Halfway through Day 2.

I just made the trek to a gourmet market to procure nine lemons and a big bottle of grade B maple syrup. You’d think that not eating for a few days would save me money, but that syrup is pricey!  This bottle put me back about $27.

For those of you intrested in jumping on the Master Cleanse bandwagon, the magic recipe is:

During the Day

• 10 tablespoons grade B maple syrup
• 10 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lemon juice
• cayenne pepper to taste
• mixed with as much water as you need

“Dinner”

• 2 tablespoons syrup
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• cayenne pepper to taste
• less water (chug it!)
• 1 cup senna laxative tea

The true Cleanse also involves a daily salt-water flush, which I tried last time I did this thing, but it made me feel so ill, and I really don’t see the benefits of flushing my system in such a drastic way when I’m already not eating and drinking laxative tea (which is delicious and has a relatively mild effect several hours later).

As with my previous Cleanse, Day 2 is pretty easy.  I’m not registering hunger as hunger but rather a dull tingling sort of feeling.  As a result, I’m drinking much less of my syrup and lemon juice than I did yesterday.  Cravings are mild, as demonstrated by my easy resistance to the otherwise oh-so-tempting fettucine with pesto cream sauce in the buffet at the market.

Tomorrow, if it’s anything like my first Cleanse, will be very difficult.  Our plan is to have soup tomorrow night, but we might decide to extend this for another day if we feel up to the challenge.  Chris is on soup duty since I have to tutor tomorrow night, and as mild as my cravings might be, I’m looking very forward to coming home tomorrow to the scent of pureed cauliflower and red pepper bubbling on the stove!

Also, in a side note, last night’s “Bachelor” finale was terribly anticlimactic.  History repeats itself, I guess, and Jason turns out to be as big of a douche to Melissa as DeAnna was to him.  Though I hesitate to place too much blame on him, since I finally wised up last night to the fact that Melissa was way too young and way too Dallas Cheerleady to be The One.

Read Full Post »

Day 1.

So Day 1 of the cleanse is coming to a close.  I’ve done OK.  I’ve had some hunger pangs, but I know from experience that I don’t have to pay attention to them.  I drank my dinner and am about to have my special tea.

Things I have craved today include:

• pizza
• ants on a log
• pasta with butter and cheese
• the red-pepper gnocchi with goat cheese cream sauce that I had for dinner on Saturday
• Big Mac (Chris’s suggestion)
• soup!

The final item is a good craving, because that is the first thing I will eat when I come off this stupid thing.  Last time we made an amazing cauliflower-red-pepper soup.  We might have to repeat that one!  I remember that the Saltines we had with it tasted better than anything I’d ever eaten before.  You forget about foods like Saltines when you’re eating whatever you want.  Sometimes the simplest foods taste the best!

We’re shooting for two more days, with a celebratory post-bowling soup on Wednesday.  We can do it!

Read Full Post »

Faster than a speeding bullet.

Tomorrow Chris and I start another abbreviated round of the Master Cleanse.  We did four days in early January, and Chris had done it a couple of times before that for a week to 10 days.  We might just do two this time, depending on what our week looks like as we get into it.

Pretty much, it’s a fast.  You eat nothing but lemon juice mixed with maple syrup and cayenne pepper.  I know it sounds crazy, and I used to think that myself.  But it’s a good reminder of what our bodies don’t need.  We can say no to that extra cookie, or the larger helping, or the snack we aren’t really hungry for.  And we can say no to other unnecessary or unhealthy things in our lives, too!

That said, last time, my will power lasted for about a day after the cleanse was over, and then I pretty quickly returned to my old habits.  I’m going to try to do better this time.  I’ll spare you the glory details, but be warned that I might talk about food in my next few blog posts.  Last time I did this, I spent all of my free time looking up recipes online and dreaming about how good food was going to taste when I got to eat it again.

Read Full Post »

Shopped till we dropped.

Chris surprised me this weekend by accepting my invitation to take him shopping!  I think he just got tired of my asking him, but still.  This was a big step.

We spent the whole day in Manhattan, first at Filene’s and DSW, then at lunch with Nate, then at H&M and Banana Republic, then back to Filene’s.

