Day 3: June 10, 2009

Weight: 165.5

I had no intention of posting my ongoing cleanse weight on this blog, but I was so astonished to have lost 5.5 lbs. in 2 days that I reconsidered and decided it was blogworthy. In fact, I wasn’t even going to step on the scale again after my initial weigh-in on day 1, but my curiosity got the better of me, and my will-power to stay off the scale became nil-power. But, I figure if I’m gonna let my self-control slip up, better this than a big ol' fried chicken pizza slathered in hot fudge sundae with Cheetos for dessert. Let me get out of this paragraph before it becomes unbearable.

So, it was a big day at the Kendall house today. Around 3:30 this afternoon, I heard a deep, diesel rumbling coming down our dirt road and looked outside to see a very large dump truck towing a very large excavator up the driveway. This was not a surprise to me or else I might have had similar feelings as Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a great series, if you haven’t read it). Luckily, they were not coming to demolish our house, only our yard. Where grass once peacefully lay, there are now two large dirt squares, with one more being dug up tomorrow. These three sites will be our summer garden plots, assuming we get some seeds in before winter comes, which, given our location, could come as early as next week. Up in these parts, you learn not to get too attached to the sun.

Along with the heavy machinery, we had several men milling about, wielding rakes and shovels and roto-tillers, muscles rippling, testosterone spurting out everywhere. Kaya was a little in awe and scared out of her mind, as was I. We sat far away from danger and gawked like teenage girls at a college football practice.

It was a nice distraction from any preoccupation I might have had with feeling crummy or eating the refrigerator, though today went remarkably better than yesterday. I was about 60% functional today, whereas yesterday I was hanging out around 10%. That’s a pretty reasonable increase, I’d say. The hunger pangs weren’t nearly as strong, either. Hopefully I’m done with the really hard part. They say you turn a corner after day 3 or 4.

The lemonade tastes good again today, though the acid has officially burned a hole through my tongue. It’s okay, though. It will save me the money on the piercing. Perhaps my batch yesterday was destroyed by a bad lemon. You know what they say about a bad lemon. No? Is it only bad apples that can ruin a bushel? That hardly seems fair. I shall file a complaint with the proverb department for unfair discrimination against citrus fruits. Oh dear. I think I lost more of my funny.

The SWF went better on both the entering and the exiting. I had a pretty productive exit, which was satisfying because I know the contents of the exit were probably not any food I’ve had recently. The myth is that at any given time a person can have 5 to 15 lbs. of petrified fecal matter in their small and large intestine. I’m sure your reaction is the same as mine, but I’ll say what we’re thinking anyway just in case you’re a proctologist and you think petrified excrement is neat-o. DISGUSTING ewwwy grossishness!!!! I want that OUT of my body. Pronto.

The hardest part of the day was making supper for Kaya and Jere. Jere has been a dear and bought himself lots of sandwich fixins’ so that I don’t have to worry about preparing him dinner at night, as he doesn’t want to deposit me right in the brambles of temptation. But, I decided that since he had been all manly and cute with his crew of guys over doing man stuff in the yard, I would tough it out and make him something he wanted. He asked for egg noodles, which just happens to be my top 5 favorite things to eat. So what? I like a good challenge. So, I went about preparing not only the noodles with butter, parmesan, and lemon olive oil, but also a faux ground beef (Morning Star soy beef crumbles) sautéed with olive oil, garlic, and diced onion to put over top of it and some green beans as a side. Oh me, oh my. I’m masochistic.

It took every single last willpower neuron in my brain to stop me from taking a wee little taste or licking my fingers. Have you ever tried to cook and NOT taste what you’re cooking? It’s very, very hard. But, I tried to be “in the moment” and relish the experience of providing sustenance for my family, all the while enjoying the sweet and pungent smells of onion and garlic. Have I mentioned that I just now decided that I want to be buried in a sautéed onion and garlic patch when I die? Mmmmmm.

I happily plated the food for my little toddler and looked longingly as she investigated it with her fingers. I told her, “Eat, Kaya. It’s good. Mmmmm.” She smiled at me, looked at her fork, stabbed a green bean with it, plopped it in her mouth and then said, “Done?” as she handed me her plate. I pleaded with her to take more bites, but she shook her head resolutely and said “no,” with a lilt on the “o” that almost makes it sound like she’s asking you a question. Believe me. She’s not. So, I failed at living vicariously through my child. Let this be a lesson to me now, so that I won’t try to enroll her in gymnastics, ballet, art school, culinary school, law school, a PhD program in English, etc. etc. Oh, the wasteland of my one-time dreams.

As I finish this up, the crickets are chirping outside our living room window, a hint of summer is prickling the air, my “Get Regular” tea is brewing away, the Red Sox are two outs away from another victory over the Yankees (that’ll be eight wins in a row against the Evil Empire), the baby is fed, bathed, and sleeping peacefully, the dog is curled up contentedly beside me, and I’ve made it through another day of this cleanse. Surely, this is la pura vida.