Day 2: Not my idea of foreplay

Smoothie ingredients: Mixed greens, apples, strawberries, banana, flax seed, Naturade soy-free protein powder

Taste: Mildly salady and pleasant

Mood: surprisingly good!

Smug points: 17

Genuinely, I feel good. I am having a ginger kombucha, partly because it has a wee bit of caffeine. The lack of caffeine and the shakeup of my morning cup of tea routine have been the hardest part, I think. It's not that I've necessarily been hungry - I just want particular things.

So although I was wondering to my friend Meg last night why I jumped into a 10-day cleanse rather than a shorter one, and why I utterly lack moderation, right now I feel good about the whole thing.

Because listen. What I really want to talk about today is fecal matter.

Now, if that sentence bothers you, go ahead and stop reading right here. Because the upcoming sentences are only going to get worse.

JJ Smith, the cleanse author, focuses quite a bit on the importance of keeping your bowels moving in order to keep eliminating toxins. I picture it kind of like a DC bus at rush hour. You're all squished in and uncomfortable and you have to exit through the back door and everyone feels better once enough people have gotten out.

Of course, in this scenario, sometimes you're the poop. But in any case, it's always a relief to get the hell out of a bus at rush hour.

And now that I've written all this I realize that I've just compared a DC bus to a colon, which, um, sorry if you take public transport. You're not the poop. Also, did I ever tell you my friend Jen got peed on once in a DC bus? But that's a whole nother story.

So there's this sentence in the book that I've read aloud to a variety of people, because it's such a gem that I cannot resist. "One product that really works wonders at getting at the old fecal matter in your colon is Mag07..."

I just...never thought about old fecal matter in my colon. Or old fecal matter at all.

Old. Fecal. Matter. Have you ever seen The Little Mermaid? If so, you know those mermaids who have been zapped by Ursula? They're grey and despondent, nearly lifeless, unable to break free,  waving in the current. This is how I imagine old fecal matter in one's colon.

But more importantly, yikes! So then! Then in the chapter Five Detox Methods to Enhance Your Cleansing, I read this bit about colonics.

Because listen to this: "The average colon weighs about four pounds, but it is not at all unusual for colon cleansing to flush away as many as 10 to 20 pounds of stagnant fecal matter."

Can it be true? Twenty pounds is so many pounds! So is ten. Even five. Any! Any stagnant fecal matter seems like too much stagnant fecal matter.

If you Google "stagnant fecal matter," it only gets worse. Stagnant fecal matter seems to be the devil. I'm not kidding.

So now I really want a colonic. And I want Nick to have one. He's not so interested.

I just know his colon is full of old lamb chops and beef and sausage pizza and such.

So last night as we were heading for bed I said I'm getting him a colonic for Christmas. I know he's got 20 pounds worth just waiting. It's going to be great.

And then he patted the bed next to him and wiggled his eyebrows and offered to knock some of my stagnant fecal matter loose.

I said that kind of talk might be considered foreplay in New Jersey, but it's no way to get me into some sexy time.