The three incomparable C's

Yesterdays market smelt of small children and Sno-cones
Flowerscent had to compete so it stayed to the outskirts
Nodding and smiling to all people I knew
I had three incomparable C's laid out on the stoop
Tried getting through to the hospital
and oblivious dads parked squalling infants in my face

Salutations decaffeination

OK the results are in and here’s the conclusion about becoming one of the few, the miserable, the decaffeine.

If one must do decaffeinated black tea in order to have some semblance of civility and rituality, much like in the real world of caffeine, Red Rose appears to be superior to the more expensive, individually wrapped, over packaged, more expensive, tripe such as Twinings.
It took me awhile to realize that I could boost my intake to two bags, in a sort of reverse process from how I got off the stuff. That did give a bit more taste to what is really now just a ritualized giant mug of milky hot water in the mornings.
But my decision is, that once this box of “RR de” is gone, that’s it for de-caf. There are plenty of herbals that offer much more actual taste. Yogi Kaffe is one. There is also a nice, hearty, Celestial Seasonings, something like Sugar Plum Spice, that appears to be seasonal but perhaps I could order or something.

I’ve also been making my own lemon and lime and sometimes lemon-lime ades and mixing them with various Zingers, as well as hibiscus straight up to play with. Honey and/or agave nectar is the usual sweetener for these as well as that a hearty splash of rose water really rules Belgium pretty firmly.

"It’s a thin line between love and hate"

“She opens up the door and lets you in,
never once asks where you‘ve been”

Here’s the thing about me and caffeine.
In the early 80’s I was, among other things, a serious tweaker. I have noticed this trend, ecto-morphs who use tend to become Junkies, meso-morphs who use tend to become tweakers. Cerebretonics seem to be fair game to all kinds of things but frequently it turns out to be sex.

Why did I become a tweaker? Well, I always suspect it was due in large part to my relationship to caffeine. I adore caffeine. I am highly allergic to caffeine. To this day I have not been able to kick caffeine right out of my life. Imagine my dismay when in ‘93 I went to visit my dying Grandmother in Seattle, and found a cappuccino machine in a Burger King. This was my first foreboding of the caffeine culture soon to reach across the country and now the world. It feels very much the same as being a nondrinker in this alcohol fueled culture. (Which is, for the most part, also one of my struggles).

So, given that I needed to work 3 jobs and party incessantly, and that caffeine compromises my immune system and severely aggravates one of my genetic illnesses, what other recourse did I think I had at the time?
Needless to say it was another in a series of really bad ideas.
I had no idea at the time that crank is the very devil, that one only has to smell it to know that it comes straight from the pit and that putting something in your body that looks, smells and tastes exactly like you scraped it off the bottom of the cat box is inestimably stupid. But it wasn’t caffeine, and it was so much stronger! How exciting was that?

I did gain one, single, boon from it, in an indirect manner, I met Uncle Bunny because of it.
I was sent to him by my friends who said to me;
“Stella, darlin’, you’re psychotic, and we think you should go talk to this guy who can help you. Tell him what idiot shit you’re up to and he’ll sell you some supplements to counteract that and you’ll feel and behave ever so much better.”
They were right.

I probably can’t get away with saying what he suggested, and what worked for me or the FDA will arrest me or something. But once I was assisted to stop being psychotic, I realized that caffeine, for all it’s problems was at least a known toxin. So I gave up the other and never went back. However, it didn’t end there, as I discovered that among other things my metabolism was now supremely fucked. It takes years to recover from that stuff. I still have some issues and its been what, over 20 years now.

So given those extremes I have decided that known toxins are generally the better choice. Like sugar. I happen to be a chocoholic diabetic. How pathetic is that? Its the caffeine thing again also, only in chocolate its the double whammy. When I work at the store, I stand right next to a huge stack of super-fudgy, chocolate-chocolate chip brownies, some of which I’ve found to weigh over a half pound, made at the restaurant by the fantastic baker. And, they just reek of chocolate. It’s like being madly in love with a married man, that you have to see socially, who doesn’t love you, but who occasionally uses you for sex.

But, in my distrust of Nutra-sweet, Splenda, other chem-sweets and chemicals, at least I know where I stand when I go back for more chocolate and tea. I’m making that perfect cup of properly brewed, black tea with milk, with my eyes wide open.
Someday I'll get what I want out of this relationship, someday it won’t hurt like this.
Then there’s tobacco.....