Lemonade Cleanse, Day 5

So I’m over the hump, in terms of hunger and, hopefully, irritability.  Days 3 and 4 are the hardest–I felt that way last year and this year reaffirmed it.  Climbing hills is a struggle.  No amazing sense of smell just yet.  But I’ve eaten fewer lemons than I thought: three every day except for yesterday’s four.

The AM salt water flush is nasty if you don’t drink it quickly.  The colder it gets, the more it’s like swallowing surf in the ocean.  The laxative tea (I use Smooth Move) tastes better than most medicinal teas and this year I haven’t awoken at 5:30 with cramps; it’s more like 7:30 with simply an urgent need to poop.

And poop I do!  The entire cleanse is basically a machine designed to get you to poop frequently and productively without introducing any new solids into your system–except lemon seeds, which I swallow because I’m convinced that seeds of all kinds are good for you.

I did think, both last year and this year, something along the lines of “Well, since I’m not eating or drinking, I won’t be spending any money!”  But it adds up, a little.  Two weeks of four lemons a day is 56.  I got them four to a lb. at the farmer’s market, so that’s $14.  The organic Grade B maple syrup is $17 $7.99 for twelve oz. at Trader Joe’s, and it looks like I might be able to stretch a jar out to a week (I halve the prescribed amount of syrup because I want to purge as much fat as possible–if only to replace it with new fat–and it’s not causing me any agony to do so).  Unless you live in Vermont, where I just assume there is a state-subsidized program for free syrup, you’re going to shell out that much.

The tea was $5 and lasts the entire time, as was the jar of cayenne pepper.  I already had sea salt and I honestly don’t know what that costs.  $5?  You need a bottle graded with amounts on the side so you can see how much you’re filling it up, and you need a Brita.  I’m going to buy probiotics this year, so I don’t experience periodic, um, flatulence.  They can be expensive, but I got sixty for $5 that were the second-highest of the four available grades (also at Trader Joe’s).

Ironically, the one thing I don’t currently have is a scale.  It’s psychologically fulfilling to see your weight drop almost every day, sometimes by 2lbs.  I was pretty erratic last year, though, and this year I just have to judge my by shrinking belly.

Assuming you have those things, the entire cleanse costs $55, plus the probiotics.  Say $100 $75 max, and I’m doing it for $90 $60.  That’s a nice meal, and less than what you would probably spend on food in a week anyway, unless you’re totally broke.  So you are saving money in addition to expurgating the previous year’s toxins out of your system.  You save lots more by not going out or doing anything social whatsoever because everything revolves around food and drink.  I read a lot and I’ve already watched 14 movies in January.

It’s as amazing as it is gross to see your feces days after you last ate something.  The salt water flush comes out of you as if your butt were forcibly spitting, and it’s yellow-brown with mucusy strands of poo.  It’s like what I imagine cholera to be, only controlled.  Nasty, but at least it’s not inside you anymore.  Already I feel my breathing passages opening up in a weird way–not that they were stuffy to begin with–as the body expels mucus.

One of the last taboos is a frank discussion of defecation, when it’s actually the act of eating that’s pretty gross.  Eliminating poison is far better than consuming it.  Not that I’m not looking forward to In-N-Out…

Where It Was At

I started reading Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon, which opens during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and it made me think of where I would have wanted to be living–if I were some sort of immortal being–from that time through the end of the twentieth century. The four criteria would be witnessing history in action, a freakout arts scene, cheap cost of living and experiencing a city that has since declined during its zenith.

