Detox Time: Days 6-10 and beyond

After day 5 of the detox, things started to repeat themselves. I woke up with a sharp headache, loaded up my lunchbox with dinner I'd made the night before (novel), got on the morning bus bleary eyed and yawning, greeted my coworkers with watering, tired eyes and slowly climbed into the day as it unfolded. Slowly, I might add. By 3:00 I was ready to take on the world. This is not how the office operates unfortunately and so I felt very disconnected from the pace of things.

I got much better sleep, however, because I was beyond exhausted by 9:00. I took much better care of myself (and my wallet!) in terms of food: everything home made, nothing but stuff from the produce section, and lots of prepared meals so no strange, whatever-I-see-first-in-the-fridge meals.

Now that it's finished I'm happily accepting coffee back into my life but no more than 1 cup a day. Ever. I feel a noticeable difference after the two slices of pizza I had today at work. Such an uncomfortable, heavy feeling in my stomach. Even if I was not (at all) energized by the detox, it did make me feel clean and light. Honestly, I felt like I weighed 10 pounds total. I was shriveling up by the day. Like kernal popping in reverse. How's that for an analogy.

How have I changed? I miss preparing my meals but I haven't gotten back into it. However, I did get lots of kale, apples and almonds for snacks this week and I drink more water now. I still have gluten-free oats and strawberries for breakfast and bought a blender last weekend for spinach and fruit smoothies in the morning. These small changes are nice to see. It's invigorating to see myself grow and change and become different, even in small ways. It means I am continuing to learn and adapt. And right about now in my life, I need that.

Detox time: Day 5

Today begins the most intense days! My "afternoon snack" used to be a rice cake with almond butter. Now it's "2 scoops of nutritional shake mixed with 4 ounces of water and 4 ounces of unsweetened apple juice and 2 supplement capsules." Awesome. Basic diet for the next 3 days is raw/steamed cruciferous vegetables, spinach, apples, pears. Needless to say, today I was hungry.

I got home with a stronger headache than usual that put me in bed--not sleeping, just whimpering-- for a couple hours. When I hobbled out I steamed all the kale and brussel sprouts I could find and gobbled them up. Feel much better now.

Life centered around a healthy diet is all work, no play. At least for the first few days. Just spent the evening figuring out what tomorrow's meals will be and getting everything straight. That means washing the dishes so I had containers for tomorrow's lunch, rationing out the food in the fridge for each meal after that, cleaning up after making all my food (including picking up bits of chopped vegetable from all over the floor. how DOES it get everywhere?!) --regular food prep stuff I guess but it's after a long day of work and with work still needing to be done this evening. And feeling overall deflated from the whole thing.

How do people ever manage work, food AND children? Tell me that.

 

 Me and my huge, bulging (3rd) bag of leafy greens on my way home from Giant Eagle (Pittsburgh grocery store chain. What does 'Giant' or 'Eagle' have to do with food?) 

 (and the awkward smile on purpose. bear with me.)

Detox time: Day 2, 3, 4

The three things I've learned about detoxing:

1.) you will make 3 separate trips to grocery store because you still not have enough fruts and vegetables. (and ask the question: WHY is broccoli in THREE separate spots?! and there are absolutely no peaches OR plums?)

2.) you will learn how to season with herbs because without salt everything tastes like wet cardboard. dill weed is nice with talapia. stuff like that. and lemon juice will save the day.

3.) you can never be prepared enough. preparing beforehand is the key! know the recipes. get the ingredients. make all your meals the day before. plan them out. know what snacks you're having tomorrow the night before. Came home with a headache and burnt the cauliflower because I was in such a frenzied hungry hurry. Ugh!

Breakfast on day 2: So bland I almost cried. Bananas and gluten free quinoa somethin-or-other. And almond milk. Which did little in the way of flavor.

It's detox time: Day 1

Today I found out what a total wimp I am. I was pretty cocky last night when I joined the throng of girls just out of yoga and aging, glam hippies at the local WholeFoods to pick up my stuff from my detox food list.

