Dumb Detox, Days 11-13

This string of texts is what happens when you go an entire week eating only fruits, vegetables and rice:

Me:  Dude, yesterday was painful.  I think my rice went bad.  It had a weird sour taste.  And my roasted vegetables turned out nasty.  I tried just Italian seasoning like you did, but instead of tasting delicious like yours it tasted like dirt and sticks were sprinkled on my veggies.  I clearly didn't drown them in enough oil so when I go home I sauteed them with garlic.  They only got a little better, not a lot.  Sad face.  I need meat!  Both kinds, if ya know what I mean.  This full body detox is really putting a damper on my slutty urges.

Sister:  haha, that is awesome!  I mean it's not but it is.  I made more dumb vegetables last night but I also made some dumb broccoli so at least I'll have a different dumb flavor in my dumb mouth!

Me:  hahahaha!  I had already added dumb broccoli to my dumb vegetables.  I jumped the dumb gun!

Me:  P.S.  I did not enjoy my turnip.  I don't know if I picked a bad one or cut it wrong or maybe it was parsnip I liked last time because my turnip tastes like sour ass.  How's yours?

Sister:  I'm worried about the turnip.  I didn't like the way it smelled when I cut it yesterday...I'm nervous about it.  I'll let you know in a bit when I eat it.

Me:  It's interesting.  I am extremely hungry right now, my stomach was growling a moment ago, but as soon as I start to fork up some salad I become painfully full.  I'm beginning to think vegetables are  the devil.  Maybe I need to start drinking my veggies like the guy in that documentary.

       Yep.  Just took a bite and it activated my gag reflex.  Wretched micro-nutrient rich foods!

Sister (regarding turnip):  It tastes like butt cauliflower to me.

Me:  Butt cauliflower?  As opposed to foot cauliflower?  Or fart cauliflower?

Sister:  haha, as opposed to regular cauliflower.

Me:  Gross.  That's the worst kind!  haha

Yes, these are the kinds of conversations we have.  Sometimes it's like we're drunk, except neither of us has had a drop of alcohol in over 2 weeks.  

Tomorrow we get to add back things like rice crackers, rice pasta, rice cakes, oatmeal and other gluten free, bland starches/bread/cereals.  I'm pretty impressed that I made it through days 7-13 without getting fired from work/friends/family or life in general.

13 down, 15 to go!

Dumb Detox, Days 8-10

Day 8:
(On dressing up to see Les Miserables) 
How come I'm thinner than I was when I bought this dress, yet it feels tighter than it used to around my waist?  Oh, right, because I'm bloated.  Stupid fiber!

Day 9:
(On my private dance lesson)
We're doing cha cha today?  I don't know if that's a good idea.  I'm rockin' a major fiber baby right now and I can't be responsible for what might come out if I shake it too much.  Damn fiber!

Day 10:
(On existing)
This morning I weighed myself.  Then, an hour and a half later, I pooped and weighed myself again.  I pooped a pound!*  A whole pound!  And yet, I'm so bloated that if I was in a plane and we had to prepare for an emergency water landing, I could use myself as the floatation device.  I'm a bloatation device!  F*ck you, fiber!

10 down, 18 to go!


*I'm such a delicate flower.  It's weird I'm still single.

Dumb Detox, Days 3-7

Days 3 through 6 whizzed by.  I pushed through the weekend like a rock star.  My Aunt and Uncle had a going away party and I brought my own food and a Nalgene full of water that I refilled about seven times throughout the evening.  I think I peed at least that many times. 

I made one of the soups from a recipe provided by The Almighty Detox (that's the name I made up for the imaginary soul behind this dumb detox) and brought it to work with me on Monday.  It was bland and disgusting and it kinda looked like vomit.  I had more to bring with me on Tuesday, but I fed it to my garbage disposal and brought rice cakes with almond butter instead - which was delicious aaaaand nutritious.

With the exception of feeling a kind of bloated I have never known before, and looking mildly pregnant due to said bloating, this dumb detox hasn't been so bad.

Today is day 7.  I think it can be best described through this series of text messages to my sister:

Just sent you an email with a recipe for gluten free rice crackers.  But they don't have rice in them.  Don't know why they're called rice crackers.  Anyway, how's day 7 going for you so far?  I made a giant batch of rice this morning.  And by giant, I mean I could probably feed China.  I think I might hate rice after this week.