The tally:

Chris

• 3 pairs jeans
• 1 polo shirt
• 2 T-shirts
• 2 pairs shoes
• 1 jacket

Me

• 3 T-shirts
• 2 blouses
• 1 sweater

I was impressed both with Chris’s stamina and willingness to try on new things and my moderation.  I haven’t been shopping in two months, and for me to come home with only six things (all great bargains) is pretty unprecedented.  It’s amazing how addictive not spending money is!

I can’t wait for next weekend, when I get to show Chris’s mom how well I’ve dressed him.

Read Full Post »

That’s a bad “Word.”

Chris and I just made it through the latest episode of “The L Word,” which over the last two or thee seasons has spiraled downward to become probably the Worst TV Show Ever.

Here’s a list of recent things that have contributed to the show’s being just terrible:

1. In a word, Jenny. I liked her in Season 1, maybe even in Season 2 (and Mia Kirshner is hot!), but she has become increasingly annoying and evil, and this season her character’s just totally unbelievable. She’s still super hot, though.
2. Pam Grier. Was she ever able to act? If so, she’s making it very clear in “The L Word” that she no longer can. Inexplicably, the writers keep inserting her unnecessarily into scenes. Everything out of her mouth is awkward, and now that we’ve done away with the plot points of her alcoholism, her relationship with the super young babysitter, and her relationship with Kelly Lynch (who I’m pretty sure had a penis?), her character is totally useless.
3. Shane being with Jenny at all. That just would never happen. But if it did happen, and if Shane actually stayed with Jenny — even after Jenny did crazy things like turn Shane’s bedroom into an office after they’d been together for, like, a day — then Shane would not hook up with Nikki Stevens in the dark room that Jenny just gave her (which was a totally inappropriate gift, as all gifts from Jenny are). Shane’s not a bad person! She can control her sexual urges! She’s done it before, and Nikki Stevens is not irresistible enough to explain why Shane would suddenly lose control of them now. Though Nikki Stevens is pretty irresistible.
4. The hook of this season is that it began with Jenny’s death, and now we’re backtracking to figure out which of her “friends” killed her. In every episode, a new character becomes a victim of Jenny’s evil ways and promptly says, “I’m going to kill Jenny!” Actually, that’s so bad it’s actually good. I have a strange respect for the writers for being able to even attempt something so stupid. Also, obviously Jenny killed herself. I mean, I would kill myself if I were Jenny!

Oh, I have to stop here. If you watch the show, you’ve had enough of this stuff without my repeating it to you. If you don’t watch, the show is boring enough as a television program; I don’t need to blogacize it.

Why do Chris and I keep watching? I’m not really sure. It probably has something to do with all the hot girls.

Read Full Post »

In case there was any confusion.

I kicked some major butt on Sunday night. You can check my predictions and see for yourself.  Chris didn’t stand a chance!

Read Full Post »

Shaq attack!

I wrote the other day about my appreciation of Shaquille O’Neal and his Twitter activity. Then Chris told me that when Shaq can’t sleep, he goes to Wal-Mart, and when he checks out, he pays for the next 20 people behind him in line or something crazy-generous like that. Then I read this, and any doubts I had about THE_REAL_SHAQ actually being the real Shaq vanished!

It’s really him!

And he tips really well.  Apparently, the man’s got a heart of gold, officially making him my newest favorite celebrity.

I don’t care what my dad says about his spelling. The man’s enormous and typing his tweets on a tiny little cell phone, so let’s cut him some slack. And the whole point of my liking him on Twitter is that he’s funny, not that he’s insightful or literary.  And his tweets are funny mostly because they’re written by a very large, very rich, very famous person.

If you’re not convinced, here are his last two:

• I had a nokia e90 but it fell n da toilet, now I have a shaqberry lol, I’m a toilet twitterer about 18 hours ago from txt

and

• I hate leprekons lol about 20 hours ago from txt

Read Full Post »

In the Olive Garden of good and evil.

I had a truly lovely Valentine’s Day. As you all know, I love chain restaurants and have long thought that my favorite was the Olive Garden, in spite of having only been once before and of being served a wilted salad. But those pastas! All those pastas! And their cream sauces! And unlimited breadsticks! Isn’t there even a bottomless pasta bowl deal?