For those of you who don't know, I'm doing a detox for work. We do a lot of "walk a mile" research where we try to understand a person's life by getting into their shoes as much as possible. For the current project I'm working on, a detox was a great way to understand the person we are designing for. Because, as I learned today, there is a universe of difference between hearing about how to do a detox and ACTUALLY doing one.

One word to sum up day one: miserable. absolutely miserable. The food part wasn't too bad. Besides a lot of tastelessness and non-excitement leading up to each meal, the food really wasn't too bad. It felt good to eat "cleanly": non-gluten oats with rice milk and blackberries, avocado and tomato spinach salad for lunch, my almonds and apple for lunch and tilapia with brown rice for dinner were really not too bad. Utterly boring but not too bad. Pretty sure I know what it feels like now to being a camel and eat the same thing for every meal. Nothing tasted too different than the next thing so I realized I was eating for the sake of getting food inside my body.

The zinger was the zero coffee. NO ONE TOLD ME! good freaking grief. I now have a huge place in my heart for people trying to kick bad habits because the withdraw from caffeine today made me feel like a back-alley junkie. Sore muscles, unbelievable sleepiness, incredibly strong nausea and a skull-wide migraine-y headache that has lasted a full 24 hours (I started no caffeine yesterday but a headache was the only side effect until today.)  At one point I felt like I had the flu: kinda of shivery, congested feeling and achey all over. Who even am I? and is there coffee rehab? And yes, I was grumpy and unsocial able.

(Dear person reading this, do not quit caffeine cold turkey EVER. Be sensible and lessen your intake over a span of two weeks. I found this out after a panicked browse through the ol' google archives.)

Going to bed early tonight after drinking a ton of water, both of which should help take the edge off.
I would ask that you pray for me/think of me but that I remember "oh right, this is self-inflicted."
And this is research. and I'm learning. But seriously: ouch.

Tomorrow I'll run to the grocery store to get a few of the items I glazed over yesterday thinking I was such a badass detoxifer that I wouldn't need them. Things like almond butter, allowable (unsweetened) juices, herbal tea, herbs and spices, mangos, prunes--things that will help spruce things up a little bit. (Which brings is another thing: detoxes ain't cheap yo. Spent $102 last night and still have some holes to fill in. don't do it unless you mean it.)

More tomorrow. 9 more days of this shiz!

east coast west coast

Last week, I spent Wednesday's early morning taking a solo walk through our nation's capitol with an iced starbucks coffee in one hand and my iPhone in the other, my thumb tirelessly skimming the surface of the map app. It is, by the way, moments like this that make me grateful for my iPhone. In the same way that I am grateful for a loving mother, a roof over my head and my daily meal, I'm am thankful for my iPhone. I don't know what I'd do without it. It gave me absolute, head-held-high bravery to walk out of my hotel door, onto the bustling streets of D.C. and miles down Pennsylvania Avenue. I knew I'd be back in time for breakfast. And that a cup of coffee was waiting for me on the opposite side of my second intersection.

That same week, on Saturday evening, I found myself on a similar walk. Only this time, it was evening and I was some 2,000 miles west of the Washington monument. I didn't need my phone because my return destination was perched on a high hill above the beach I traveled to. The only question would be how exactly to climb back up in the darkness that enveloped the landscape after the sun slipped behind the silky Pacific. And where exactly I'd left my shoes. And if it'd be alright to grace the marbled lobby of my hotel in my sea splashed jeans and freshly salted hair.

Would you like the grand tour?

Yes, that's Nutella on our breakfast table. Eric and I realized this morning that breakfast has no dessert. We decided to change things. (I didn't bother doing the dishes for you. We're good friends, right?)

