Same old song and dance..

I'm quitting smoking. Again. For the last time.
I have resolve. I will not yield to the demonic temptation of cigarettes. I am armed with patches that deliver obscene levels of nicotine through my epidermis (that's skin, kids), far more than I would accumulate if I were actually smoking my girly cigarettes.
Why am I doing this, you ask?
Well, there's the obvious:
Cancer - Don't really want to die horribly.
Other diseases, none of which I can name - Still don't want to die horribly, or slowly, or live in discomfort for 20 years before dying.
The Smell - Smokers stink. The things is, when you're a smoker, you don't know it. But everyone else does.
Then, there's the real reason.
MONEY.
Cigarettes cost anywhere from $2.50 (taste like pencil shavings, may well BE pencil shavings for all you know) to upwards of $4 for the "Premium" brands; i.e. Marlboro (Come to where the flavor is). Let's imagine that a person smokes a pack a day. That person is me, and I do smoke a pack a day. Smoking less is hard. Say I buy myself a pack of mid-range cigarettes a day. (Cartons would be more economical, I'm sure, but then I would smoke more. Plus, plunking down $3 plus tax seems better to me than $30.) If the total cost is $3.50, and I buy a pack every day, that comes out to $24.50. (Right? Math skills failing.) Spend that $24.50 4 weeks a month, and you have $98.00 a month. Jesus! That's more than I thought. Anyway, I could take that $98 and spend $30 of it a month at the gym and batter myself into a sleeker, sexier body, and I would still have $68 dollars a month to buy important things, like candy bars and pretty colored nail polish. So, in light of this, I have decided to quit smoking forever. Unless my husband starts again, but I think if that happens I shall simply flush all his cigarettes down the toilet while he watches like my mom did to me when i was 15. My 10 year off again, on again love affair with the cigarette has ended. Goodbye, my friend. Perhaps one day we shall meet again, when science provides me with a 100% healthy smokable substance. I will not hold my breath.

The moral to this story? Stephanie is cheap.