Cleansing finish

I guess I should note somewhere that I am doing my own version of this cleanse-y thing, and I'm skipping what by all accounts is an important step: the Orange Juice day. Except that I really couldn't do an entire day of orange juice. So I'm going directly to veggie broth and later some juice. Tomorrow, since we are skiing, I'm going to make a smoothie (coconut milk, pear or apple, and kale) for the morning, and have hummus, crackers, and lean turkey, along with lots of carrot snacks and dried fruit to eat.

I have no idea how that's going to work with the sheer amount of calories burned while skiing, but I'm willing to bet I need the calories more than I need liquid if I'm doing snowsports.

This is so...interesting. By tomorrow night I plan on eating fairly normally, albeit gluten and sugar-free. (I hope.)

In other news...

I'm doing one of those super detox body cleanses. Yep. The Lemonade Master Cleanse diet. I'm doing a short version of it because I just don't have time or energy to do a lemonade fast for ten days. Nope, that's too much.

It started with a day of just vegetable (apple, carrot, beet, parsley) juice and warm veggie broth. That was tough. Then the first day of the lemonade. It's just fresh lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne, and water. The recipe that I followed was incredibly sweet and too spicy, and made me very grumpy. I was emotional and grumpy and did not want to continue. Luckily, Andy's incredibly supportive, and I stuck with it.

The cleansing comes from two sources: letting your body rest from the work of digestion, and by flushing out your system. The flush is done by drinking an entire nalgene bottle of salt water. I know. It was as awful as it sounds, and it didn't have the desired effect. Totally gross.

Day two was much, much easier. Instead of the salt water, I'm bailing and just drinking senna leaf tea (a mild laxative). I altered the recipe for the lemonade to make it both less spicy and less sweet. I remembered to drink more water. And I was incredibly productive.

Today is Day Three, and I've gotten a lot of work and chores done. I'm vaguely hungry, but it's nothing like I thought it would be. I'm not running or cycling right now, but that's ok.

Tomorrow I get to do the veggie broth and juice again, and eventually some plain crackers! Whoopee!

So why am I bothering to go through all this? Well, after the CT scan (mega radiation) and all the drugs in my body, I felt like I really needed to give it a good cleaning. Add to that the stress that I've been living with for the past 9 months, and I really need to take better care of my body. No more going to bed crying. No more waking up dreading the day.

I also like the idea of eating less gluten and sugar. Now, I eat very little of either, but I could still eat less. And drink less beer. Fewer hamburgers. Not that I eat much crap, though. I read about all the things one should reduce from one's diet (processed foods, white bread, milk, soda) and I think that I don't eat much of any of that. My vice is in homemade cookies in the staff room, instant oatmeal, waffles and applesauce for breakfast, and trader joe's granola bars. (I could probably live for a few days at least on those.)

Hopefully, this experience will give me better health as well as more reason to avoid the foods that aren't good and find alternatives to granola bars for my morning snack. Who knows?

Did I mention I get broth tomorrow? Hooray!

Snow!

It's really snowing in Portland. Sure, it's more like a dusting, and it's supposed to warm up soon, but for now, just for now, I can look out my window into a flurry of gray and white, white tipped trees, and dream of mountains.

Vacation

Vacation! At last. Finally. Since September 2 (yep, two days after the wedding) I feel like I've been going incredibly hard, except for those two months of swine flu, when I just thought I was going to die. But it finally arrived.

It being the last week, then the last day before the winter break. The kids were progressively more and more awful and excitable. I still had math-MATH!-to teach. Every day I would fall into my bed at the late hour of 8:40 pm and sleep until 5:30, and then get up and do it all over again. I was trying to ride, and trying to stay sane, and trying to be a good teacher, and a good person. I think I did ok.

I managed to be social a few times with school people. I went out on a beautiful boat on the Columbia River with a couple of Educational Assistants from the school and their husbands. I went to the Grant High School Performing Arts Winter Gala with my mentor and her friend/awesome substitute, Paula. There was massacring of the Nutcracker Suite and ackward teens and even some gorgeous singing. I also managed to make it to the staff party. Then, we left.

I'm currently a mile or two north of Klamath, CA, in the Redwood country. Tomorrow we are going to Endor. (Jedidiah State Park-whooee!)

Stay tuned for gigantic redwoods and elk.

I always wanted to be an auntie

Tia Elicia and Kaylah Erin Brandon

Growing up, I was not really one of those girls who dreamed of motherhood. The idea of babies and family making seemed to me, if not completely vile, then certainly unreasonably difficult and unrewarding.

I understand that other people don't feel this way. That is fantastic. Smart people make smart babies, and for folks who want families, all I can say is more power to them. It's not my thing.

However, at some point I got the idea into my head that I'd make a great aunt. You know, the one with the funky glasses (check) and the crazy lifestyle (check), and lets you have wine with dinner and tells you stories prefaced with "I know your mom wouldn't want you to hear this story, but once we were..." Cool, maybe a little embarrassing (especially when you have to explain that the lady crying at your 5th grade graduation isn't actually related to you), and part of the fabric of your family.

It's hard to be an auntie when you're an only child. (And I have to confess, it never in a million years occurred to me that I might marry and thus get a niece or nephew. Honestly. That really wasn't in my reality either.)

I did get married, and I got a lovely little niece. I don't know her at all. I hope that changes. And then, in August of 2008, my best friend Kelly had a baby named Kaylah Erin.

Kel was the first of my closest girlfriends to get married. She is the only friend (who isn't one of my bikey girlfriends) to come bike tour with me. She has been my friend and confidante for seventeen years. We met because of college, and an acting class, and a borrowed tape of some rare Doors. We shared a love of Jim Morrison (c'mon, we were 16) and Pink Floyd. Her family kindly took me in when it was too far for me to fly home for holidays. I learned about New Jersey (a place that, growing up in western Colorado, only existed in books). I went to NYC for the first time with Kel. And so on. Years and years of letters and stories and visits and more letters. Kelly is the one who drove to Portland to pack me up when I left Voldemort's house. Kelly party hopped Thanksgivings with me one year, and hosted me the next. I spent one memorable Christmas with her, her boyfriend (now husband), and his family. I could go on and on.

Kelly and Pat, her husband, had a baby. Pat is a sailor. More accurately, he is an officer on one of the ferry boats that go to Alaska. He is gone much of the time. Kelly is more or less a single mom, at least with the the schedule they have now. And it's tough. Harder than I ever imagined.

But for just one short weekend, I got to be Tia (that's spanish for Aunt, gringo), and play with Kaylah and cook for Kelly and shower both of them with so much love and affection that I thought my heart might burst from joy. We stayed up late whispering the way that girlfriends do, and took turns playing with Kaylah, and I cooked and cooked and fed them both as best I could.

Kaylah learned to call me Tia (sounds more like Cha! coming from her). She saw my tattooed legs and made the sign for heart. She ran up to me and hugged me a few times. It was amazing.

So here's my chance to be the auntie that I've always wanted to be. Thanks Kel. Thanks for letting me continue to be part of your family, even with husbands and babies and different lives. I am so incredibly lucky to have a friend like you.