I know Nate Berkus says NEVER to have an office in your bedroom. But you know, whatever.  I'm thrilled to pieces that we actually have room for "an office." Maybe I'll even use it. Side note: Pittsburgh has blessed us with zero closet space. Say hello to vacuum cleaners just hanging out like it's a house plant. What to do, what to do.

My Tobi, and my (little) Dad and my Amazing Grace perfume (til the end baby.) And that's my wedding bouquet. I honestly can't decide if it's too "Great Expectations" to keep my wedding bouquet but it's so stinkin meaningful! I can't throw it out, right ?

 There are some things I care about and some things I do not. I do not care about hanging things evenly. Obviously. I do care about a supporting local artists (Eric's friend from Denver did the top white piece. mmhmm.), frozen butterflies, red handkerchiefs on women's heads, sexy flower petals and the girl family pieces.

Eric spent one of our first weekends here putting together this headboard while I was out of town. (what!?!) It's absolutely gorgeous. Reclaimed wood and the whole bit.

 The lover bookshelf.

Top: My aunt and uncle on their wedding day. Middle: my parent's engagement photo. Bottom: Eric and I on our 1st anniversary trip.

This door knob may or may not be the ENTIRE reason that we chose this apartment. 

 You might have thought we had central air or something fancy like that until this picture came along: two fans within six feet of each other. Gotta say, I'm so proud of my Denver boy for being so graceful with this heat and humidy. He's really knockin it out of the park. Only occasionally has a melt down (now that i think about it, almost literally.) where his eyes get all wide and throws his hands over his head "THIS PLACE IS SO FREAKIN HOT!" but yeah otherwise, very graceful about it.

The man himself. (His handiwork on the wall behind the couch. I'm so pumped to finally have enough wall space to hang his  g o r g e o u s  prints. In our last place they were tucked out of sight behind a book shelf. Saddest story ever told. )

#89 I went for a walk today

It's too hot in our 3rd floor apartment around 6:00 pm. I like to think that this is when all the hot air that's been collecting onto the pavement all day long reverses direction--in a slow bounce--and finds it's way into all the unsuspecting open windows on it's way back up out of the city for the night. It gets trapped with all that ceiling everywhere and makes the place something that would be toasty warm and cozy. if this were January. and there was snow boots by the front door. but there's not.  so I get out of the stuffy apartment where all the confused heat is and go where everything is moving around a little more. the street. my new streets. i took a walk three blocks north towards one of the busier streets and then doubled back through a vacant park, up alongside an old cemetery and back towards my apartment once the sun had officially tucked behind the tips of the furthest hill tops.


and snapped pictures of my favorite spots for you. isn't city texture exquisite?

#88: paul simon: my home

No matter where I go, how I feel, who I'm with--or without--the minute I hear Paul Simon's voice I am home. Some little locked door behind my heart, right next to where my soul must be, bursts open and I remember everything that is good and right and lovely. Which is why, when I'm feeling like I need to recalculate, I listen to that man all day long. And then, just when I thought I couldn't love Mr. Simon anymore he goes a writes this song just for me on this long, lazy, quiet Saturday. My Pittsburgh adventure is forever marked.

#87: pittsburgh observation #1

            The entire city is filled with middle aged women who talk very loud, drawing out their vowels to nearly oblivion. They're initially obnoxious and then endearing. And they're everywhere. Instead of the buses being filled with young single, stroller wielding mothers, clusters of chirping teens and city-dusted men in their quiet corners, the bus system is pulsing with these clucking women. It's hilarious. Women who grab my arm--forearm to forearm with her tight, small fist around my elbow--when the bus stops too suddenly and say, "Jus hold on to somethin, sweetie. Jus hold on to somethin." Women who moan and complain about the bus being a whole hour late as they board in their blindingly white, pediatric shoes and then look at me and say with a side smile,  "I'm just so upset. I'm just so emotional." They tug on suit jackets of the older gentleman who are standing to urge them switch spots because they'd really rather stand with a "Go ahead now. Take a seat. Go on." They holler up to the newest, slightly skittish bus rider who didn't bring enough for the bus fee, "Don't worry about it honey, I got it." as she pulls the dollar amount from the pocket book perched her lap and aggressively taps the gentleman in front so he'll pass it forward. It's a city full of put your jacket on, sit up straight and don't mumble mothers. That's what Pittsburgh is. The city of motherly love.

how to move to pittsburgh in 5 easy steps

 

say goodbye to your nearest and dearest. 

