And now, for something completely different: A cleanse

Have you ever done a juice cleanse or smoothie cleanse or some kind of detox? If so, do you have thoughts to share?

The other day Nick got this wild hare (yes, I know) to do a juice cleanse.

I'm not kidding. I know you think I am, but I am not. He said, "Let's do a juice cleanse. You and me."

I wasn't sure I'd heard him right. And then I was all, does the man know there's no meat or cheese in juice cleanses?

He does. He means it. You guys, he is serious.

This is nothing I'd have ever dreamed of suggesting to him. Or myself, for that matter. Although I've been cleaning up my diet and feeling better for it, so it's probably a great idea.

So I talked to this very healthy friend of mine who suggested that a smoothie cleanse might be better, as that way you're getting fiber as well and less sugar than juice. This appeals to me, as I love smoothies, and also I have a high tolerance for drinking weird stuff.

I've accidentally said before that I have a high tolerance for putting weird stuff in my mouth, but that never gets taken the right way. Plus I'm not up for unusual meats or animal parts. No. I just can't. I think it's just the odd beverages.

Like, when I was trying to get pregnant with India, twice a day I drank these initially-revolting herbs that my acupuncturist gave me. Eventually they were fine. You can become inured to anything, I'm quite sure.

Anyway, enough about me and my proclivities.

Have you done a cleanse? I've been doing some research, and there's the 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse, which is appealing because it seems to be all easy, here's what you do, here's your 10 days of smoothies, live long and prosper.

He says if I figure out what we should do, he's all in. So I want to make a well-informed choice.

I don't know if this is the way to go for the two of us. And maybe 10 days is too long? Although it seems to be to be a good amount of time to really make a positive change in your body. But not if you suddenly feel you really need some emergency soft-serve ice cream topped with pork rinds halfway though, you know?

We'll be doing the same thing, together, each and every day of whatever it is, and it needs to work for our wildly different, well, differentnesses.

Any advice?

Another installment: This one is brutal, so you know

Some of you lived through this night and the following days with me. I've written a lot around it, just not these particular details. And I'm OK - not falling in a hole or dwelling. I'm just writing, working on the writing.

April 19, 2007

By the time I get within a block of the motel I can see the flashing lights of the police cars, the fire trucks, the ambulance. The motel parking lot is a circus of red and white. I get out of my car and almost immediately bump into a police officer who tells me that I need to stay back.

“But it’s my dad!” I say, lip quivering. I wave in the direction of the motel. “It’s my dad! Is he still alive?”

The officer asks me if I have ID with me and I realize I’ve forgotten my purse. Crap. It’s illegal to drive without a license, isn’t it? Fuck. I am a first-born rule follower.

“I forgot my purse!” I wail. “I was hurrying! Am I going to get in trouble?”

No, he assures me, I am not going to get in trouble. He very gently takes me across the parking lot and up a set of outdoor stairs. It’s the kind of motel that is like a strip mall – all the buildings in a line, and you have to go outside to get to any of the rooms. There are an extraordinary number of police and emergency medical personnel. There are probably a lot of onlookers as well, but I do not notice them.

We get to the second floor and the officer says to a couple other policemen who are standing at the end of the hall, “She’s the daughter.”

“Is he alive?” I ask the nearest one. I hold my breath. I’m so scared the answer will be no.

One of them turns to face me and says, “Yes. We can talk in a minute. They’re about to bring him out. You don’t want to watch.”

I watch. I always watch. I cover my eyes at violence and gore in movies, and I hate life-or-death moments in stories, but I always watch when it’s my dad. He’s my dad, you know? What if I look away and miss something important?

They wheel him down the hall, and the officer says, “He wasn’t breathing when we got here. But the EMTs resuscitated him pretty quickly.”

“So he’s OK?” I want someone to tell me he’s OK. That everything will be OK.

“We don’t know how long he was without oxygen. They put in a trach tube. They’re taking him to INOVA Fairfax, if you want to follow the ambulance.”

“I have to get my mom,” I say. I feel like a small child. I need my mom. I need my dad, but, well, you know.

Both officers pull out their cards and give them to me. The one I've been speaking with points out the number of the station, which I can always call. They are very kind.

I start to shiver, even though it’s not particularly cold, even though I’m wearing that periwinkle fleece. I always get cold when I get upset, even if it’s the middle of summer. I read once that when your body is in crisis, all your blood goes to your organs. I imagine the heart needs it most, so it doesn’t break apart in a million pieces. I pull my arms in tight, trying to stop shaking.

I don’t want to ask, but I have to. “What did he…How did…Where was he when you found him?”

He hesitates. I look directly into his eyes.

“Please.”

“He hung himself.”

I nod. I keep nodding. I can't seem to stop nodding.

