...Raw

Let me tell you about my experience with the Raw Diet.  Or, more appropriately (although I’m a not proud to admit) the 7-Day Detox Diet.  Let this be a warning to you.  (Although my friends and family are typically more intelligent than me so they probably don’t need to be warned about this).  But first let me back up 17 days.  Two weeks on the road equals eating out (tastes great…questionable nutritional content), airport food (doesn’t taste great…don’t want to think about the nutritional content), few trips to the gym, and a sleep cycle that has been turned around 180 degrees.  Literally.  So after 17 days of Hawaiian Sushi, Japanese Ramen, Korean Kimchi, and airline chicken (lots and lots of airline chicken), I came home to a freezer containing nothing but leftovers from Thanksgiving 2011, some expired pie crusts, and a frozen bag of edamame.  So I do what any sane American who thanks God that she was born in this blessed country would do, I throw the bag of edamame in the microwave, open a bottle of wine, and order a pizza.  And then I do what any jet lagged traveller who has travelled over 17,600 miles over a 12 day span would do, throughout the weekend I drink multiple bottles of wine and ate like I was 15 again.  Tired, jet lagged, and overall feeling like crap I had a fit of jet-lagged brilliance, I needed to shock my system back in to a healthy state of balance.  Which leads to the crazy idea of a 24hr fast.  Which leads to the even crazier idea of a 7-Day Detox Diet.  Which leads ultimately to this post.

Here was the plan:

Day 1: Water

Day 2: 100% Fruit Juice

Day 3:  Raw fruits and vegetables

Day 4:  Raw fruits and vegetables

Day 5:  Raw fruits and vegetables

Day 6:  Raw fruits and vegetables

Day 7:  Raw fruits and vegetables

Spoiler Alert:  Its been five days and I’m typing this while drinking a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and munching on some rotisserie chicken.  Obviously not a convert to the “7-Day Detox Diet”.

Let me be clear upfront that I’m not a fan of “dieting”.  I’m a fan of nutritious eating while maintaining a healthy lifestyle.  A healthy body is the product of one simple equation:  Good Calories In is less than or equal to Good Calories Out.  I’ve lived by this basic equation for a long time so I’m not really sure why I got it in my head that I needed to do a 7-Day Detox Day.  I blame this whole thing on a jacked-up sleep cycle.

After Day 2 it turned from a health kick to a dummass idea.  After Day 3 it turned from a dummass idea to pure morbid curiosity.  The interesting thing was that I wasn’t hungry, I just didn’t feel right.  I’ve gone on a hunger kick before.  (Don’t worry mom, it wasn’t a weird eating disorder…it was another example of morbid curiosity).  A few years ago I had read the book “They Poured Fire On Us From the Sky” about Sudan refugees and I wanted to see what true hunger felt like.  I made it 48 hours and wanted to eat my shoe.  The weird thing was that this Raw Diet wasn’t like that.  I wasn’t hungry, I wasn’t miserable, I just didn’t feel right. So, after five days of this little experiment, I quit.  So…with that background, let me discount some of the oft-seen propaganda found on websites (if you don’t believe me check out webmd.com, the oracle for all responsible self-diagnosers).

Crazy Propaganda Websites:  We eat so much poor, processed, nutritionally-deficient foods today our organs need to be flushed out periodically.

Me:  Um…no.  Our organs are the product of 10,000 years of development, getting stronger with every generation.  One week of uncooked vegetables will not improve 10,000 years of evolution.

Crazy Propaganda Website:  You will feel sluggish but that is just the toxins leaving your body.

Me:  Um…no.  That is the biological response to your body not getting enough nutrition

Crazy Propaganda Website:  You will feel like you want to do nothing but sleep, that is your body craving processed junk food.

Me:  Um…no.  That is your metabolism slowing to a standstill.  A natural survival reaction perfected over thousands of years in response to famine.

So, the outcome here is that after Day 5 I’m typing this while eating chicken and drinking a glass of wine.  Not a raw vegetable in site.  Well-balanced eating…recommended by healthy, sane individuals everywhere.  