[insert brave face here]

  

cross your fingers and say a little prayer

that they'll be teaching like this ^ waiting for you. 

 

set your alarm for 4:30 in the morning, brush your teeth with squinty eyes

and remember to pack your phone cord, your toothbrush and a scarf.

 stop in chicago for a night with old college friends and a morning

with some pretty famous coffee to get you jazzed for the 24 toll roads

you'll hit over the next 8 hours

 keep it together during the last 45 minutes of a 24 hour car ride.

(which I've always found to be the very worst part.)
it usually helps to find the local techno radio station and stop every
five minutes or so for a snack or two.

it's just that simple. see, you could move to pittsburgh too.

#86: i can't do it on my own

Below you'll find a letter that my father wrote to his older sister, Melinda (who has just discovered that she has stage two melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer and while we're waiting to see whether the cancer has spread further, she's setting a date with doctors to have her big toe amputated.) I guess my mom was struck by the humble compassion in his letter too, since she sent it out in an email for us all to read.

sweet melinda,

what a horrible reality you've suddenly had to face.  we always know that fearful and terrible things happen in life, but when they show up in our very own everyday, it's a shock.  i know your world is being rocked and you are struggling to stay calm and be brave.  i am completely without courage and have always been marked by fear and insecurity. so i've always found the Lord to be the only answer for every little (or big) thing because i know i don't have it in me. 

last year I was reading a book about prayer, and something in particular from that book has really stayed with me.  the writer was calling attention to God being our father.  think of your own little child coming to you for help, and how you treat them.  all that matters to you as their parent is that they belong to you and that you are in a position to help them.  you don't care what tone of voice they use, what words come out of their mouth.  you just take them into your arms and console and care for them.  

this is how God, our heavenly father is toward us.  this is the essence of the gospel, that we are no longer cosmic orphans. we have a perfect father who can do anything.  he will never forsake us or fail us or reject us.  there really is no other permanent comfort.  go right to him and blubber uncontrollably. he loves you. he will take care of you.  he will solve all your problems.  what could possibly be better? we will also be talking to him about you, and asking him to really show up for you in a profound and reassuring way. 

we love you,

damien

I have no surgeries coming up, but sometime mid Thursday of next week, I'll be pushing past Colorado's border to start an internship in the yet-unknown city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania sans Eric, friends, a place of my own and certainty in my near future.

In the midst of all things (tiny little new jobs and great big scary surgeries) this can be our bravery. We are no longer cosmic orphans. We are allowed the great, luxurious freedom of throwing our hysterical, sobbing pleas for comfort onto the lap of a sympathetic heavenly father.

#85 monday morning, you sure look fine.

Most people dread Mondays like the yearly dentist appointment and math homework on a Wednesday afternoon. I've heard that they're unpopular. For sometime now, however, Mondays have my own personal, weekly, very quiet holiday. Even my beloved Sunday has momentarily slipped into a sad second when I think of my Mondays. While everybody else suits up and takes to the highways, the bus stops, the corner coffee shops for their first shot of the day, I'm only just slinking out of bed mindful to walk those twelve steps to the bathroom at meandering pace, making sure to crawl back into bed a few times before I commit to the journey. Only because I can. And because it feels so good. On Mondays, our apartment's sun soaked, cement porch that sprawls a good portion of the front lawn is all mine. All those new, bright white lawn chairs too. I can have my pick. A rickety old metal table teeters under the weight of my hopeful stack of books and unwritten notes. My keys, my coffee, a few pencils and my ever faithful v5 precision point pen rest on it's chipped, sun scorched surface available at my every whim. And the sun. That sun. Of all the things I would ask be at my beck and call, it would be the morning sun at ten o'clock on a cloudless spring day.  And it is. Beyond all of Thursday's wildest hopes and dreams, the sun holds still in it's spot concentrating all of it's soul soothing rays straight into each shadow locked inch of me. And for a few short hours I am free. Utterly and incomparably. For a few hours, all relationships will mend and perhaps resume their old ease, forgiveness will be given and --what's more -- received, fear loosens it's grip on my shoulders, the corners of my lips and the sore bottoms of my feet. Mondays are my mend, my hope, my rest.