1892 – 1897: Chicago

1897 -1900: Paris

1900 – 1904: London

1904 – 1908: Buenos Aires

1908 – 1912: New York

1912 – 1914: Madrid

1914 – 1916: Dublin

1916 – 1918: Moscow

1918 – 1921: Beirut

1921 – 1925: Paris

1925 – 1929: Berlin

1929 – 1933: New York

1933 – 1935: Miami

1935 – 1937: Shanghai

1937 – 1938: Asmara

1938 – 1940: London

1940 – 1945: Los Angeles

1945 – 1948: New York

1948 – 1950: Istanbul

1950 – 1952: Detroit

1952 – 1955: Amsterdam

1955 – 1956: Marrakech

1956 – 1958: Paris

1958 – 1960: Havana

1961 – 1964: Rio de Janeiro

1964 – 1966: London

1967 – 1968: San Francisco/Berkeley

1968 – 1969: Paris

1969 – 1970: Mexico City

1970 – 1972: Copenhagen

1972 – 1973: Rome

1973 – 1975: Cairo

1975 – 1976: Montreal

1976 – 1984: New York

1984 – 1987: Tokyo

1987 – 1989: Manchester

1989 – 1990: Prague

1991 – 1994: Seattle

1994 – 1995: Berlin

1995 – 1999: San Francisco

1999 – 2001: London

Highly Eurocentric and biased–especially towards places I’ve actually been to–and I totally admit some of these are outright cliches (like Havana ca. 1959 or San Francisco in 1967).

And who doesn’t want to live in Australia?  But I can’t really think of a specific time when Australia was particularly off-the-hook; unlike, say, Buenos Aires, which definitely had its heyday around 1910.  I’ve never even been to Paris but I would have lived there four times.

Lemonade Cleanse

I’m doin it, baby.  I need to detox ’08 0ut of me.  (Shouldn’t have sucked all the mercury out of those dragon rolls).   No more solid food until we have a new president.

I did it last year and can confirm the rumors that it’s amazing, as long as you know what it isn’t: a weight-loss program.  I lost 14 pounds in 14 days but gained it all back within a week.  However, with the benefit of hindsight, I’ll be taking acidophilus as soon as I’m done so I can rebuild healthy intestinal flora.  That way you don’t have to eat a huge quantity of food just to absorb the normal amount of nutrients.

I did it for 12 days last January, and I had tons of energy–I found waking up at 5am because of laxative tea I drank the night before was enough sleep.  Plus your sense of smell improves dramatically, since the cleanse essentially purges the body of mucus and of course the nasal passages are a major mucus locus (eww).  While you do get an increased sensitivity to cold, and climbing several flights of stairs (or, say, a hill in San Francisco) can be taxing, it’s the shit.  You don’t experience unbearable hunger pangs, except on Day 2, which is the Wall. (I will be spending my Wall serving crab to old people at a country club.  Could get ugly).

14 days of warm, cayenne-y lemonade gets kind of monotonous but by the time you’re done everything tastes amazing.  Your caffeine and alcohol tolerances are sharply reduced, so you don’t be sucking back one red eye after another just to keep from screaming, nor will you drop $30 in a dive so easily.

It’s kind of a test of endurance.  If you can endure drinking a colonic salt water flush every morning, you can endure a lot.  (Sucking it down while it’s still hot is key; it’s like broth that way.  Otherwise, you’re just gulping the sea).  It’s like reading Pynchon or being a candidate in a primacaucus.

Resolved

Be more outrageous.

Read 50 books.

Publish Lowereastcide, the novel I’ve been writing for years now. Finish the second book.

Watch 180 movies I’ve never seen before. Watch the Wire.

Learn more about the internets. And Photoshop.  Make this blog not look like crap.

Correct people when they refer to Elliott as my partner. I know it’s meant to be polite and every hetero-Californian wants you to know they’re cool and progressive, but he’s my boyfriend, damnit.  We’re not the fucking law firm of Breeden & Kane LLP.  Boyfriend is sexier.  And it doesn’t mask the fact that butt sex constitutes the core of our relationship.  Partner-in-sodomy is acceptable.

Strongly consider a second dog. Fight the housing prejudice against larger dogs.  What is that about, anyway?  They don’t yap.  Possible names: Roberta, Prudence, Mr. Woofers, Garland, Woofgang Amadoggus Mozarf, Pickles, Gerund.

Keep jumping rope and keep upping the number of jumps daily. Maybe crunches too?

Go to Alaska or to Hawaii. I have 800 days until I’m thirty and I will get to the remaining 7 states I haven’t been to yet by then (AK, HI, LA, MS, NM, NC, SC).

More pub quizzes. More karaoke.

Happy new year, internet.  Here is a great tit to ring your LaBelle.