Liquid Fast:I'm doooooooiinnnnggggg it!

One thing I can readily admit, I have zero willpower when it comes to trying new foods. That sounds like a good thing, that sounds like I will happily stuff new flavors and concoctions into my mouth without judgement or bias (it's true, I will). That sounds like I was the perfect toddler (it's true, I was). Broccoli? Sure! Beets? Sure! Weird meat dishes? Sure!

But it's not a good thing 100% of the time because 100% of the time I want to experience new restaurants and new drinks. Baked pork belly. Yummy, oozing cheese. Frothy brews. I'm sort of proud of my iron clad stomach but I'm sort of not proud that I seem to lack the letters "N" and "O" in my alphabet soup. Such self-indulgent behavior is not always (re: usually not) for the best.

On the reverse of this, I can also admit that I'm somewhat (some might say overly zealous) about nutrition, learning about health foods, eating healthily, etc.... I think in an attempt to conquer my alter ego: Girl Who Will Eat Bacon All Day. Tim is going to make a shirt that says "Bacon' friends is easy" [more on that later]. But do you get it? Do you understand that I'm two foodies living in one body?! Half of the time I'm all, "yay kale chips!" and the other half of the time I kill the person who says that and scream "yay anything with copious amounts of butter and fat!" instead. Lots of times I even skip the sustenance all together and just lustfully slur "alcohooooollll!"

So now you get it, over eating, over counting calories, over exercising, over analyzing every morsel I drop into my mouth--all of this over thinking and over indulging and over compensating has made me dizzy. Which leads me to today, the day I decided to try my own take on a "liquid, juice-if-you-will" fast. One last thing to admit, I have tried the master cleanse fast in the past and do you know how that went down? Basically I drank something that looked like pond water all day, laid in bed, and then got so hungry I stuffed my face with (probably bacon).

After eating ice cream, red vines, mini corn dogs and a beer yesterday--I decided today was the day to kick the fat train in the caboose. I wanted to give my body some time to detox and slow down the digestion process. I wanted to feel lighter and healthier. I also wanted to reacquaint myself with self-control and to explore how I would feel with minimal sugars and processed foods. So, in between red vines and meeting my girlfriends for mini corn dogs and beer last night I drove to Trader Joe's and stocked up on liquids for today. I knew that only water or only tea would not work for me (see above story about failing miserably at the master cleanse) so I bought sensible things I like that I could consume in small amounts in addition to water and tea. So far my day has gone as follows:

Obviously eating mini corn dogs with some of my best gal pals

Morning

1 cup of green tea, a handful of almonds, 1 cup of almond milk, 1 bottle of sparkling water

**The morning was great, I felt light and in control. I did not feel hunger pangs.

Mid Afternoon

2 servings of carrot juice, plain water

**I continued to feel awesome and proud until an hour after downing the carrot juice, whence I did not feel awesome but more like I was going to throw everything up. After a trip to the bathroom to put my head between my knees, I felt awesome again.

Late Afternoon

1 cup of tomato juice, more plain water

**Still feel awesome and feel even more proud after my boss tried to tempt me with chocolates and cookies to which I declined repeatedly.

Dinner

**Remains a mystery because I'm not sure if I will eat a salad or continue with the liquid....I will update more later.

As a final note, I realize that drinking a few healthy things for a day does not make me Mother Theressa or Gwyneth Paltrow. But, I do feel successful in that even with my crazy "get up for work at 4 a.m." schedule and 12 hour days, I was able to concentrate on what was important to me and to make myself feel better.


Update: I ate a salad and lots of cherries for dinner. I missed drinking coffee the most :(

The weed killer is killing me:

This morning at work I was talking to a co-worker in the shop and I thought "hmmm, his cologne smells kind of sickeningly sweet." A few minutes later my boss yelled down the hall, "do you guys smell that?!?"

Mental thought: Is said co-worker's cologne that strong??

Fast forward 2 seconds--we all spy out the front window an industrial sized vat of weed killer being sprayed all over the street in front of our building.

Fast forward 2 more seconds--the quiet grip of nausea begins to take hold and soon all 50 employees are headache-y and vom-y.

Conclusion--I'm slowly dying and nobody at work seems to be leaving so I guess I'll just die.

Artistic rendering of my life right now

Hey, this is what's been happening!

Hey remember when I said one of my travel dreams was to visit Paris (you're welcome for wiki linking you--now you can read tiny text for hours about one topic) this year? Well I'm doing it, me and my best friend booked a flight to Paris for late July. I see lots of red lipstick and "oui oui" in my near future.

This is said best friend with great bangs in the middle

Hey remember when I said I was really happy because I met somebody that I love, who makes me laugh and feel special? Well I am. He's the best. Really, the best.

