Another thing I'm totally going to do? This. When the time is right, of course.

My old journals

This: http://jezebel.com/5327399/to-do-send-us-a-page-from-your-old-diaries

is something I'm totally gonna do. But not on Jezebel, no. I think I'll do it here. If I can find that one old diary with the boy in the rowboat on the cover, the one with the broken lock, the one that (still!) smells like candy. Or if I can find the journal where Holly went through and commented with things like "Curtis is so cute!" or "Danielle isn't a good friend to you, Moon-d". Those were awesome.

Also: I'm sitting here drinking black coffee and eating a pink, vegan cupcake. Went to the gym and worked out all my stress. Today is a good day.

Yes! I'm done blogging about the cleanse, and can get back to my self-indulgent fantasies that people actually read this blog! :)
So the next problem in my life is this: job search. It is going terribly. I've applied to 9 jobs in 3 months - 6 of those applications were sent out last week - because I can't find any job I WANT, you know what I mean? I've been offered my old job back, if I want it, in September. But I DON'T want it. It's boring and it doesn't pay well and it's not helping me reach my career goals. I have the luxury of taking my time finding a job, thank god, so I haven't had to apply for any retail positions yet. But I'm sick of being in this apartment, in front of this computer, looking for an ad that excites me. Maybe I should be a hotel night auditor, or a part-time office administrator, or... ANYthing, just to get out of the house. Maybe I should deliver pizza or something. Because I'm going crazy in this apartment, watching the same reruns on TV, doing the same daily quests in World of Warcraft, writing the same stupid shit on this blog, having the same conversations with H. over and over again.
Today was a "crying" day, sparked by my weighing myself right after dinner (never a good idea) and the start of a new reality show called The Fatchelor. Oh, no, I'm sorry, it's called More To Love. Reviewers just like to call it that other name because, you know, everyone on the show is fat. And because they're fat, they're worthy of punchlines. Take this review from Salon:

"Fox's new reality show More to Love might as well be called The Fatchelor: It's an excruciatingly typical dating competition with the single twist that both the catch of the day and the women competing for his attention are all larger than average. With weight as the show's central focus, the editing plays to as many fat stereotypes as possible: In the first episode, which airs Tuesday night, we get women weeping about their dateless pasts, one unironic use of the phrase "big-boned," a debate on the merits of Spanx and, of course, umpteen conversations about food — one of which includes the fatchelor flirtatiously declaring, "I like anything thick and juicy." (And cheesy, apparently.) The show's marketing and promotion campaigns claim a message of empowerment, but for the larger romantics among us, More to Love does little to dispel the myth that fat people's lives are built around dessert and desperation."

Dessert and desperation? Really? Because I'm fat, and I hardly ever eat dessert. And I'm definitely not desperate.
In fact, getting married is what made me fat in the first place yo. I was a nice, healthy weight (as I've said before) until H. and his sweet tooth moved in. Except that according to the rules of this TV show, my healthy weight (a weight which didn't seem to turn ANY guys off, let me assure you) is still considered "fat".
This, dear readers, is why I stopped watching More To Love. I'd intended to watch the whole thing, write it up for you (since I'm sure none of my readers are "fat", and therefore didn't watch it... because, you know, the only people who'd watch a fat dating show are fat people. And those who make fun of fat people.), and offer some "I've been there" insight. But I had to turn it off, because the... ugggh... the idea that a woman who weighs 170lbs, 5lbs over a "normal" BMI, is obese... no. I'm sorry, readers, it bugged me. And why are all the women on the show at least 50lbs less than the man? And WHY, WHY, WHY did they have to POST THE WOMEN'S WEIGHTS next to their names?
Why does their weight matter? It's not a weight-loss show, it's a dating show. They're not being judged on how much they lose, they're being judged on their ability to "find true love". Does their weight come into the "true love" equation at all? I mean, I'm done with this stuff... I've found my guy, I'm happily married, and truth be told I haven't been single since I was 19. I've never had to "date", really. But if this is what it's like to date, well... I guess I'd be a spinster, because I couldn't handle the constant self-hate. I have enough self-hate as it is.
I wanted to watch this show and support my big-boned sisters, you know? But I couldn't handle the way they... they seemed to ooze desperation and nervousness, as though they really thought this guy was their only shot at happiness. THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW HIM. He could be a secret date-rapist or a wife beater or a racist or a Republican. I'm not saying he IS, I'm just saying he COULD be. They don't know, and yet they're willing to humiliate themselves, globally, to win his affections. It's ridiculous.
Even more ridiculous is that this is how skinny people see us. They think we're sad and desperate and if we just lost the weight, the world would be a better place. No, no it wouldn't. Insecurity doesn't go away just because you lose some weight. Insecurity comes from a much deeper place. It comes from our perceptions of the world. It comes from knowing where we stand in a group dynamic. It comes from knowing how we're being judged. If you've been fat, you know how it feels to be judged like that. Even if you lose the weight, I'm sure that self-consciousness stays with you.
On Sunday they showed that episode of Family Guy where Lois gains a bunch of weight. Peter tells her that he's not fat, "only fat WOMEN are fat." Like most of Family Guy, it's a joke that hits a bit too close to home. They didn't post the guy's measurements every time he was on-screen, like they did to the women. Did they? Like I said, I only watched the first few minutes.
Anyways, my point is this. I'm not down with More To Love. I was hoping the show would be... well, it's too much to hope that it would be empowering, but I at least thought it would be humanizing. Instead, like always, fat people are treated like cattle.
Maybe I should start writing about True Blood? That's what we watched instead...

