The Green Monster

Day three.

(Side note: one of my favorite bands, Gaelic Storm, named their third album Tree. Get it?! One, two, TREE?! Ha! Now every time I see or hear the word 'three', my head chimes, "One, two, tree!" The littlest things amuse me.)

I started the day with a spinach-watermelon-ginger-carrot-strawberry juice. It was pretty delicious, but if I'm being honest, I like the simpler combination of one fruit with one vegetable. This juice did NOT receive the HOLY MACKEREL distinction of juices.

It was a gorgeous day, so we spent most of it outside. I love watching Ester play. It is amazing to me how, even though she is not our birth daughter, I still feel this overwhelming sense of pride watching my kid. We have had her for three years; the adoption date is July 23rd. Still, it feels like she is an extension of my husband and I. I could not imagine loving her more if she was from my womb. Seriously. Anyways, she is just a really friggin' cool kid and I get geeked out watching her play with the other children in the neighborhood because she is kind, funny, fun, and engaging.

After an hour or two, I went inside and made a green juice. I made red chard-spinach-lime juice. My recent pattern has been to make my green juice around noon and take a relaxing bath while I sip my juice.

Little did I know while I took my bath, I would be joined by The Green Monster.



Holy Mother, that green juice was horrible. I don't know where I went wrong, but bless my soul, I never want to go there again. Stubbornly, I thought, "You're just not used to such powerful greens. Drink it. " That is likely true.

Again, "Drink it."

I whined at myself, "But I don't wanna."

"DRINK IT."

"Fine."

Ugh. I chugalugged it, and felt so nauseous. I thought it would pass, but it lingered with me for quite some time. Putting a few drops of peppermint on my tongue, I went back outside with Mp3 player in tow. I listened to the awesome that is Ray LaMontagne and Adele while the sun warmed and healed me. After an hour or so, I felt much, much better.

Lesson learned: it's okay to toss a juice.

My shiny, heroic husband made me a watermelon-ginger-red chard juice. He went really, really light on the chard by using only 3-4 stalks. He rocks. The juice was phenomenal, and the ginger helped soothe any remaining protests my stomach had to make.

Then, it was time for dinner. As a family, we are relatively informal during the day when we eat. If it's sunny, we sit outside and eat our breakfast. For me, it's juice. The kids are digging waffles right now, but Ester usually will eat fruit or cereal. Lunch is whatever we want, whenever we want. Supper, though, is our important meal.

The television goes off. We sit together. We talk. We enjoy.

Seriously, it's likely my favorite time of the day. I don't quite know how to handle suppertime right now. So far, I've been able to avoid it. On the 3rd, we were at the races, so the kids at crappy racetrack food. On the 4th, we were at my aunt's house. Last night, though, we mutually agreed that it was time to make my favorite meal.

Veggie Soft Tacos. Summer squash. Carrots. Red peppers. Onions. Mushrooms. All sauteed. In EVOO. Refried black beans. Fresh Guacamole. Fresh Tomatoes. All wrapped up in soft taco goodness. Oh. My. God. I love. This.

The smells, the memories - I almost broke. I wasn't hungry at all and, logically, I realized it. Still, I wanted to wrap all that yummy in a soft blanket of mmmgood and shove it in my mouth. I had intended to sit with the family, but I remained bolted to the couch. I was certain if I sat at the table, I would crumple into a mess of desperation and eat one of those tacos.

The meal itself is not bad, but the eating of it would have been. My digestive system is going into rest and glutting on that amount of solids would have been a horrible shock. While I am only planning on doing a ten day fast, it will take an additional four or five days to slowly ease my tummy-tum awake. Your digestive system needs to hit the snooze button about 409649 times before it is fully awake after a fast.

I withstood gobbling tacos. Go me!

In accordance with the rules of our house, Jeremy left the dishes for me. Yanno, one person cooks, the other person cleans kind of thing. I take away his rockstar status until homeboy starts cleaning my juicer after I 'cook' for myself. Mutter.

The night went well, and sleep wasn't so elusive.

All in all, day tree (I crack myself up) was a success. I learned a lot. My emotions were relatively stable. Day four, it's on.

Like Donkey Kong.

Heck yeah.