This is just a little something boyfriend and I whipped up

This is boyfriend's roomate's dog, confusing? Sitting (where he is not supposed to be) on the couch

Just a couple of dudes (Maru and boyfriend) in pajamas

This is boyfriend and I (sitting where we are allowed to) on the couch

This is a good Memorial Day weekend (re: 4 day weekend for me because I don't work Fridays). Lots of dranks and hanging with friends. Also Sunday night Tim and I have a rezzie at Searsucker for Arizona Restaurant Week (I plan on wearing a dress with lots of room because I also plan on eating my weight in bacon and dessert). 

Until next time.....

On Anxiety:

Growing up I always loved the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's (and still do). Audrey Hepburn is the epitome of class and sophistication and she has such a lovely nature. But more than that I found it comforting when her character talked about getting "the mean reds." The mean reds sounded like some far off sadness that you just couldn't put your finger on. Like something that swept over you every once and a while for no real reason at all. I thought I had the mean reds too. When I was younger the mean reds manifested as some sort of angst or restlessness and into my early 20's they felt like tiny bouts of depression. But I'm learning as of recently that what I always thought of as some mysterious gloominess that hung around every so often is not really sadness at all but more likely a bit of anxiety. It sounds strange but I'm happy to be discovering this because it feels tangible, like something I can work on. I think it will be important to work on letting perfection go, letting my worrisome nature subside. For some reason I carry a strong sense of obligation to others and I would like to work on managing my expectations and my obligations.

Oh Audrey!

Lately:

I have not written in here in sometime. I was on a streak of overloading this poor blog with with weepy, womanly feelings but lately I feel very protective of my emotions. Like I want to keep them inside of a little nest, bound together with old bits of twine, held tightly together deep under my sternum. Not because I don't feel feelings anymore, but because for some reason I want to keep what is mine, mine. Just for now. Probably in a few months I will resume pithy dribble. Back to regularly scheduled programming.

Ok there is one thing that is mine but that is so nice it should also be shared with the world, maybe. That thing is love. And it's warm and gooey, like diving into a bowl of your grandma's best macaroni and cheese and eating your way back out again. It makes you feel content and satisfied and happy and small. Like you would do anything for your love. Like you would struggle a little in the beginning because in the end it will be worth it. It's definitely worth it.

Just watchin' some 3D flick about dinosaurs...Jurassic Park!

I Love Him:

Love:

Keeping a record of your life that you can look back on later means that you punctuate each entry with good and bad. Life is good and life is bad and sometimes it's neither, sometimes it just is. It's easy to write about the sad, the melancholy because that's what rolls off the tongue best. What's not as easy is to write about the good stuff, the happy stuff, that stuff that makes your heart burst because the whole time you are writing you are worried that when you finish your sentence the happy will be gone, it will have disappeared just as quickly as it came.

But this time I'm not so worried, this time I'm not so concerned about the happy going away because this time I don't think it's going to go away. The thing that's making me most happy in this very moment is this person that I met, this person that I fell in love with. This person is witty and kind and says things like "I love you" and means it. This person makes me laugh every day.

On Being Young:

The beauty of being young doesn't stem from irresponsibility or from looking the other way, turning the other cheek. The beauty doesn't come from carelessness but mindfulness. It comes from the appreciation of the random. It comes in dark, smokey rooms with your best friend. It comes on foggy, downtown streets at night. It comes through the sound of hipsters in drag wearing Lolita sunglasses playing sad surf music. It comes when the ceiling is lit up like a high school prom. The beauty is the 'being lose on the world' part, the 'liking everything' part, the whole 'world is my oyster' part.

Dear You:

Dear You,

Yesterday was your birthday, if you are reading this and yesterday was your birthday then you know who you are. I don't even know if you read this. I won't use your name because I know you don't like big, showy, public gestures. Do you remember your birthday, years ago in Albuquerque, sitting on that snowy stoop outside your mom's house--drunk as a skunk. Or my 21st birthday, you had to pick me up from Danielle's house and I forced you to buy me jewelry because I thought that's what adults gave each other for presents. Do you remember when you picked me up from the train station in Rome and we hadn't seen each other in months and you felt like a stranger but I loved you anyway. Those silly little poems I wrote for you--I meant them. Those years filled with fighting or cooking or laying in bed or walking to class or sitting on trains, I loved them too. Even though it didn't work out for us, in 6 years not a day has gone by that I don't think of you in some way. And rather than write about a new year or resolutions I thought it was better to let you know that you are a constant. Whatever strange ups and downs our friendship seems to take, I will always care for you.