Cleanse Day 4 and 5: Nothing Much Changed

So I have this problem with weekends. The problem is, you see, H is home, and it's his time to sit in front of the computer. So even though I'm pretty much saying this to and for myself, I'd like to apologize for getting so behind in the blogging.
But there's another reason for that. I don't have much to report.
Day 4 of the cleanse, I tried again to get some exercise. I managed to do 30 minutes on the exercise bike, but then I felt pretty weak. Nuts and grains just weren't giving me the calcium I needed, and by dinner time, the faint feeling had turned into a full-on headache. I was a real bitch by the time H. got home, I'm sorry to say. I picked on every little thing. But he's a good guy, and instead of getting mad or defensive he sat down, put his arms around me, and asked what was wrong. I said "fuck it, let's have spaghetti for dinner."
Because, as those of you who know me are aware, spaghetti makes all my problems disappear. Seriously. Pasta is my #1 comfort food.
I stuck to the cleanse as much as I could, though: the sauce was all fresh vegetables, a little bit of olive oil, no canned tomatoes. The pasta was whole wheat, and I didn't put any cheese on top. But I still broke the cleanse, and for that I felt bad.
H. came home with alcohol, too: a case of beer and a bottle of port wine. He was so excited to have port in the house, saying it's what "sophisticated people" drink after dinner. Needless to say, I'd never tried it. And I'm proud to say I didn't try it that night, either. I could give myself a break on the whole wheat pasta, but if I'd had some alcohol I'd have to declare defeat.
The next day, day 5, I pretty much gave up. Things don't "keep" very well in our fridge, so if we want fresh things, we have to buy them right away. I was so sick of going to the grocery store. I think, in the 5 days of the cleanse, we'd spent almost $100 on fruits and vegetables!
So like I said, I gave up. For breakfast I had a bowl of Frosted Flakes and a cup of coffee. Oh coffee, I'd missed you so much! The sweet, full, nutty flavour! The scent, so inviting, like meeting a long-lost friend on the street, and they give you a big hug and tell you you look great....


So, after (close to) 5 days of cleansing, what have I observed?

• After not having sugar for a few days, a bowl of cereal hit me like a ton of bricks. I was a little kid again, running and jumping and singing.... impossible to calm down until I crashed on the couch and fell asleep.
  
• I have dry skin, and before the cleanse, the skin on my palms was peeling. After the cleanse, all my dead skin is gone.
  
• I also have dark circles under my eyes, and after the cleanse, they're pretty much gone too.
  
• The last time I saw my mom, which was a few days before the cleanse, she said I looked a bit "puffy", like I was retaining water. After the cleanse, I can see what she meant. My face and body, even though I didn't lose much weight, feel thinner. Flatter, maybe.
  
• I really like dairy, but I don't need it to survive. Cheese should not be my go-to food.
  
• But was any of this because of my diet, or because I was drinking so much water? I'm inclined to believe it was the water.
  

I'm not necessarily a "strong" person, but I couldn't stand feeling as weak as I did. So I think in the future, instead of dieting, I'm going to incorporate more fresh fruit and vegetables into my diet. I'm also going to make sure I stay hydrated, and make more of an effort to cook fresh foods for H. and myself. Tonight I'm making a big batch of pasta sauce. Last night we had salmon, corn on the cob, and fresh carrots. H. has commented that he really enjoys the "home-cooked meals", and I do too. It's not as hard to cook fresh, healthy, satisfying meals as I thought it was.
Now if only we had a dishwasher, my life would be perfect.