...Jet Lag

Jet lag is a lonely affliction.  Morning jet lag isn’t bad, it typically happens overseas so its a good lonely.  You wake up at 3 AM and lay there for a few minutes thinking you can fall back asleep.  You eventually resign yourself to your state of heightened alert and turn on the TV.  You soon realize every channel is a different language but you get a kick out of finding something you recognize, maybe a dubbed over action movie or a bad version of the Simpsons.  Sports highlights are always good because you don’t need to understand the announcers.  That novelty wears off after awhile and you decide to get up and see what this place has to offer.  You’re excited that you’re in a new world.  You make coffee and watch the sun come up, smiling because back where you were it is the middle of the day.  Or the middle of the night.  Either way you’re somewhere new and different.  You think about the expanse of the oceans and start tingling because you have something new to explore.  You’re alone but you like traveling alone.  Even if you’re travelling with someone else you know you have a few hours to hang out with your favorite travelling partner until you have to make an appearance.  You may go for a run.  Or take a walk at dawn.  You start planning how to make the most of the trip, you don’t have a meeting until late morning so you can hit up that cool looking coffee shop on the street.  You know you’ll be done early one day so you pick up a guide book and develop a plan to check out that palace.  Those ruins.  That beach.  Morning jet lag in a foreign country means the start of a new adventure in a new place and the less time wasted asleep the better.

Late night jet lag is different.  It's lonely.  It's depressing.  You are home after a long trip.  You’re thinking about what was left undone, both here and back there.  You’re thinking about your inbox at work.  You’re thinking about your mailbox on the street.  You have this nagging twinge of guilt.  You’re not sure why but you start to explore it.  Its completely irrational and you know it but you cant help it.  Guilt grows…did you leave a steaming pile of poo at work before you left?  Did you forget to pay your power bill?  Did you really have to skip the gym while you were gone?  Did you thank your second cousin twice removed for that really nice Christmas card a few years ago?  Did you show your mutt how much you loved him when you were twelve?  Anxiety inches in…did that meeting you were out for go well?  What time is it?  What’s the best way to organize your closet?  You move to the couch and turn on the TV, hoping that a complete review of your DVR will put you to sleep.  You think about eating but nothing sounds good.  Maybe a glass of wine?  Nope.  You lay there some more.  Episodes of Archer crawl by in 30-minute increments.  You make the far-reaching comparison that its a mirror to your life.  30-minute increments of life passing by without noticing while you’re half asleep.  Then you realize you’re being completely overdramatic.  You look back on your trip and wonder if you took advantage of it to the fullest…you know you wont always have this opportunity.  You start thinking about things that have been long buried.  A college friend you ignored at a party.  High school opportunities you passed up.  Your 2007 taxes you didn’t file in time.  What in the world is that noise and why have you never noticed it before?

Jet lag is lonely.  There’s two solutions to jet lag:  never travel or suck it up and stay on the road.  I’ll pick the road.

...March 22nd

If I’m ever questioned by a fat, sweaty detective in a cold concrete room while sitting on a folding metal chair with one bare lightbulb hanging overhead and asked where I was on March 22nd then guess what, I’m safe.  March 22nd didn’t exist for me.  Seriously, I flew west and suddenly I was missing a day.  Best.  Alibi.  Ever. I’ve had days disappear before but they’re typically associated with a pounding headache, obscene ATM receipts, and 6 hours of fuzzy, blurry, blackness.  This day, however, simply didn't happen.  I left Hawaii at 11AM on March 21st for an 8 hr flight and landed in Tokyo at 3 PM on March 23rd.  March 22nd did…not…exist.  I introduce (drum roll…) the International Date Line.

The international date line blows my mind.  I’m still trying to figure it out.  I consider myself a relatively intelligent individual but I can’t wrap my mind around this concept.  I’ve laid in bed at night wide awake suffering from 180 longitudinal degrees of jet lag and tried to figure it out.  I’ve stared at the globe in the Hemingway Corner of my house and tried to work through it.  I’ve spent more time than I would like to admit thinking about time zones and how they work.  I always make it to the Pacific before I give up and just accept that days disappear and reappear depending on which side of that imaginary line you’re on.

Seriously, have you ever crossed the International Date Line and not had your mind blown?  I don’t ask that in an elitist “I’m a world traveller, are you?” kind of way.  I ask that more as a warning of “seriously, if you haven’t crossed the international date line, beware, it will mess with your reality!”