Sister's response: Let's make them!  This weekend we can shop at Sprouts and make rice crackers from scratch!  Hey, I got a question...when did we turn into hippies?!

Seriously, we need to stop washing our hair, start rubbing crystal rocks on our pits and wear clothes made from hemp.

For lunch today I have a salad of lettuce, tomato, avocado, green beans and boring "healthy" salad dressing accompanied by rice with avocado.  So far, so good.  I can totally do this for 7 days.  Because I'm a rockstar.  And because I'm not creative enough to think of another meal using only vegetables, fruits and rice.  And because I'd rather be hungry than fat.

Dinner was a smoothie of dumb detox powder, strawberries, blueberries and banana, a plate of rice with avocado, and roasted vegetables...except I got full before I could eat the roasted vegetables.

My stomach hurts.  I'm hungry and full at the same time.  I hate rice, I hate vegetables and I hate, I hate, I HATE salad dressing!  6 more days of this?  I might scratch my face right off of my face.

7 down, 21 to go!

Dumb Detox, Day 2

Oatmeal was better today.  I added a teeny bit of vanilla rice milk and heated the bananas in the oatmeal so they got all mushy.  I'm calling it cinnamon banana oatmeal deluxe.  I'm sure no one has ever thought of doing that.  I'm so creative.  I could totally be a chef.

Apparently my hummus and rice cracker lunch wasn't enough to keep the cranky down.  I was ranting about a customer to three of my coworkers when suddenly one interrupts me and says to the other two, "Wait a minute - just so everybody knows - she's detoxing!"  It was hilarious.

Added chicken to the pasta and beans tonight.  It was good but it wasn't cheese.  Throughout my entire meal I had to make a conscious effort to believe I didn't want cheese.  But I did.  A whole lot.  I think alcohol may not be the hardest thing for me to go without for 28 days.  I think it might be cheese. 

Oh yeah, tried Trader Joe's almond butter with flax seeds.  After stirring it for what seemed like half an hour, and getting a much-needed arm workout, I discovered it was quite delicious!  But I don't get why it's better for me than peanut butter.  Same amount of calories per serving, same amount of fat, same everything!  What do they got that peanuts ain't got (besides courage)?

The courage remark was a reference to the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.  And the answer to my question was that peanuts cause inflammation...which results from white blood cells dying off to heal the body...which are needed to defend the body from toxins...which explains the point of a dumb detox.  See how things come round full circle?

2 down, 26 to go!

Dumb Detox, Day 1

Throughout my first day (yesterday) of this dumb detox/cleanse thing, I sent my sister (who is my dumb detox team mate) a series of text messages:

Day 1: So far, so good.  Altho, I need sweetener for my oatmeal.  Cinnamon is about as sweet as my shoe.  Do you recommend Stevia or brown rice syrup...or something else?

Now that you mention it, I remember the one time I tried Stevia I wanted to scratch the top layer of my tongue off to remove that nasty flavor. Can one purchase Truvia at a grocery store?

So, the rice crackers aren't the worst thing I've ever had in my mouth!  I was  pretty impressed.  They make hummus with tomato and avocado slices seem like a meal!  Trader Joe's garlic hummus is not the best.  Good thing I put olive oil* and balsamic vinegar in it.  I still ate almost the entire container and I have 735 calories** left for dinner and a shake.  So far I'm rockin' day 1!

The pasta and beans wasn't half bad!  Of course, it could have used a little wine (as could have my mouth) and I wanted to pour cheese on top of it so badly it made my face hurt.  But I powered through like a champ!

Day 1 ended with dance class, so I was extra successful on accounta eating healthy and exercising in the same day.  1 down, 27 to go!

*Yes, olive oil is one of the acceptable fats
**I'm not required to count calories, I'm doing it partly out of habit and partly out of curiosity.

Detoxifying

I have decided to do one of those dumb detox/cleanse things with my sister.  Originally, I was going to opt for 10 days of hunger and crankiness, but then I remembered that I was very popular in June and July and along with the lovely memories, I packed on five big ones.  So, I decided to dive in and go for 28 days of hunger and crankiness.  (I know these dumb detox/cleanse things aren't designed for weight loss, but let's face it, nobody puts themselves through that kind of misery without losing weight.)

No refined sugar, no dairy, no red meat, no gluten, no alcohol.  I know what you're thinking:  what CAN you eat?  Well, I'll tell you.  Healthy stuff.  Again, I know what you're thinking:  what's healthy stuff?  Well, I'll tell you...good question.  Luckily this program comes with a list of acceptable foods.