Cleanse: Day 3 *yawn*

I'm tired, and really have no mental energy for this. So I'm not even going to try and string complete sentences together. Here's what happened on Day 3:
Once again, I didn't eat until 1pm. Don't know why I'm doing that, it just seems to happen. Then I made myself a big salad, with the rest of the leftover baby potatoes, some raspberries from my mom's garden, greens, walnuts, and a homemade vinagrette. Very good, although I probably should have cut the potatoes into smaller pieces.
I spent most of the day in front of the computer, writing yesterday's blog and playing WoW. I just... didn't want to do anything. After the cleaning spree of the day before, I guess I was tired. I did perk up a little after taking the multivitamin - apparently I should read labels, because the vitamin I'm taking is chock-full of green tea extract. At least I'm getting SOME caffeine, I guess.
I felt really dirty. Even after a long shower and a good scrub, I felt... I don't know. Greasy, I guess. I get the occasional zit, one here or there, you know what I mean? Yesterday I had three new ones on my chin. That's very strange. Is this the "toxins" trying to get out of my body? I don't know.
When H. got home from work, he immediately went to the cupboard above the fridge - the one where I'm hiding all the tempting foods - and took out a bag of chips. He snacked on those while I cooked dinner - a big veggie stir-fry, with tofu marinated in garlic, ginger and soy sauce. The websites said garlic and ginger are really good cleansing foods so I used lots of them... 6 or 7 cloves of garlic, and a whole ginger root (peeled, of course). I thought it was really good - at least it wasn't bland! - but H. didn't seem too fond of it.
So after dinner we went to the grocery store. I bought strawberries and grapes. H. bought chocolate, gummy bears, and cereal. He had so much trouble picking out cereal. I said to him, "you should get the cereal you loved most when you were a kid." Why did I say that? Because I knew it would be something loaded with sugar, and therefore completely off-limits to me. Not something sitting in a middle-ground, you know? And I was right. He grabbed a Family Size box of frosted flakes.
One other thing I noticed yesterday: I felt gross and oily on the outside, but my insides felt... I hate to say it, it sounds so cheesy... but my insides actually felt CLEAN. Like... kind of tingly. Like the mud that'd been caked on for years had been scraped off. I still have that feeling now.

I'm on Day 4 as I write about Day 3. Only one more day to go!

Cleanse: Day 2 >_<

I woke up tired, and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. But you know how it is, once the eyes are open, it's impossible to shut them again. So I got up, poured myself a glass of water, and set to what I do every morning: scour the internet looking for a job.

I wasn't hungry, so I skipped breakfast, which now seems like a really bad idea. I didn't have anything except water and green tea until 1pm, and then I had a leftover baby potato from that wonderful salmon dinner we had on Monday. Then I had some leftover pasta sauce I'd made on Sunday - it was all-natural, no dairy or meat, so it was alright to eat. Kind of strange without the pasta, though.

Usually, I'd go to the gym. But for the cleanse I decided to stay home and, if I felt the need to exercise, use the stationary bike in the living room. I did about 15 minutes before the weakness set in and I said to myself, "I'll just go for a ride on the real bike."

I should say, before going any further, I haven't ridden my bike in a year. It was covered in a thick layer of dust, the tires were completely flat, and I think it'd gotten heavier since the last time I'd used it. Anyways, I cleaned it off and set to work pumping up the tires.

Maybe I was weak from the lack of food, or maybe I'm just generally weak, I don't know. But it took forever to pump up the tires. In fact, I don't think I pumped them up enough, but had to stop because my arms couldn't pump anymore! I thought it would be okay for the quick trip to the grocery store, though... it's only like 20 blocks round-trip.

So. I get on the bike, start riding, and everything's fine. Until I get to the first hill. I gear down, hoping a lower gear will make it easier. I start to pant. I start to sweat. I push harder. In my head, as usual when I ride this bike, I'm screaming. "JUST MAKE IT TO THE TELEPHONE POLE! THEN YOU CAN SLOW DOWN! YOU'RE ALMOST THERE! JUST A BIT FURTHER! COME ON!" I made it to the telephone pole, and all the way to the grocery store, without stopping. Good for me. But when I got off the bike my head felt like it was spinning, and there were little stars in my peripheral vision like fireflies.

When I was a teenager, I had this bad habit of passing out for no particular reason. The first time it happened was, ironically, in a grocery store parking lot. I'd broken up with my boyfriend a few days earlier, and I was depressed. Didn't want to leave the house. But my mom yelled (actually yelled, which is strange for her) at me to get off my ass and DO something, so we went to the grocery store. I told her I wasn't feeling well and wanted to stay in the car. She wasn't having any of that, so I got out of the car and... stars. The world turned blue and caved in on me. I could hear people around me, panicking, and an unrecognizable woman asking my mom, "is that Amanda?" I didn't hear my mom's answer, though. Next thing I remember, someone's lifting me into a truck and driving me the two blocks to the hospital.

At the hospital, the doctor said I fainted because of poor diet. He told me to eat a bagel and drink some orange juice, although I can't remember why. Lack of carbs or something. My mom spent the rest of the day scolding me for not eating, then apologizing for not listening when I said I didn't feel well. I ate a couple of bagels, drank some orange juice, and was fine again.

Until the next time. It was almost a year later, and I was living with my dad, working part-time at the grocery store deli. My first time away from "home". My first real job. I cut meat and cheese, made pizzas and rotisserie chickens, packaged salads, and tried to make some new friends. At the end of each day, we had to clean and sharpen the cutting machines. So what do I do? I cut myself on the newly-sharpened (and, luckily, newly-sterilized) blade. It was a deep cut; I still have a faint scar on my finger from it. So deep it didn't even hurt, and I thought I'd just put a band aid on it. So I went to the first aid kit, and the other girls (who, by the way, were just standing around letting me do all the work) asked me what was up. I told them nothing, it was all fine, I just needed a band-a...

