endurance

Throughout the years I’ve run my life through numerous filters. I think we all have. And most of mine have ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous.

After a nasty break-up, my filter informed me that ‘all men cheat‘. If things went south for me in business, the filter which I ran my life through convinced me that I ‘couldn’t catch a break’.  For a short period of time it even told me that leaving the house without lipstick was ‘bad luck’.

It has become my practice, as of late, to run everything I do through the most recent filter—the shit to value ratio—which is exactly like The Law of Diminishing Returns, except it has to do with shit, and how much we take to get what we want.

It’s not very scientific, and in fact, it flies in the face of most societal norms. But it makes life so much easier, which makes me happy, and at this stage of the game I’ll choose happiness over almost anything else.

If you’ve never heard of it, it goes something like this: How much shit must I endure to get value?

Here are a few examples from my life. I think you’ll see what I mean.
For instance, how long is the drive (i.e. how many hours of my life will I lose sitting in traffic) for that thing I absolutely need to do? (The answer for me is: if it goes beyond 30-40 minutes—I rethink it. But there are some exceptions, I’m not an asshole.)

How much mindless chit-chat is required to get to the authentic, substantive, issues that I’d rather discuss? (My endurance time is getting shorter and shorter. Soon, I’m afraid I’ll stick a fork in my eye at dinner parties after only ten minutes.)

How many horrible, unreadable first drafts come before I can cobble together one good sentence? (The answer is nine.)

How long do you stay in a loveless relationship just for the security, or because you’re too lazy to leave? (The answer for me was seven. And that was four years too many.)

How many hours and dollars will you spend to battle the effects of aging? (I stopped dying my hair blonde which turned out to be the best money I haven’t spent in years!)

How many years will you suffer the whims of a terrible boss? (Twenty. And he wasn’t all bad. Said the woman who stayed too long.)

And how much pain will you endure? THAT is a biggie for me and the answers these days is… NONE.
I won’t suck it up and suffer for anyone anymore.

I won’t continue to hike with oozing blisters.

I won’t get the lip injections on a whim because I met you at the dermo before lunch.

I won’t get micro needling, dermabrasion, or that Hannibal Lector looking peel to promote collagen. Fuck collagen. It’s highly overrated. (But just in case I’ll drink some collagen protein.)

I won’t starve myself to be a size six.

I won’t let the highly recommended, sadistic woman with the indiscernible accent, burn skin tags off my body with a glorified cigarette lighter. (I got up and left when she wanted to look for them around my ass.)

I won’t try to keep my uterus inside my body. I won’t lalalala my way around that fact that it’s let it’s true feelings be known to me FOR OVER A DECADE. It protested in the only way it knew how—pain and bleeding. After I ignored that, it enlisted my bladder as an unwitting accomplice. Apparently, my uterus was going to ride it like a manatee low enough into my body that if I had a good laugh, or a sneezing fit, they could just slide out of me. No big deal.

Last year, I finally ran my loudly protesting lady-bits through this new filter—and had the damn surgery!

I recently read that Lena Dunham relinquished her uterus and while I know she is so much younger than me, it’s the perfect example of shit to value—and it had to go.

Too much shit for not enough value.

I’ve also recently begun running “the revisiting of old emotional wounds” through this filter. Listen, It was all the rage to do this back in the day. I did it. We all did it. We dove head-first into our pain, writhing around in it like pigs in shit.
But now I see my younger friends wanting to go down that road and I’m not sure I think it’s a good idea to go back in time and dig up all the buried bodies. Why?
YOU’RE DIGGING UP SO MUCH SHIT.
SO MUCH! The wounds are old—and they’re DEEP! 

And looking back, if one dollar is the highest return on that emotional investment, I may have gotten, in the end, maybe, forty cents on the dollar of value.

All I’m saying is that perhaps there is another way? A better way? A less painful way?
I suggest that first you run your life though this shit to value filter. I wish someone would have suggested it to me when I was thirty.
Or forty.
Or fifty.

Carry on,
xox

Okay. So, tens of you, my darling readers, have been living in suspense, asking me for days how I broke my green drink fast and if indeed I found some clarity as a result.

The rest of you didn’t care—Good for you!

Well, the answer is—bacon and sort of.

By Wednesday (the fourth day), I had so much energy there wasn’t a speck of dust left on any surface in my house, all the prep and chopping was finished, and I baked several pies in the afternoon. That was after I completed a triathlon and learned Mandarin.

Boundless energy. Apparently that is the side effect of every cell in your body silently screaming for carbs.

My friend Kim came by to witness my bought of plant-based beverage madness. And steal a pie. She can attest to my supernatural buzz and cheerful disposition.

Apparently that was side effect number two—I was delightful. Ask Kim. Ask my husband. Ask the girl at the gym and the guy walking his dog past my car, (who I thought I’d spoken to earlier that morning so I picked up the conversation where we left off only to find out it wasn’t the same guy OR the same dog, but I just smiled and kept on jabbering away like he was my long-lost BFF).