I went to my local Trader Joe's - my health food store of choice.  There's a Whole Foods closer to my apartment, but I'm afraid of the people who shop at Whole Foods.  They can smell the cheese made from cow's milk, and not soy, on me from a mile away.  They look at me like I'm a human pesticide sprinkling my sin all over their organic Garden of Eden - and stood in the produce section, like a dummy, with the list.

The thing is, I eat fruits and vegetables on the regular.  But for some reason, probably because I'm limited to a list and have to follow a bunch of rules, I felt like I'd never bought food before.  I was like, what is this?  Frewit?  Oh, it's pronounced "froot"?  So the "I" is silent.  Tricky.  Vegetables, huh?  They're mostly water, right?  So, I'd probably need to eat, like, a bucket of them before I get full?  Do you sell them by the bucket?  How about by the barrel?

The no gluten part is the most fun.  Everything has to be made from rice.  Rice milk, rice pasta, rice bread, rice crackers, rice cakes (which, as we all know, are not actually cakes. That name is very deceiving).  So I'm trying to find all these rice products (and I look like I'm lost in a library - head up, mouth open, eyes wide, gazing like I have a purpose but, really, I don't know what the hell I'm doing and cursing the Dewey decimal system) when I come across circles of cardboard wrapped in plastic.  Oh, those are rice cakes?  You eat those?  You don't use them as a shim under a table that's standing on an uneven surface?  Interesting.  I am learning so much today! 

One hour and $111 later, I had all kinds of healthy crap that will hopefully last me more than a week.

28 days.  Wish me luck!  Be supportive, not honest.  Unless your honesty is supportive.  I hope you're ready to take this journey with me!

Chapter 23, or Name change process, part 2

 It's been a while since I threw a chapter from the book in here, so let's go back in time again...

            When my social security card arrived with my new slash old name, I handled it surprisingly well.  It helped that my roommate was there and fixed me up with a big glass of wine.  I took out a pad of paper and practiced writing my new slash old name about one hundred times before attempting to sign my new social security card.  When I started to get teary, she’d yell at me and gave me more wine.  We are nothing without our girlfriends.

            A couple days later I took my new social security card, my old driver’s license and my divorce decree with me to the DMV (See, you can do something old, something new, and something blue for divorces, too).  I decided to try the same trick I used with the Social Security office and get there a half hour before it closed.  My plan worked, I only had to wait about twenty minutes.  The lady told me I’d receive my new license in about a week. 

            When I got home I made a list of all the companies with whom I needed to change my name.  There were my utilities, Bank of America, Chase, and my passport.

I also needed to change my name with my car insurance, health insurance (and I needed to get my own health insurance), and because I got the house in the divorce, I needed to change my name on the homeowner’s insurance, the deed and the loan.  The only name changing I could do without my new license was with the utilities, credit card and bank accounts.  I ended up getting a new credit card and closing out the old one.  I always wanted a credit card that earned me Disney dollars and The Ex never let me get one, so that was the first thing I did.

            When I got my new license I was able to change my name and policy on my car insurance and I ended up getting health insurance later through my roommate.  The biggest pain in my ass was the house stuff.  I had to change my name on the deed before I could change it on the insurance or the loan.  To change the deed I had to go to the courthouse in San Bernardino on a certain day between certain hours.  The whole idea of the process gave me a headache.  And then one day I was explaining it all to my Attorney’s paralegal and she said, “Oh, do you want us to take care of that for you?”  Uh, yes please.

            After that was completed (two weeks later) I could submit a copy of the new deed, the divorce decree, the settlement agreement (saying the house is mine) and my social security card to my homeowners insurance so they could change my name and remove The Ex’s name.  After that was completed I could submit all the same paperwork plus the new homeowner’s insurance (and some money) to Bank of America to have them change my name on the loan. 

            The whole house stuff process took several months, actually, and there were times I wished I had made The Ex keep the house.  He sent me a few angry emails when he was impatient with the process.  As if I wasn’t impatient with the process?  I had been working on making the necessary changes for months.  Every week I was dealing with social security offices or DMVs or lawyers or insurance agents or loan agents or any other kinds of agents you can imagine.  Every week I was reminded that I was divorced.  Every week my life turned upside down.  Every week at some point, I cried.  And what was he doing?  He was fucking his girlfriend.  It must have been a really rough time for HIM.  I can’t imagine the pain HE must have gone through.