Stars. I felt something soft, like a pool noodle or a Nerf ball, hit the back of my head (in reality, as I fell, I hit my head on the edge of a counter). Everything was blue. I woke up to a group of people, most of whom I'd never seen before, standing over me in a half-circle, their eyes full of concern and helplessness. I guess they'd never seen anyone faint at the grocery store before.

Anyways, when I came to, they asked me if I needed anything. I said bagels and orange juice. Someone rushed off and brought me a bag of bagels and a carton of orange juice, then they sent me home early. I had to walk. And it was snowing outside. The next day, there was a bill for the food I'd taken home.

My point is, when I got off the bike, I knew that feeling.

Luckily this time I didn't pass out. I took a few minutes to rest, pretending I was having trouble locking up the bike. Then I slowly made my way though the store, picking up fruit, putting it back. The stars faded, but they didn't totally go away, so I bought some Happy Planet juice. I guess I broke the cleanse diet, because you're not supposed to have anything "processed". But my thinking was "if I don't have anything, I'll pass out, and at least Happy Planet is organic..."
I don't remember paying for the groceries. I remember standing in line, I remember the cashier and the girl who helped put the food in my backpack, the annoyed glances at me from other shoppers waiting to pay for their purchases. I remember it was the first day of the Thrifty Foods "no plastic bags" rule, and the woman in front of me put her groceries in a cardboard box. I remember the cashier was wearing Buddy Holly glasses, for utility and not fashion. But I don't remember actually PAYING. I must have paid, they wouldn't let me leave the store if I didn't. Right?

The ride home is mostly uphill, and this bike of mine? I don't know, man. I think there's something wrong with it. I mean, even for someone of my size, there should be a setting where it's easy (albeit slow) to ride uphill, shouldn't there? It's a 21-speed bike, after all. But it's a cheap, no-name, made in China bike, so maybe not.

I made it all the way up the hill, and the next hill. In fact, I got within two blocks of home before I had to get off and walk the bike the rest of the way home. Then I had to sit down for a long time and catch my breath. I'm definitely weaker than I was a few days ago, because even on my weakest day, I can ride on a flat surface. But not yesterday. It's my own fault, though, because I barely ate anything. I have to remember to EAT things. A restrictive diet doesn't mean starvation. In fact, it means the opposite. I have to eat more of the things I CAN eat, because I have way fewer choices.

For dinner I made turkey with lemon rice - flavored with garlic, onion and capers. Even with all the strong flavors, though, the food tasted bland. It was the same thing the night before. I made curried tofu with peanuts. Curried tofu! And it was bland! Maybe it's my palate - without the (red) meat, dairy, sugar, salt, and all the rest, my taste buds are rebelling? I don't' know, but it sure feels that way. The only thing that really has any taste, it seems, is sweet sugary fruit.

The cravings started yesterday too. I thought I'd be desperate for some cheese, but the thing I wanted more than anything, yesterday, was a shot of amaretto. It doesn't help that we have a bottle of it sitting in the bookcase. I'm looking at it right now. Oh, the sweet nutty flavour, the warmth as is slides down the throat, the happiness in the center of the stomach... I could mix it with coffee, or in a drink, or make tiramisu with it! Oh, tiramisu! So decadent! So forbidden!

D.'s on a non-dairy diet right now as well. Sent her an email yesterday:
"I didn't realize how much my diet depended on cheese!"
She replied:
"Cheese and yogurt and ice cream and butter and and and.... >_<"

I think it must be harder to cut out one thing at a time, because you can overcompensate (and therefore get sick of) other things. If I cut out dairy, I'd overindulge on soy. If I cut out meat, I'd... overindulge on soy :) If I cut out sugar, I'd overindulge on salt.

Salt. That's another thing. The inside of my mouth has tasted really salty for the past few days. I brush my teeth (but no mouthwash, because it contains alcohol), I rinse my mouth with water, whatever. Nothing seems to remove the salty film from my mouth. Maybe this is a good thing, though? Maybe it's excess sodium leaving my body? That's what I'd like to think, at least for now, because another reason I'm doing this cleanse is to (hopefully) get my sodium levels back down to normal.

Before I gave my grandma a kidney, my mom said, grandma had been on a low-sodium diet for years. The diet, apparently, was to help extend her kidney function. My mom is worried that since giving grandma a kidney, my body's not processing sodium the way it did before, and maybe that's why I'm gaining weight. The doctors didn't say anything about that. They didn't say anything about long-term effects of the operation. What they said, and I'll quote as best I can from memory here, is "you won't have to change your lifestyle in any way." They warned me about complications during and right after surgery, like hernias from heavy lifting, but that's about it. My grandma had problems with sodium because her kidneys didn't work right. So maybe, just maybe, I could have sodium problems too. Who knows? It's worth a shot. And in the process, I'm getting healthier, and hopefully losing some weight.