Christmas Cookies with Meme 26 Years In the Making:

“These need to be thinner,” my Meme would scold as she hovered over us little girls while we rolled out batch after batch of sugar cookie dough. This dough, this special concoction that had been passed down from generation to generation needed to be paper thin as we gently pushed the old, metal cookie cutters into the yellowy batter. “My little grandma liked them thin” our very own little Meme would tell us. Tradition meant homemade frosting and thin cookies. Almost the best part about making cookies with Meme was not making cookies but the ritual of sneaking into her hall bathroom closet to pick out which apron we wanted to wear all day, aprons covered in flour and powdered sugar and sprinkles. After hours of baking we’d become tired and carless and our paper thin cookies would become thicker and thicker in an effort to do less work. Meme would catch on every time, “girls, look at this,” she’d exclaim. “These are too thick!” I was always amazed that my miniature grandma could stand for hours at her sink mixing frosting and kneading dough without complaining, without sitting down.

Life is altered so much from year to year, feelings are fleeting, relationships are fleeting. Sometimes it seems like almost nothing sticks. But one thing that never changes is baking cookies with Meme every December. For the past 26 years we have baked our way through doubled and quadrupled batches of dough, and that is comforting. Now when we bake cookies she has to do a little less standing and a little more sitting but that’s ok because we are a little less messy and we roll the dough a little thinner.

Turkey Meatballs With Asparagus and Parmesan:

Tonight I made this delicious dish--the recipe can be found over at Ambitious Kitchen.

To Land Where?:

I thought this picture was funny--me within me. But then I looked at it longer and I realized it explains how I feel. Me looking at myself looking at myself looking at myself for forever, for infinity. Am I supposed to stay in the dessert? Am I meant to keep searching for happiness here or am I meant to land some place far away? I always had these dreams of living in great cities. I saw a psychic and she didn't help me, she told me I wasn't meant to live around others but rather in nature. Is that true? If I sit in the bathtub for a million years will the answer come to me?

An Open Love Letter to My Mother:

If I were fluent in fifty languages, I would still be lacking in words to describe how wonderful my mother is. This one is for you mamma.


Dear Miss,

 The phrase I dreaded hearing most growing up was we’ll see. Can I have this? Can I do that? Can we go here? Can she come over? Can I stay up late? So many questions would run through my little brain and the answer was always the same, we’ll see. That one tiny contraction contained everything in the world-- promise, hope, fear, longing, expectation, denial, anger, patience. We’ll see meant I never knew what would happen, something good or something bad or nothing at all. I was on the edge of my seat for 18 years. Back then I thought you used we’ll see as a shield or a stick, something to keep my constant nagging at bay. Back then we’ll see was this elusive answer that hung in the air and kept me guessing. Back then I hated we’ll see.

I have never been a patient person and waiting to see if something would pan out in my favor felt like you were asking me to paint a house and watch it dry or count the sand in an hour glass grain by grain. It felt impossible. I was stubborn, and feisty, and I pushed for answers, pushed for everything. At my best I was always pining for something and at my worst I was a child mule refusing to budge and demanding a “yes” even if the answer was “no.”

But somehow over the years I grew up, and I went from 6 to 26. And somehow over the years I began to see that you weren’t using we’ll see as a shield but rather as a tool. You were a crafty little mother teaching me patience all along. Sometimes life punches you in the stomach, it knocks the wind right out of your lungs. It makes your heart hard and your head hurt. During these times when I feel like I can’t breathe I think to myself, “what would my mother do?” and the same answer comes to me every time, just like when I was little—to be patient, to wait and see.

 You’ve taught me to let the universe unfold in front of my eyes, to let things happen as they will, to allow the beauty and the anticipation of we’ll see to linger.

I love you Miss

 xoxo

One Should Always Indulge:

Life should be lived in moderation. A little good, a little bad. Except where wine and laughs are concerned, then one should always indulge.

When I am a Mom:

That sentence is funny to write, when I am a mom. It's funny to use the word when and not if. It's funny because when I was 19 and taking a women's literature class I thought I didn't want children. I thought having babies meant that you didn't love yourself and you didn't love adventure. I remember that professor, Judy I think was her name, she would stand in front of all of us with her Indian jewelry and deep red hair, she would always start a sentence with a finger over her lip and the other hand clutching a strand of hair away from her face, just holding it there out to the side like some sort of nervous habit. Don't all women want a room of one's own? What do you think the author is trying to convey with that wording? Women end sentences with a question mark because they are scared to make declarative statements. I thought she was stunning, old and stunning. I think she had children though.

Somehow I went from wanting a room of my own like Virginia Woolf to a room for babies. What is that called, a nursery? That sounds so old fashioned, a nursery. Not now of course, right this minute I want a room dedicated to winter boots. But someday I'll want a room for babies.