Forgiveness means refusing to make someone pay for what they did. However, to refrain from lashing out at someone when you want to do so with all your being is agony. It is a form of suffering. You not only suffer the original loss of happiness, reputation and opportunity but now you forgo the consolation of inflicting the same on them...It hurts terribly. Many people would say it feels like a kind of death.

-Tim Keller, The Reason for God

and may the odds be ever in your favor

I don't know what it is about The Hunger Games. I just can't shake it from the place where it has landed deep inside my thoughts. When I'm easing down from the day, sorting through what has happened in the time since my head lifted from a wrinkled pillowcase, I continually return to the raw mental space that holds Katniss Everdeen and District 12 in some gritty version of a futuristic America. It's not a grinding, anxious space but similar to a malleable, clay-like object that I continually turn over and flatten in my palm in a rhythmic way, only partly aware the I'm trying to give familiarity to it's form. And that it's killing me. Something of the same feeling when you're sitting catty corner from that women in the restaurant who should be a stranger but, perplexingly, is not at all. Somehow, you can almost predict her movements and know that she's kind and has a brother. You've seen her before. Where was it? You know her. How?

It's something about the chilling Effie Trinket in her shocking pastels on that dusty stage. It's the dull but frantic mental terrain of a young girl, hardened far before her time. It's the fear inside each colorless dress and boot and button up shirt standing in those long, sloppy lines as they wait for their name not to be called--dear god, save me--by someone whose has forgotten that they have a soul. It's wild power in the face of a stale and dry hopelessness. A cooped up privileged few so blinded by the color of their shoe laces and eye lashes that they pay no mind to unspeakable crimes happening in the very place they call home.

It would not be so captivating--so deeply horrifying--if I did not know that these things have happened and are happening now. And don't these things always happen while a comfortable minority sits on the sidelines cooking broccoli and shopping for cereal? It's not in the face of full, naked awareness that droves of innocent people are subjected to brutality but when those who can help--who can bring clarity to muddied disaster--decide not to. Right? It is, in the end, an unwillingness to engage in difficult, sprawling devastation. Fear becomes--through some twisted mental decision--a happy, embarrassing ignorance; transforms it's owner into an obnoxious, pitiful Effie Trinket teetering on silly heels before a crowd of drooping gazes and pallid complexions. The microphone is directed towards our mouth and still--through fear, through ignorance, through an unfathomable selfishness--we fail to see the young, the poor, the hopeless, the unborn silently screaming for justice as we happily call their names for a cruelty that we mistake for brief entertainment.

update : for instance, this unspeakable.

the kendalls come to denver

photo journal: spring edition

comparing paper swatches for a blue-inspired bride.

on a total jazz + blues kick these days.
my favorite station: esperanza spaulding. woo, girl.

Eric's research these days: schools to teach at in Pittsburgh,
how to build a kayak and where to find a puppy dog in the Pittsburgh area.

playing with Evelyn Keith, a little belonging to my friend from highschool.
having/seeing/thinking about having offspring is crazsee.

I try to spend my Mondays with my Lauren.
The girl is a machine.

Monday are now dubbed my "make up free day". My skin is pretty awful. not exactly porcelain at all (how do they do that?). but i believe that even imperfect skin deserves a day in the sun.