There was certainly no bottomless pasta bowl deal at the Olive Garden on 6th Avenue that Chris and I went to for the Early Bird Special on Saturday. We thought arriving at 4:15 would beat the crowds (not that there would be crowds at the Olive Garden in New York City, with so many other restaurants to choose from!), but that place was packed. There was a 40-minute wait, so we walked around and stopped in the Container Store, which is an incredible and way-too-expensive store. It’s one of my favorites, and I love to imagine the organizational system I’d choose for my walk-in closet, were I to have a walk-in closet or be able to afford such a system.

It turns out that not only is the Manhattan Olive Garden a popular spot, but it, like the Container Store, is Way Too Expensive! Entrees started at about $18. What? And, as I mentioned, no bottomless pasta bowl. I guess the unlimited salad is only for the basic salad, not the Caesar, which is what I wanted. There were unlimited breadsticks, but while they were delicious with all the butter and salt and garlic slathered on top, they weren’t really breadsticks, more like big puffy loaves.

We got the calamari and beef ravioli appetizers. Both were pretty bad. I love fried calamari, and this was some of the worst calamari I’ve ever had. I’ve had better for a few bucks at a bar. The Caesar salad was overly dressed with watery, bland dressing that only hinted at Caesar. Chris got some Italian sampler with lasagna (actually not bad), chicken parm (I couldn’t even finish one bite) and fettuccine alfredo (admittedly delicious).

I got the chicken and broccoli with garlic-cream sauce, which I’d been daydreaming about since I saw it on the online menu last week. Alas, the chicken was unnecessarily breaded, the broccoli was merely steamed (I’ve recently developed a killer recipe for broccoli, and this fell way short, though, let’s be honest, broccoli is delicious no matter what you do with it), and the cream sauce, like the salad dressing, was watery and bland. The dish’s saving grace was that it used orecchiette pasta, the little ear-shaped guys, which is probably the trendiest pasta out there right now. The Olive Garden’s hip to pasta trends, at least, and it really was a good choice. The sauce, too watery to really stick to the noodles, was able to nestle itself into the cup of each little ear and thus deliver as much of its muted flavor as possible.

Everything was better as leftovers, of course, and no matter that this was my worst meal in New York. It was also utterly hilarious, and I shared it with one of the best things (people) New York’s got going for it. Thank you, Chris, for a wonderful second Valentine’s Day celebration.

Best part: We made it home by 6:30, just in time to watch several hours of TV!

Read Full Post »

Arthur has arrived!

I can’t write much because I am totally absorbed by the newest addition to my family, King Arthur, who arrived several hours ago and has been causing me uninterrupted joy ever since.

I don’t know what this cat’s previous foster family was thinking. How could they give up such a lovely cat? He spent the first hour or so just looking around, sniffing, exploring, climbing. He loves to eat, and I guess I picked the right food and treats, because he seems very happy with them. He’s actually a bit of a cuddler, though Chris was the main recipient of that. He doesn’t run from me when I approach him like Luna used to do, and he lets me pick him up and snuggle him whenever I want. He’s mildly playful, and he’s a grade-A napper.

He’s also beautiful!

I’ll post more pictures soon. This guy is very photogenic.

Read Full Post »

Clean as a whistle.

I forgot to update all of my loyal readers on the shower-curtain situation at the gym.

I had the idea last week of attaching a magnet or small weight to a string tied to a safety pin, which I would then pin to the bottom of the shower curtain and remove when I was done showering.  Chris was repulsed by this idea.  Even though he showers at the gym barefoot, the idea of my carrying a wet magnet around in my bag that had touched the shower floor was pretty much the grossest thing he’d ever heard of.

I still don’t understand his reaction, but I did realize that I was probably not going to rig up the magnet-string-safety-pin combination any time soon (see: Even Simple Things Take Forever in New York). Luckily (especially for that curtain, which I’m not sure could have survived too many more of my foot-beatings), on Thursday I was struck by genius, and I devised the Perfect Solution to my problem.

NY Sports Club provides three bottles in every shower stall: body wash, conditioner and shampoo.  They are removable so that they can be refilled.  I only use the shampoo, because I bring my own soap and try not to over-condition my hair, so I simply take the body wash and conditioner bottles out of their holder and set one on either side of the stall door, tucking the edges of the curtain around them.

It works like a charm.  The only irritating thing about it is having to lean down after my shower and pick those bottles back up, but that takes significantly less effort, I imagine, than it would to unclip a safety pin with string and magnet attached.

Read Full Post »