Nothing a little DCA cannot fix

Sometimes I get a certain way.
Maybe I'm a little edgy. Maybe I can be saucy on occasion. Maybe.
I'll admit it's possible.

When I get this way, Lucio usually has to intervene. Take me out.
Distract me with something sparkly.
Keep me off the phone with the people who call asking us to support the Police Benevolence fund.
Like 4 cents on the dollar from these cranial giants actually gets back to the local police. And they are so not listening when I tell them 6:10 pm is not a good time to talk. So, yes, call again every night this week at the exact same time...

He usually knows when I am approaching the precipice of cray cray.

Yes, he's a good man. Or maybe, just maybe, the whole reason I married him was because he actually knows what I need before I do. Yikes. Good thing he doesn't read my blog.

Totally serious.
He doesn't read a word of it.

Tangent.

Here's my side of a recent conversation we had after a dinner he claimed to have made.

Technically, he re-heated pork chops I had cooked the night before, steamed a bag of brown rice from Trader Joe's in the microwave and opened a can of green beans and put them in a pot. He gets to count this one as "making a meal" and therefore I am on clean-up, which is redonkulous, because he didn't actually cook anything as much as he made stuff I cooked hot again, but I digress.

"Don't you need to go to DC sometime soon?" Lucio asked with a shaky voice. "I think you maybe need to get home soon."
'
"Why exactly?"

"Um, well," he stammers...

"WHAT?" I snap the cabinet closed. My husband seemingly is unaware that the clicking noise means the cabinet is closed and will stay that way.

Straightening his spine, he clears his throat. "Every 6 months or so, everything about Illinois starts to really bother you. Before it's me or the kid, or in the interest of our mortgage, one of your colleagues, maybe you should try to book a weekend back east."

I cock my head at him and smile. Every six months? Perish forbid I am becoming predictable.

"For how long have you known this?", I ask, loading the dishwasher.

"Since you ran away the first Memorial Day weekend we lived here and you didn't let the ear infection Jack was nursing get in your way."

"Well that was different. Flights were cheap and he could still sit on my lap for free."

"I also remember the following October when he was not under the age of two, nor did he have the slightest interest in sitting on my lap for any length of time and you told the airline he was just about to turn two, even though his birthday was three months prior so he could still be free. But you wanted to have margaritas with the girls and go to some exhibit with Leslie and swoosh - off we went to DC. And none of this is important. Jack told me you used your horn twice today after picking him up from school. There are only three traffic lights between his school and our home. In that space of time, three horn uses seems excessive. You want to wind up in the paper? It's a small town, Heather. You need your east coast fix."

"Fine, smarty, but I went to the library and Walgreens after I picked him up, which involves like 11 lights."

"Are you or are you not the same woman who used dream of a cigarette lighter plug in hair-dryer for your nine mile, 45 minutes commute from the ghetto house to American?"

"That would have been a totally amazeballs inventions and I am for sure not the only one who would have used it. But, yes, maybe you're right."

"I am sorry. Someone used their horn in front of our house. Can you repeat that?"

"You're right. Almost everything and EVERYONE in Illinois is annoying me lately. Present company included."

Silence.
So happy is he to hear these words he's singing a little song as he makes his way down to the basement.

"Don't you want to know some of the things that are making me crazy?" I call after him.

"Do I have a choice?", he replies from the bottom of the stairs.

I can hear his damnable grin from the kitchen.

"You did. Now you don't. In the past three days, our surname has been mangled by no fewer than seven people. Vaz. Quez. Like it's two words. Like there's a pause in the middle. And even when I said it correctly to a couple of these people, they repeated it back incorrectly. They make the QUEZ part "kwez".

Then I went to arrange for a campus car for an upcoming trip and I was told it was a vee-hicle. Not a car and not a vehicle. But a VEE HICKLE. Again with the making two words out of one. Why again can we not call it a car? Turns out, here in Illinois, they are all vee hickles.

Then, while Jack was in Tae Kwon Doe, I chatted with a woman who was so artificially tan - fake bake tan, you know, from light bulbs, who looked like Magda from There's Something About Mary - who tried to give me a free pass to her tanning salon. And she's sitting there the color of maple syrup and I politely decline and tell her I don't like to use tanning beds. I laugh and point to my whiteness. You know what cafe crayola tell me then? "Oh, a tan always make you look better." Um, listen much? So I told her, no, actually, it's the vacation at the beach that usually makes me look better and the tan that comes with it from spending my days languishing in a beach chair watching the boys race cars across the sand is just a really nice perk.

She smiled at me, clearly not understanding, and that's when I realized in lieu of vacations, this raisin goes tanning to look like she's been somewhere! The irony? The only place she looks like she's been is on a watch list for the next George Hamilton dating show! And she had that Illinois Angle haircut. And you know how I feel about that. Then she leaves me the card to get a free tan and says "Just make sure they see my name on the card." Um, hello?

And lastly, I had woman in my office today who is educated in the traditional sense - all sorts of letters after her name - who stood up at the end of our meeting, thanked me for my time, turned around and upon seeing my signed photograph of me with my arm around HILARY RODHAM CLINTON asked me, "OMG! Do you know Ellen DeGeneres?"

I take a deep breathe and wait.

Still waiting. He knows I hate waiting.

"Honey? Are you there?"


He pops his head around the corner.

"They're still getting our name wrong? Really?"


"I KNOW!!"

"You should really tell the girls about this in person. Maybe there's a deal on Airtran?'