Gaunt and boney, (hardly), even dingier, (hard to imagine, but true), and delightful (oh absolutely).

Because I wasn’t hungry. Not at all.

So here is what you’re waiting for, oh patient reader; you want to know how I broke my fast.

“Go slow”, everybody advised. “Eat deliberately, take your time. Start with something bland and inert, like, like, a lemon. Suck on a lemon. Or better yet, sip hot water with lemon.”

Yeah, That’s so me. I’m someone who’s going to suck on a lemon after four days without solid food.

I could not disappoint. Not myself and certainly not you guys. You don’t come here to read about a spiritual guru who sits in perfection and quiet contemplation—fasting—then sipping warm lemon water while they advise you on all things holy.

Fuck that! You can read Deepak or Marianne Williamson (both whom I adore BTW) if you want to read the obvious. The expected. Perfection personified. THAT is everywhere!

Nope, I broke my four-day fast with bacon—on. the. grill.
Stop gasping, or laughing or applauding, I can’t hear myself think it’s so loud!

Here’s the thing, the kitchen was otherwise occupied Thanksgiving morning. My mad scientist/chef of a husband had the stove and oven firing on all cylinders—but I wanted bacon.
I needed bacon.

So I became inventive, industrious and clever as I utilized all the benefits of a four-day brain cleanse.

I cooked bacon—in a pan—ON THE GRILL! BAM!

Genius! And delicious. And satisfying as hell. It made me so happy I had a stupid grin and bacon grease on my face all day.

See, aren’t you happy it wasn’t freakin’ lemon water? I see you grinning, I can guarantee you—nobody grins all day from lemon water.

Besides, I’m not that girl and this isn’t that kind of blog.

Someone asked me the other night about the blog and I told them this, “I write the blog I always wanted to read: Sassy, messy, with stories of tragedy and triumph, tales of sorrow and success, with a dash of irreverence and a touch of cursing all wrapped in humor…and bacon.”

See that? Clarity.

Carry on,
xox

It’s Tuesday morning.
The start of day three of my sort-of-self-imposed green drink fast.

My stomach is growling so loud it woke up the dog.
It sounds like the insistent, angry growl of a lion eyeballing a Gladiator like a pork chop.

I would kill for a pork chop right now. A thick juicy slice of pig-on-a-plate.
Or bacon.
OMG. Don’t get me started on bacon. If I smelled the savory aroma of bacon cooking right now I would drown in my own saliva—I just know it.

Instead of a mass of bloated puffiness, after two days I am now all gaunt and boney.
Seriously.
Okay. Not really. But anyway.

“Feel that!” I urged my husband last night in bed, taking his hand and rubbing it down my right side.
He humored me with a couple of hand passes before rolling over.
“Those are my RIBS! I can count them. Do you know how long it has been since I could count my ribs? I am literally wasting away.”

I heard him snicker from his side of the bed now to be referred to as Outer Siberia.

On Sunday night, that same guy stood in the kitchen and finished off two pieces of cheese pizza and half bottle of wine while I stood feeding kale into the blender.

“It doesn’t count if you’re standing. Everybody knows that” he responded to my dirty looks. “But in solidarity I’ll eat power bars and protein shakes for the next three days.”

What a guy.
As of this morning, he’s lost seven pounds. SEVEN POUNDS! In TWO days!

I have never weighed myself. I go by how my clothes fit. Besides, for me this is about finding clarity, not weight loss.
Yeah, right.

But my gaunt and boney self wants to hurt him—just a little.
I can’t lie. I’m too hungry to lie. It takes too much energy to lie.

My dreams have changed. They have been colorful and epic in their scale and scope.
I dreamt of swimming and running and laughing and drums.
And so has my sleep.
When my eyes opened this morning, BAM! I was awake. Wide awake.
No sluggish slugginess, no urge to meditate or ask questions.
Just BAM! Up and Adam. Protein shake, here I come!

It’s now 9 a.m. and I’m going out to run all my errands. Too Da Loo!

It is now after three and I ran every errand with the speed and efficiency of a woman in labor on a scavenger hunt.
Then I came home and chopped up some shit, made my mom’s sweet potato soufflé and baked a pie.
I also garlanded a wreath within an inch of its life and planted some white poinsettias while the pie was in the oven. I even found my smile—it was hiding in the kitchen junk drawer.

Who am I? I don’t even recognize me.

So clarity…

It is clear I have waaaaay more energy That is for sure.
And I’m not hungry anymore.
And I may be taking this whole thing a tad too far. I accidentally licked some baked sweet potato off the spoon and promptly spit it into the sink. Crazy, right?

It’s a Decathlon people, not a sprint, and I must not cheat—tomorrow is the home stretch.

Okay, enough chit-chat, it’s time for tea.

Lots of love from your gaunt and boney, seriously delusional, green drinking, whirling dervish, pie bakin’ friend—me.

Carry on,

xox