After dinner, I settled in for a night in front of the new digital cable box: Wipeout, I Survived a Japanese Game Show, Krog Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire. (Side note: In three years, when I read this over, am I going to remember any of these TV shows? Probably not.) But I got restless. I just... and this is unusual for me... I just couldn't sit on the couch, watching TV. Poor H. probably thought I was going crazy. First I filed all our old bills, cleaned up the piles of paper on the coffee table, and swept the floors. Then I cleaned all the old food out the fridge. Then I got out a bucket, filled it with water, added a dash of bleach, and disinfected the fridge. Then I... well, then I was done.

One last note before I go: poo. That's what a cleanse is all about, right? It's about cleaning the bad stuff out of your colon, and the colon expels things in the form of poo. You're supposed to stick close to home because of poo. I don't really want to go into the details of poo here, but I will say this: the first day of the cleanse, I pooped a lot more than usual. The second day, I barely pooped at all. As I write this, I'm into the third day, and... something's definitely happening in there. The size, the texture, the... yeah, I've gone too far into poop talk now. Let's just say that something is different, and I feel... yes it's true... cleaner than I did a few days ago. Not minty fresh, but... lighter. It doesn't feel like my body is a black hole anymore.

Also: I've lost 2lbs. Woot! Only 90-something to go!

Also: H. is supportive, but he's not doing the cleanse himself. That means yesterday he went out and bought chocolate bars, Coca-Cola, cinnamon buns. You know, the usual. And because he's a sweet and generous guy, he offered me some chocolate. I refused, and you know what? It wasn't all that hard to say no, because I knew there was an awesome peach in the fridge with my name on it.
I know he wasn't trying to make me "break my diet" by offering me chocolate, that's not the way he is. His mom runs a daycare, he was raised around small children. He's the best sharer I've ever met. He was just being polite. But still, on the off-chance he was trying to tempt me, I countered by trying to tempt HIM to join me on the other side. How did I do that? I gave him my last organic Valencia orange. I said to him, "this is the best orange you'll ever have. Do you want it?" So simple, so effective. :) He ate it and loved it.

Cleansing?

So, as those of you I've seen lately know, I've gained a lot of weight in the past few years. Well, more to the point, I've gained a lot of weight since high school. At last count, it was close to 100 pounds that I've gained in the past 13 years... which doesn't sound so bad when you space it out like that, I guess. But the truth is, I gained most of that weight since H. moved in. I'm not blaming him - the only one who can make me do anything is me, right? But it's a fact, I've gained at least half of this weight since he moved in.
Most of it, I'm sure, is because of our diet. H. loves his candy, sweets, junk food. There's always Coca Cola in the house, always ice cream (although I did get him to switch to frozen yogourt), always beer and potato chips and those other bad, yet attractive, things. He's also European, and I don't know what it is about European guys, but they just LOVE their meat. I mean, I barely ever ate meat when I lived alone. I might have meat once or twice a week, tops. Now we eat it at every meal, and I don't like it.
Here's what a typical day looks like in terms of food:
Breakfast - sandwich (bread, meat, cheese) and a cup of coffee. Possibly from Starbucks, which means it's probably a cappuccino or macchiato instead of plain old coffee.
Snack - granola bar, more coffee, and if anything's lying around (half-empty bag of chips, cookies, etc) that'll probably get eaten too.
Lunch - sandwich (bread, meat, cheese)
Dinner - a typical dinner in our house? Frozen pizza, storebought sushi, pasta with ground beef, hamburger helper with veggie ground round. Little, if any, vegetables. Mix with beer.
After dinner - this is the biggest problem, I think. H. and I both snack until bedtime on chips, cheesies, candy, ice cream, and whatever else is available.

Right now, in my kitchen, there is a package of cinnamon buns, a bag of Italian hazelnut and chocolate cookies, a half-eaten bag of cheesies, a bag of blue corn tortilla chips, and a box of something called "breakfast chocolate" which H. says is like hard Nutella. Oh, and a jar of Nutella hidden in the back of the cupboard. And a big block of cheddar cheese, two or three different kinds of bread, two kinds of frozen yogourt, a bucket of "frozen mojito drink", and I'm sure there's some candy around here too.

Add to that the fact that neither H. or I is very active. We live what they call "sedentary lifestyles". We have a car, and we use that car whenever we can. To the grocery store. To the corner store. To the video store. A typical night finds H. in front of the computer, me in front of the tv, until we go to bed. Recently I've started going to the gym 3 times a week, which is good, but that's pretty much the ONLY exercise I get.

So that's why I'm fat. I've tried a bunch of things to lose weight - last year I walked 10km / day for a month, this year I did Slim Fast for a month as well, not to mention in the past when I'd tried The Zone, Atkins, diet pills - and nothing works. I can lose a few pounds, but nowhere near the close to 100 I'd LIKE to lose. My problem isn't willpower, I have lots of that. I'm a motivated person by nature. My problem is a lack of enthusiasm. I mean, I did Slim Fast steadily for a month, and lost 1 pound! I walked 10km every day and didn't lose anything! It's so very frustrating.