Seriously, who's better than him?

Deep Cleansing Breathe

Of all the things I've tried in my efforts to make there be less me without losing what is innately moi, this was by far the worst.

Super far.
Can't get there from here far.

Way worse than the breathe that accompanies the complete lack of carbohydrates. I guess what with a good portion of a cow and 43 eggs doing the hokey pokey in your belly, breathe is bound to get rough.
But wowsa.
The smell of dog shit is the closest I can equate it to. In your mouth.

Jarringly worse than the cabbage soup gas. An overachiever when it comes to flatulence, the cabbage soup diet put me in the Olympics trials. Easy.

Even worse than the "oily anal leakage" situation from 2001 when Lucio was forced to ask the question, "Ah, Dios Mio, Heather, what did you eat?" as he woke in a bed quite literally full of orange oil.

Stupid Dorritos.

A simple cleanse. For three days, no food. Sounds like something Goldie Hahn would do. Admittedly, she'd probably do it to jump start her no doubt marrinated liver, but whatever.

Here were my instructions.

No food.
Just OJ, Pineapple or Carrot juice when I found myself hungry.
Water all the rest of the time.
Work out like normal.
Hungry? Have 5-7 ounces of juice.
Hell, if it's day 2 or three, you can even add Apple Juice to the mix.
Keep drinking water.

Par...tay.

Toxins. OUT!!!
Caffeine addiction. BEAT IT!!
A quick 5 pound loss. COME ON!!

Originally, I thought if I started on Friday, it would some how be easier.
For me, it's too hard to be that disciplined on a Friday.
It was almost impossible for me to not eat on Saturday, what with all that goes on in our world on any given Saturday. Like I don't want to cook, and we have pizza and usually go out for at least one meal on Saturday.

Oh, and I forgot to buy juice.
Whoopsie.


So, I begin my fast in earnest on a Sunday.
The Lord's day.
Sounds meant to be.

I muddle through. Barely.
Lucio takes lead with child, as I am cantankerous by 2 pm without benefit of diet coke.
Actually, I kept dozing off, what with no outside influences of energy in my system.

I find napping helps almost everything.
30 minutes can be magical.
Try it. I dare you to be as whatever you were before you let yourself doze off watching Toddlers & Tiaras. If nothing else, you know you're a better person than those nuts.

Just a little pearl of wisdom from me to you.

I make it through work on Monday and Tuesday basically without too much trouble because, well, it's work, and I am expected to not just think about myself there, and I almost always manage to meet that expectation.

The paycheck is a solid motivator.

Almost always.

Tuesday night arrives. Trip my way through a Junior League meeting.
Avoid snacks, water and invitations to grab a cocktail post meeting.

Head home for the finale.

Oh, did I not mention?

The Finale goes like this.

Stop drinking and eating at 8 pm.
At 9 pm, drink a combination of 2 pints of olive oil and 2 pints of lemon juice.
Lay on right side.
Be still.
And wait.


I know? Right!

I choke down the olive oil/lemon combo. Do them in one NOT CLEAR container.
Trust me, you don't want to see what's in the glass. I don't like remembering what it looked like.

But, on the other hand, if I ever need to induce vomiting, I do have the image now to get things started.

I brush my teeth.
I lay down.
I am still.
I taste like Italy.
I brush my teeth again.

(I bought really expensive olive oil. If I am going to drink it, and pretend it's a drink, it's going to be the best I can find)

Lying there, I begin to congratulate myself.
Such discipline. So strong.
"I'm every woman...it's all in me... anything you want...."

I wonder when I will have to go to the bathroom?

Oh, that's right. I haven't told you about the real finale.

Like, in a scary movie, when the naughty killer is downed by our heroine, and she turns to check her wrongly accused beau, and then she turns around, and poof dead bad guy is GONE.

Oh my! Where did he go?

He's right there!! With one last evil deed in him!
BAM. BOOM. BLAST.

That is what it going on in my tum tum.
Keep staying still, Heather.

"Baby, you're a firework...come on show me what you're worth..."


Wait. What is that?
Uh oh. Urgent and seizing.

Quickly to bathroom.

Door closed.
Fan on.
Time for the final finale.


The final finale is all about the, um, output.
If you've done this correctly, it's entirely possible you're are going to finally part ways with a cheeseburger you ate in '87.

In the form of green pellet like substances.
The size of peas.
At top speed.

Well, I did it right.
Way right.

It sounds like a firing squad had our toilet bowl in its cross hairs.

The noise jostled my usually fairly oblivious husband from his permanent seat in front of the computer doing homework.

Hurrying down the hallway, Lucio calls, "Honey bunny, are you okay?"

"I think I'm alright."

"That didn't sound alright."

"It didn't feel great either, but I think it's okay."

Gripping the side of the tub, I wait for everything to settle down.
Which it totally does.

I go to bed, and basically, pass out.

Nine hours later, I wake and I am horizontally across our bed, with Lucio gripping the side and using his Columbia fleece as a blanket.

I get up, scrape my tongue clean, use the loo.
Stripping down, I step on the scale.

7 pounds down.
S-E-V-E-N P-O-U-N-D-S!!!!

Totally worth it.
It wasn't that bad.

Completely doable.
Highly recommend.

Just make sure you buy good olive oil.
That's the key.

That, and being able to not accidentally chew your own elbow off when you just cannot stomach another ounce of OJ.

Maybe it was be easier to just watch what I eat and exercise.

Damn it.