I will not think about the grammar until much later, when I am saying it aloud. He hanged himself. Hanged, not hung. But in this moment, I do not think grammar. I think about my dad.

My throat is thick, and I struggle for breath. I whisper, “OK. OK, thank you. Thank you for saving my dad.”

You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em...

When I was little, I thought I might like to be a spy when I grew up.

The Mata Hari kind, with mystery and intrigue and cigarette holders and fabulous outfits, of course. Maybe a pillbox hat with a small veil. Not the actual kind that wears unremarkable clothing and has a lot of paperwork and what-have-you.

This didn't happen, as you know, although I still think about it occasionally. Because one, I am small and rather innocuous, and two, nobody ever suspects me of anything.

I once had a tangerine in my bag when I arrived in Miami from South America. I'd meant to eat it on the plane and had forgotten, and when they asked if I had anything on their list of stuff you weren't supposed to have, I said no, and they were all, OK, welcome to the U.S.

And then as I was walking away I realized I had this tangerine and I turned around and said, "Oh! But I do! I have a piece of fruit!"

I handed it to the woman and she glared at me and said with the tone that your parents use when you've let them down, "And you look so innocent!"

So then I was thinking, hell, I should've smuggled some heroin in my anus, you know?

Except that I'm never going use, much less sell, drugs and I'm not inclined to put anything in my anus. Plus, I don't know about you, but that movie Midnight Express made quite an impression on me as a child.

So there's all that.

But back to the spy business.

Everyone once in a while I get a reminder that I would totally and completely super suck at anything requiring duplicity. Because I have no poker face.

Last weekend I was at my friend Rachel's son's birthday party. There was a well-known children's entertainer there, one I've seen perform at her children's prior birthday parties.

So at some point during his performance, while the kids were howling with laughter, I was standing with Rachel and a woman I didn't know. We were talking about the guy's act, and how much the kids were enjoying it.

Rachel said, "He's not charging me for this show. He's doing it as a favor. So I'm trying to figure out what I should give him as a thank you. What do you think?"

I almost blurted out, "How about a nice blow job?"

Almost! But somehow, uncharacteristically, I didn't!

I said nothing. I just stood there quietly, as if considering the question. Inside, however, the words "blow" and "job" were flapping about, dying to escape.

And Rachel, she knew. She raised her eyebrows and pointed at me, smiling. "I see what you are thinking, and I acknowledge it. And I commend you for not saying it out loud in a room full of children. I was thinking more along the lines of cash."

The other mother said, "Fifty bucks?"

Rachel said, "That's probably about right."

What do you think about this?

This is a tale I've told before, but I'm approaching it differently.

October 1987

I’ve now spent just over a month at Carolina, and I am struggling. I will not learn for a couple more weeks, when I catch a ride home and see my mom, that my dad attempted suicide in September. He's in an institution in another state. He'll be home in a month. I'll certainly see him at Thanksgiving.

Oddly enough, it doesn't seem to affect me that much.

I know now it is because I am already in a depression and hurtling toward the bottom of a pit, so focused on my own pain. Let's be honest, however; the news is not helpful.

When not attending classes, I can chiefly be found drinking before or at frat parties or sitting on the floor of my dorm room eating chocolate covered peanuts and crying. My friend Ann, who lives down the hall and also has one good and one insane roommate, works at Student Stores and introduces me to bulk candy. To this day I've never had better chocolate covered peanuts. Never. A friend of hers rings them up for me cheaply. I buy pounds and pounds at a time and eat them all.

By mid-October I am well into the 40 pounds I will gain before spring. None of my clothes fit anymore. I cannot stop crying, and I cannot stop eating. I once eat an entire jar of my roommate's peanut butter with a spoon in one afternoon.

Somehow, despite this, my roommate Lesley (of the peanut butter) and I form a friendship that  endures to this day. We live in a ridiculously tiny triple room with no air conditioning and two closets. Lesley is an interesting, French-speaking, well-traveled deadhead from Charlotte. When we meet and she learns I went to high school in India, she thinks it is cool. She doesn't ask me if I meant Indiana, or if I lived in a mud hut. She turns out to be unusual in this regard.

Eventually, I will get so tired of being sincere about India, about how we lived, about how modern it is, that I begin saying "yes" to every question. Yes, we rode elephants to school. Yes, we had tigers as pets. Yes, we lived in a mud hut. Yes, yes and more yes.

This was before the Internet. I imagine it's different now.

Our other roommate is Laura, a cheerleader from Goldsboro, who hates Lesley on sight because of her tie-dyed T-shirt and Birkenstocks. She does not know where India is, and feigns interest when I show her on a map.

She mistakes me for normal, that first day, and so it takes her a good week or two to begin hating me as well.