The only times I've lost weight are when I'm sick. In 2000 I caught a horrible flu and couldn't eat for, like, a week. For a couple days, the only thing I could stomach was water. I was in and out of consciousness, sweating like a pig, and... and I lost, like, 15 pounds. I wasn't fat then, but after losing the weight, people started telling me how good I looked. A friend of mine told me, years later, that he developed a serious crush on me around the same time. He said he didn't notice I'd lost weight... he just noticed I was beautiful. Hmmmm.
In 2005 I donated a kidney to my grandma. After surgery I was on a morphine drip, sliding in and out of consciousness for a day or two. I couldn't walk, or go to the bathroom, or anything. I definitely couldn't eat. For a few days I had water and clear broth, then moved up to popsicles and jello, and finally, on my last day in the hospital, I had some chicken soup. Why? Because I couldn't poop. One of the side effects of the anesthesia and the air they pumped through my body during surgery. I couldn't poop. It was painful. On the way home from the hospital, my mom's husband was hungry, so he stopped and bought a hamburger. Now, I love hamburgers, but this one? It smelled like shit. Like actual barnyard SHIT that had been out in the hot sun for a few days, swarming with flies. I vowed at that moment that I would never eat a hamburger again... and I didn't, until H. came along. But in the time between the operation and hooking up with my future husband, I lost close to 20lbs. After the surgery I had to take laxatives for a while, and I couldn't eat a full serving of food because my stomach had shrunk. I couldn't drink anything carbonated because my stomach was sensitive, so no beer or soda. I couldn't drink too much alcohol because it made me feel sick (with no happy drunkenness - just sick).
But when H. moved in, I wanted to show him I was a good partner. And he'd moved here from Sweden, you know, so I wanted to make a home for him. The first few months he was here, I made ham, pot roast, lasagne, meatballs, steak, fried chicken... I made any "home cooked meal" I could think of. And of course, all the recipes I used were for 4, 6, 8 people. And of course, there's only 2 of us, and I hate wasting food. And of course, the only real exercise we got was sex (sorry Dad).
Anyways. All this is leading to the point of this post... sorry it's taken so long to get there :) I've gained a lot of weight, and I know it's because I'm not living healthy. I've been going to the gym, like I said before, for a few months now. I've lost 2 pounds. Woo. So I remember a friend of mine, last year, doing this thing called the Bioxy cleanse. Then a few weeks ago, some other friends were talking about how, after a holiday, they cleansed all the bad stuff out of their bodies. I thought "maybe I should try this!" So I did some research, and while I'm still a bit leery of pills bought online, I found a site detailing how to create your own "cleanse diet".
So, for the next 5 days (starting today) I'm going to be following my own cleansing diet. Here are the rules I gathered from various websites:

• no red meat or dairy
• no caffeine or alcohol
• eat as many organic fruits and veggies (the more colourful the better) as you can
• take a multi-vitamin
• No processed foods (this means frozen meals, salad dressings, sauces, condiments, meats, or anything else that didn't grow that way)
• drink at least 8 glasses of water per day
• shower (and scrub well with a loofah) twice a day
• eat some kind of protein (white meat, tofu, eggs, nuts) at every meal, if you can.
  

It sounds like it might be a bit hard... I mean, I'm addicted to caffeine but even MORE addicted to dairy. But I'm gonna give it a try.

Yesterday, to start things off, I went to Planet Organic and bought berries, onions, broccoli, baby potatoes, corn, etc. Then H. and I went to Thrifty's and bought some fresh salmon for dinner. We had a wonderful meal of salmon, new potatoes, and garden salad (lettuce, cabbage, carrots). I thought I couldn't have any oils, so I squeezed lemon on the salad for flavour. Eeew. Glad to know I can at least make my own salad dressing :) For dessert we had some organic strawberries, and oh my god. They were the ripest, reddest, tastiest strawberries I've ever had in my life. Then we had some green tea and went to bed. I slept like a baby, but don't know if it was because of the food or because I was tired :)

So technically today is my first day of the cleanse, because yesterday I had a granola bar :) So I said I'd start today.

Breakfast: I woke up... not hungry. So I made some green tea, poured water in my bottle, and got ready for the morning. I forced myself to eat an orange (organic valencia from Planet Organic... once again, so tasty! I think I'd forgotten what an orange actually tastes like!) then got to work on household chores.
I thought about going to the gym, since I haven't gone in a few days, but all the websites I read said you should stay close to home for the first few days of the diet. So I think instead I'll get on the exercise bike.
How many calories are in a cup of green tea? Because I'm sure I'm gonna be substituting green tea for coffee. It appears to be 0. Well. Okay then.
It's almost 1pm, and the only calories I've ingested are from that valencia orange. I've had 2 cups of green tea, two bottles of water (close to a litre, I guess), and I'm not hungry. Maybe the caffeins in the tea is keeping me pepped, I don't know, but I feel like I have more energy than usual too. I've done the laundry, changed the bedding, cleaned the bathroom, done the dishes, and taken out the recycling. And spent a couple hours on this blog :) That's more than I usually do in a day, and like I said, it's not even 1:00.
Next on my agenda: figure out dinner. H. isn't doing this cleanse with me, but he IS subject to my dinners. I don't think we can afford fresh salmon for dinner every night, so tonight I'm gonna try to do something with tofu. My mom put me onto this website called Food Down Under, where you enter the ingredients you have, and it pops out a recipe for ya. I'm gonna see if they have much in the way of tofu recipes :)
My stomach is starting to growl now, but I don't know what to eat. That's going to be the biggest problem, I think... not knowing what to eat. But I'll figure something out.
Hopefully I'll remember to check back in at the end of the day.