...Allegories

So I knew this couple once.  I’ll resist the urge to put that in quotes.  Quotation marks annoy me.  People who pantomime quotation marks while speaking really annoy me.  Almost as much as laugh tracks, because laugh tracks seriously annoy me.  But I digress…

I knew this couple once.  We weren’t friends.  I didn’t even really like them.  In fact I didn’t like them at all.  They weren’t, how do you say, “accepted by the community for being good neighbors”  (WTH!  Quotation marks!  Argh!).  Well about two years ago this couple separated.  I was happy to see them split and hoped the divorce would be quick and easy.  To be honest, I was rooting for her; I hoped she would get the house and start taking care of the yard while he disappeared in to the mountains to spend the rest of his days studying zen.  Or something equally as passive.  Unfortunately that didn’t happen.  It soon devolved in to an all out civil war.  Seriously…civil war.  It turned ugly.  Real.  Real.  Ugly.  Everyone knew he was a complete asshole, but recently she had started consorting with known felons, drug dealers, and gang bangers; you know, the upstanding citizens of Cell Block I.  Fights started breaking out at all hours of the day and night.  Soon the whole neighborhood was talking about the chaos.  There were lots of discussions at dinner parties and BBQs and wine tastings about how crazy and tragic it was becoming, but no one actually did anything about it.  She started calling all her new found friends in for help.  Or maybe it wasn’t her inviting them over, maybe it was these dregs of society seizing an opportunity to turn this once-quaint cottage in to a crack house.  Who knows.  We all had our own problems and no time or inclination to figure out there’s.

Well, I’ve got this friend.  He saw what was going on across the street and thought…hey, she needs some help.  She talks about HOAs and painting the shutters and if someone would only help her kick that deadbeat out, she could exterminate that herd of possums living under the front porch, start following the by-laws and rejoin all the other fine upstanding citizens of the neighborhood.  This friend of mine is a good dude, I won’t deny that, but maybe a little naïve.  Or maybe its just that he’s new to the neighborhood and wants to prove to the rest of us how truly philanthropic he is.

So what does he do?  He gives the drug dealers and gang bangers and known felons 60 million dollars to help her take over the house.  And the real ironic part?  He had just told his kids they were going to take a 20% pay cut in their allowance because he couldn’t afford it.

Too obvious?  Ya.  Probably.

...Self-Planned Pity Parties

The only thing I want to do before I PCS this summer is go to Jumpmaster School.  OK, wait, lets be honest…maybe not the ONLY thing.  I’d also like to win the lottery; cure cancer; or find a cache of gold buried in my backyard by a hereto unknown Ponce de Leon expedition (disregard the fact that A – Ponce de Leon did not explore north of the 30th parallel; B – I would have to excavate through 3 feet of pine needles to even reach my backyard; and C – I’m pretty sure I don’t even own a shovel).  Let me clarify…the only REALISTIC thing I want to do before I PCS this summer is go to Jumpmaster School.

Well…this girl was ready to go.  Knew the nomenclature cold.  Killed the pre-test (thanks Jon for tipping me off to iron my Hook Pile Tape Lowering Line!)  Memorized pre-jump verbatim.  Three words:  Ready.  To.  Go.  One more word:  Motivated.  Not a fan of that word but Army people like it so I’ll use it in this case.   So “motivated” she sat outside for two hours prior to show time in 20 degree weather to attempt to get a walk-on slot.  I am not making this up…2 hours.  20 degrees.

I won’t expound on the gory details of why this girl didn’t get a slot.  We’ll just say it is not easy for a non-division individual to walk on to the 82nd ABN Division Jumpmaster School.  That doesn’t make this girl any less disappointed.

So what does she do?  Well, to be perfectly honest, she begins to execute the Plan B she started to devise after 1 ½ hours of standing in the cold and realizing she probably wasn’t going to walk-on this month.  She works a hard slot for the next month’s course.  She moves some duties around at work.  She pushes back her PCS timeline to take in to account the fact she will be pre-occupied for the month of April.  She basically resets the conditions that were perfect in March to make them perfect in April.  But then what?  She’s still disappointed and while enacting a plan of action appeases her Right Brain; her Left Brain still wants attention (I have no idea if Positive Thinking and Self Pity emerge from diametrically opposite hemispheres of the brain…but I bet you would have accepted it as fact if not for this aside, huh?).  So she pouts.  She mopes.  She leaves work a little early and puts on her UW fat pants and declares it a night of Taco Bell and beer until she falls asleep on the couch watching Family Guy.  This will be the perfect self-planned pity party to celebrate not getting her way at 6AM that morning yet still scheduled to get her way at 6AM four weeks from now.

And then what happens?  Her phone beeps and it’s a friend “hey, you want to go grab a beer”.  As much as she wants to pout, mope, and be fat and lazy…social interaction takes priority.  And then what happens?  He invites her to jump with them on Thursday.  OK, fine, as much as I want to feel sorry for myself, if I can’t go to JM school this month, strap-hanging on a C130 jump is a decent consolation prize.