We are both afraid of her, although we outnumber her. Laura, she has a look. Plus, she can eat three M&Ms and then leave the bag. Who does this? She claims an entire closet for herself, leaving us to share the other, and we do not contest it. She is small but she is mean; she punches the wall really hard after a fight with her boyfriend.

Because she doesn't talk to either of us, we only suspect how much she hates us until we begin reading the journal she is required to keep for an English class. Lesley opens it one day, and all is confirmed; she loathes us utterly and completely in poorly written, unimaginative prose. Fortunately, for the six to eight weeks she lives with us before moving out without notice, Lori spends the bulk of her time out in the hall with our shared phone talking to her serious boyfriend. When she's around, however, we drop crumbs of things she's written into our conversation. She knows and she purses her lips tighter.

Laura begins hiding her journal under her bed. With the good snacks. Does she think she can treat us that badly and still expect us to respect her privacy? Or snacks?

We know the precise date she is moving out because we read it in her journal. We count down gleefully. We make sure to spend the entire day elsewhere, and when we return to our pantry of a room, it is entirely, gloriously ours.

Revenge is a dish best served...at 98.6 F?

Have you ever had a dog that punished you for going away? Or maybe for doing something else they didn't like? Maybe other pets do this as well?

I have no idea. Dogs for sure.

On Saturday India was particularly incensed that I was putting her down for a nap. Violently opposed. Enraged.

She made it clear that she was in no way interested in napping. Nope, no thank you. No. Back arch. NO! NONONONONO NAP! NOT TIRED! DON'T YOU DARE TAKE ME UPSTAIRS! I'LL CUT A BITCH! JUST TRY ME! NOOOOOO I DON'T WANT TO NAP!

Although he no longer naps, Jordan and I have this agreement that I tell them both that it's nap time, and he goes up very agreeably, ostensibly to sleep, and India is supposed to follow suit.

In the beginning he didn't know how to play it, so he would whisper across the room, "BUT I'M NOT REALLY NAPPING, RIGHT?"

And then she would hear it and so I would have to say, "Everybody is napping!"

Which would cause him to wail, because he'd feel tricked. They'd both be having fits. But now he knows.

So off he went. "C'mon, India! Let's go nap!"

He headed for the stairs and I said, "Oh, thank you Jordan! Look at Jordan. I'm so impressed with him for going up to nap!"

And she was like, "See ya, suckah! I'm staying right here! Hey, Ma, pass me a beer and the remote, wouldja?"

So I said, "I know I know like to play and you're having fun, but it's time to nap. You can play again after you nap."

I read that this kind of wording is how to couch it instead of being all hell if you think you're not napping.

The nap,  it's really not negotiable. She needs her nap. She falls asleep and sleeps solidly for 2-3 hours. She wakes friendly and happy.

My darling girl skips her nap and she's evil. And so am I. So I scooped her up, asked her if she wanted a diaper, which she rarely uses for naps anymore, and put her in her bed. Here you go, here's your bed, I love you, see you later.

She raged for a bit, as she often does, and then she got quiet, and I thought she'd gone to sleep.

About 10 minutes later I heard the door open. She walked down the hall and said, "I pooped, Mama."

She looked very pleased with herself.

Now, sometimes she will ask for help, and sometimes she will just head off and use the toilet, which is commendable, but she doesn't know how to wipe and quite frankly it's a disaster when she slides off, pulls up her pants, and goes on her merry way.

So I said, "That's terrific! Let me look at your bottom!"

I took her over to her changing table and then I realized...that she'd pooped in her underwear. It was everywhere. And it was vile.

Rage Poop.

She smiled a smug little smile.

She'd taken a rage poop, just like my dog Gloria used to. She'd punish you for going away by pooping in random rooms.

This wasn't an I-was-stuck-and-suddenly-had-to-poop poop. No. This was revenge.

On the one hand, I was practically retching, trying to get her clothes off. I won't get into particulars, but let me pose a question asked by a dear friend of mine in response to my situation: does anyone digest corn?

And on the other hand, I was impressed.

I don't like to think of myself as vengeful, but if I'm being completely honest, I am, at least in my mind. I don't often act on it, but I did consider peeing in the corner of our wedding venue.

I told Nick about it and said, "She's a smarty pants. It's gotta be satisfying revenge. Don't you wish you could do something like that?

And he was all, "What, so you're always going have a little poop saved for later, in case you need it?"

This is why he's considered the practical one.

Actually, I've long wished I could vomit on demand. Sometimes you're in a situation with another person that you kind of loathe. Perhaps a work meeting. Or maybe you bump into someone you worked for years ago, who you genuinely believe to be an agent of the devil. Or what if you were being assaulted?

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could puke on them at will?