LATER

we also got digital cable yesterday, so sticking close to home for a few days isn't so bad :)
For dinner we had some quinoa, curried tofu, and corn on the cob. A fully yellow meal. That wasn't on purpose, it just happened that way. As soon as dinner was finished, I started thinking about tomorrow's meals. What am I going to eat for breakfast? What about dinner? Food Down Under wasn't as good as I thought it would be. There were a tonne of redundant, repeated recipes, especially for things like curried tofu. So tomorrow, since poultry is allowed on this diet, I'm going to make turkey with lemon rice.

So on another topic.. I'm on Twitter, and I subscribe to Neil Gaiman's feed. That man writes SO MUCH! Not just Twitter, though - blogs, short stories, EVERYTHING. He's prolific. How does he do it? Confidence comes from success, I guess... but what about inspiration? Writing just seems so HARD these days. It's like I don't know where to begin. I put so much weight on the act of creation that I psych myself out.
Anyways... watermelon for dessert, maybe some more green tea, then bed. I'm sure I'll sleep peacefully tonight.

I'm famous!

I submitted a pic to Fail Blog! You can see it (and vote for it) here:

That is all :)

working on a new music video.
here's the song: it's called "skuld II".

http://www.myspace.com/skuldkansla

observations while walking down the street

This blog? it takes no "effort" because I'm not worried about "creating art."
What is creating art? It's purposely sitting down to make something good, it's worrying about craft (in my case; grammar, sentence structure, image, cleverness) and meaning. Which I don't really do here.
why do i always apologize to homeless people when I don't give them change?
i lied to a homeless guy and said I didn't have any cash. I did. I had a $20 in my wallet. Briefly I flirted with the notion of saying I'd give him the $20 if he let me interview him, ask him why he was on the street, all that. So I could tell his story to someone.
Why didn't you buy him food? He was eating pizza.
Why didn't you give him money? He was drunk.
Why didn't you guide him to places that could "help" him? I'm sure he knows those places better than I do, and there's probably a reason he's sitting on the street corner, drunk, eating pizza, asking for change.
In my mind his face is sooty, like a portrait from the Great Depression. In reality it wasn't.

my stories are not good because they're not completely coherent. I need to work on that. I need to work on logical progressions.

saw myself at age 70: overweight, bent, wearing a sun visor, with a shrivelled little gentleman on my arm. That would be H. We both walk slowly (but as fast as we can) towards a golden Toyota Corolla. I have the keys. I'm driving. He's cool with that.

bought eyeshadow. girl at the counter seemed disgusted with my colour choice. i bought a set of 3 metallic shades: gold, bronze, shimmery black. i now have 3 different types of black eyeshadow.

this? this takes no effort because I'm not thinking about it, not trying to draw conclusions or tell a story.

i'm slowly turning into a zombie. that's why I have so much black eyeshadow.

I have nothing pressing to say. I just woke up to a barrage of kisses. Sometimes H. does that :) I can't say I mind. In fact, my response was "I can't think of a better way to wake up." He said "what if I had a tray of waffles and eggs and hot coffee?" Okay, that might have been *slightly* better. Then again, I might have been covered with food before I made it out of bed. :)

So I'm on Twitter now, if you want to find me. Look up my email address.

