�m going into the bathroom and pouring a half bottle of stinky K-Mart soap down the drain and opening my new bottle of Rainbath. I�m also going to throw something like a thousand packets of pink into the garbage and I�m going to re-arrange the remainder so that I can use my favorite first. Suddenly I think I understand the true nature of waste. I think I may have saved some soap but wasted part of myself.

And I�m terrified that I might waste the rest of me.

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