I was hiking South Mountain this afternoon and as I was climbing down I saw this dumpy looking kid off to the side of the trail. He had a tear stained face and he was yelling to his mom for her to come back. He said, "something startled me again." I don't know what could have scared him, an empty water bottle, a butterfly? I didn't, but I wanted to punch him in the stomach hard. I wanted to give him something to be startled about. In that instant I knew exactly the kind of mom I want to be someday. I want to raise kids who are not startled, I want to raise kids who will try squid but also like their chocolate milk. When I am a mom I hope I remember that pudgy boy on the mountain and encourage my kids to keep going, even when something startles them.

Movie Review: The Loneliest Planet

It's not often that I write about a book or movie. I would rather wax poetic for hours with a friend in person about my favorite author or why a certain sentence sounds so pretty. When it comes to movies I'm no good at judging anything--mostly because I like it all. I like to be entertained. I like to cry, I like to laugh, I like to sit in the dark and just take it all in. As I'm sitting here I honestly cannot think of one movie that I hate. I don't love them all, but I certainly don't dislike them either. Paramount should pay me to write movie reviews, they would all contain flowery language and praise for mildly engaging dialogue or pithy scenery.

One of the only things I've ever written about a book can be seen here.

I did take myself to the movies last night to see something I had been dying to catch for a while; The Loneliest Planet starring Gael Garcia Bernal. It looked so intriguing, a couple traveling through the mountains of Georgia, backpacking really, and discovering dark things about their relationship that would have remained dormant had the stresses of travel not unearthed them. [Edit: Also I would watch Gael Garcia Bernal in a brown paper bag, swoon]. So the movie itself was not great--but as you know I didn't hate it. Less for the acting and more for the actual story, it got me thinking. Thinking about travel and about varying personalities and about why when we see new places does it bring out the worst in us sometimes. Why do we let a missed train or an underwhelming dinner or heavy luggage turn us into characters we don't recognize? Is it because each in our own way, in our own minds, we have some mental prediction of the way a situation is meant to play out, and when the universe intervenes and our plans are foiled we become resentful? Is travel just a tiny microcosm of real life? We each have an idea of the path we are supposed to be on, and when that path becomes crooked or rocky that idea vanishes, it blows away with the wind and we become angry.

I am certainly guilty of feisty behavior, stubborn behavior. What I've learned recently though, is that if you are patient and you stop trying to control a situation or enforce pre-conceived stipulations, the universe will give you exactly what you need at exactly the right time.

The Desert is a Charming Place:

Desert, deserted landscape

my sanctuary, my prison,

my house within

the confines of the valley walls,

the space between the molecules

of dust and sand; dry land.

The place where a bloom

is new and rare like a love

out of reach,

reaching within, keeping you in,

inside the petal, inside the forever.

Wild Geese

I keep this poem on my refrigerator door because sometimes when you are having a bad day, it is nice to be reminded that you do not have to walk on your knees and you do not have to repent--you merely need to let the soft animal of your body love what it wants to.

 

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~ Mary Oliver ~

The Prettiest Thing Is The Dinner Table After a Dinner Party

When the last glass is poured and the last napkin thrown there you are, alone, at the center of the table, whether you truly are or not it feels like the world has turned in on itself and you are there looking out from behind a bottle of amber liquid that makes your head spin. When the last candle drowns itself in a teaspoon of wax so that the black stick stands alone, smoking lightly where the fire used to be. When the dishes pile up, shinning white on white, night on light. Perfect is nice but the beauty is better where wine is smudged into the wood and clam sauce dribbles down your chin and the music lets you in. 

What It Feels Like to Be a Woman:

So let's talk about what it feels like to be a woman in today's world. It's confusing. Let's talk about what it feels like to be a woman who is on the fence in life. On the fence between wanting a man to come and sweep her off her feet but also wanting to pack it all in and travel on her own. On the fence between wanting to be a caretaker and wanting to be cared for. On the fence between wanting to pursue her passions but recognizing that her bills won't pay themselves. Let's talk about that disconnect between being assertive and being submissive. Which is it? Or how confidence comes in waves--it ebbs and flows. To be a woman is a powerful thing. A man couldn't do it. To walk around with the complexity of emotions that we carry every moment of every day and still have the strength to type an email or warm up a cup of coffee--we are like tiny ants carrying shredded pieces of leaves and it looks easy but the leaves weigh a million pounds and they are heavy but we do it because we are strong.

I turned another year older and with that year came clarity, and patience, and balance. It felt before like I was maybe floating a little in the air, maybe a breeze would pick me up and put me someplace else for a while. But the universe gave me gravity and some extra pounds and now it feels like I am tethered to the world--to do what and to say what, I don't know. But at least I'm here now, I'm not going anywhere.