alright. so last night I figured out my "writing problem". Reading over that heavy metal essay, I felt like (and I know it's not necessarily true, but I felt like) I've been a lazy writer. I was lazy with that piece, and I probably won't post it here, because I feel like it's not a "good example" of my writing. D asked yesterday over dinner, "why are you writing about things you don't like?" and before I could respond, A said "because she's a writer, and that's what writers do." I think it's a long-running discussion in their household. Which I understand.
It's a long-running discussion in mine, too, and every time I bring it up, H gets a bit frustrated. "Why don't you just WRITE?" he says. It's not that easy. We're raised (in the University, mostly) to think, perhaps not even consciously, that writers are above other people. That we have some sort of duty to humanity, that anything we set down in words will live on forever. I mean, in my last summer class, we discussed this over and over. One guy said writing makes him feel closer to God. Another said writers have a duty to improve the world with their words. Yet another said writers have a "higher calling" than other people. Every time someone made a comment about the "writer's duty", the class would clap appreciatively. "Oh yes, brilliant point, you are so astute, good job." And I'd squirm in my chair, trying not to be noticeable, but at the same time bursting to yell at these people.
Writers are NOT BETTER than anyone else. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, we're probably worse than most because we THINK we're better. I'm talking mostly of my predominantly white, predominantly middle-class fellow students here when I say "writer", just to make it clear. I'm not talking about people who witness events and feel a duty to report them, like the many people who wrote about the Holocaust. Those people have something to say, and a reason to say it. In that sense, they DO have a higher calling, at least for a while. But I don't know any of those kinds of writers. The ones I know are, like I say, mostly white, mostly middle-class, mostly students learning how to string words together. Just like me. In fact, I'm probably far less white than most of them because of my family and where I was raised. I'm not saying that students aren't valid writers, or that because of being white and middle-class they have no stories to tell. I'm just saying that we have to get over this idea that because we write, we're better than the average person.
And if you go into writing thinking everything you put down must be gold, because it's gonna live on forever... well, you've screwed yourself before you've even started. And that's my problem at the moment. H keeps telling me to just get my work out there, but I can't, because I keep thinking it's not good enough to be published. "It's really hard to build confidence in yourself," I said last night over dinner, "when your confidence is tied up in something that's going to be judged by some anonymous stranger." D added "and every opinion is arbitrary." Yes, exactly. If I got something published, even for free... it doesn't matter where, as long as I'm not SELF publishing it, you know? If I could do that, I'd have some confidence. But before that, I have to face the scrutiny of a bunch of people I don't know. And I'm already at a point where I don't like my own writing. It's so messy and comma-filled. I don't have anything I'm really PROUD of as far as writing is concerned, so I don't have anything I want to send out for publication. I don't have anything gold yet, is what I'm trying to say.
H keeps saying it doesn't matter if it's gold, maybe you don't think it's gold but someone else does. That's possible, I guess, but my low self-esteem won't let me truly believe that. In my head, my writing isn't very good. It doesn't stack up to the rest. I read other people's pieces, like EVERYBODY in writing workshop, even the ones that aren't so good, and I'm like "wow, how did they DO that? I couldn't do that." But I CAN. I just... maybe I'm getting soft. There's no structure, no deadlines, right now. I'm free to just WRITE. But all this freedom is stifling: I don't know where to begin.
I took a whole class on this! What are my stories? I don't know! I can tell you stories of my family, stories that didn't happen to me. I can tell you about my friends (although I'm betting they don't want me to). I can tell you about my parents. But none of this is really me. I don't know where to start!

Heavy Metal

So I think my writer's block is caused by low self-esteem. That's no big revelation, I guess. Of course low self-esteem holds people back, and of course I've known for a long time that the only way to get ahead in this world is to sell yourself. And to sell yourself, you gotta BE confident, and if you're not, you gotta ACT like you are.
This weekend I was at a picnic, and I was sitting next to this girl. I know the girl, used to work with her, but haven't actually talked to her in almost a year. I don't know why, I mean, we get along just fine. I like her. We just haven't talked. Anyways, I'm sitting next to this girl, but for most of the time she had her back to me. At one point, though, she rolls over and looks me in the eye and is like "Hi!"
"Hi" I say back, "how's it going?"
"Good... how are you?"
"I'm good... just finished summer classes..."
"Oh, so you're just about done, right? Got a job yet?"
"Not yet..."
'What do you wanna do?"
"I want a writing job..."
"Like a newspaper?"
"Nah..."
"Magazine?"
"Yeah, that would be good..."
"That would be awesome! My friends writes for a [blah blah blah]" I tuned out then. Of course her friend writes for this or that. I have friends who write for this and that too. But _I_ don't write for anything, and I know I could if I wanted to. I just need to grow some balls, dig out of this hole of self-loathing, and GET MY ASS OUT THERE.

My problem is that I never think a piece is good enough for publication. I don't have the balls to submit anything for publication. So today, I read over the last piece I wrote for workshop last year. It's called "I Married a Metal Head", and it's supposed to be, like, a non-metal (read: girly-girl) guide to heavy metal. I thought it was a great idea, at the time, and had fun writing the piece. But now I look it over and... I don't know. Maybe it's not very good. I did some serious editing between the first and second drafts, and the second is a lot better than the first, but I still don't think it's something I would use in a portfolio. Which is what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to make a portfolio so I can start applying for writing jobs. Everyone else seems to have the confidence, so why not me? I KNOW I'm at least a half-decent writer, and I'm sure I'm better than at least a few so-called "professional writers". And I know that what I'm lacking is confidence. Not energy, not opportunity, not money. I'm lacking CONFIDENCE.
and it's like... it feels like all these essays I write have an expiration date, like they'll go bad if I don't get them out to the public within a certain amount of time. I never get them out, and they keep going bad. They're growing mold and stuff. So, I'm going to post that metal head piece here... not because I think it's amazing, but because I need to post SOMETHING. I need to take some stuff out of the cupboards, get it out there, and look at it from a distance. If I post it, I won't worry about "publishing" it.
But I'm not going to publish it today. First I'm gonna finish another draft :)