The Fast: Day 7 - Deleting Facebook Friends

I cannot tell you how good this cinnamon tea smells right now.  It has been a full week since I stopped eating solid foods.  I find myself walking around my neighborhood smelling the fresh tortillas being cooked just for the pleasure of it.  This weekend I’ve watched numerous individuals eat delicious food while I sat back sipping my lemonade, admiring the texture of the food; noticing how people were eating way too fast and feeling very curious.

People have been asking me exactly how I’m able to not eat for long periods of time.  I’m not sure how but I can tell you this: I HATE everyone on Facebook that feels the need to post pictures of their delicious amazing food!!  F***ERS! Seriously?!  Does everyone find it necessary to take pictures of their food before eating it?   Those are the people that will soon be deleted from my friends list.  You’ve been warned.

Just kidding, I mean, I’m like Jesus when he fasted, experiencing nothing but moments of clarity and epiphany.  I haven’t been dreaming of pasta with scallops, shrimp and a spicy marinara sauce.  I haven’t been missing my regular whiskey or red wine.

Why do I torture myself by adding this picture?  I am a serious masochist..

I’ve actually been doing really well – in the past when I’ve done the Master Cleanse the detox symptoms were very unbearable.  I would experience headaches from the lack of caffeine the first day, extreme fatigue, extreme hunger pains etc.  This time around I’m going to parties until 2a.m. and dancing while watching people eat pizza and chips with hummus.  I’m working out every single day and trying new machines at the gym because I have so much energy.  I’m staying up late and getting up early.  I’m focused and my mind is very clear.  My olfactory sense is sharpened.  Colors seem brighter.  In short, I feel fantastic.  A little hungry maybe, but I feel good.

One of my yoga teachers will make us get into the most uncomfortable and difficult positions and then hold it for 5 – 10 breaths.  Usually, this is the part of the class that I’m silently cursing her very existence in my head and asking myself why on earth I decided to come to this stupid class anyway while my whole body begins to shake.  This is when she says to “smile through it.”  Having no other resort I listen and smile.  Then it doesn’t seem so hard after all.

I’m not saying this hasn’t been hard.  It is hard, but I guess I’m taking my yoga teacher's advice and smiling through it.  Taking it one breath at a time and deleting friends on Facebook.  J  Just kidding.

33 more days to go!

THE PLAN: 40 Day Fast

THE PLAN

I haven’t eaten solid food in four days.  That’s right, no morsel of cheese, fruit, rice, chocolate or even coffee has passed these lips in four days.

My plan is to fast for a total of forty days.  Maybe I have a Jesus complex or maybe I’m just crazy.  Perhaps I should explain myself.

I started doing the Master Cleanse Fast about five years ago when I first started getting into alternative health practices.  The Master Cleanse is essentially this:

• Raw lemon juice
• Organic grade B maple syrup (more nutrients than Grade A)
• And cayenne pepper

All mixed with natural spring water or filtered water with as much non-caffeinated herbal tea as you want and a laxative taken every morning and every evening.  Sounds delicious no?  The master cleanse is to be done at minimum 8 days with a recommended 10 days.  My plan is to do 10 days and then an additional 30 days of juice fasting.  I would like to clarify that this is not a water fast where you consume no calories a day.  This is a fast where you are consuming between 1,000 – 1,600 calories a day – it’s a liquid diet.  This is how I’ve been able to go to work, exercise and participate in social and business events/meetings without any adverse affects for the past four days.

Juice fasting is a less severe version of the Master Cleanse and nutritionally robust fast.  It will be my first time doing it and as such I don’t know too much about it other than the basics which is this:

• Buy a bunch of fruits and vegetables
• Put them in a juicer (but don’t mix fruits with veggies or vice versa and voila!  Breakfast, lunch and dinner are served – in a glass.It’s essentially like eating all raw – in liquid form.

The longest fast I’ve ever done was 13 days and my blog originated from documenting the fast.  We are coming full circle.  No doubt fasting for 40 days will challenge me in so many ways.  This is like a death wish to my social life.  Ever notice most of our social activities revolve around food or drinking - both of which I can't do?

Whenever I tell people I am fasting, they get tense and ask me all sorts of questions and then tell me that what I am doing is unhealthy for me.  I’m not a doctor and neither are they usually, but I can tell you this:

• I feel amazing when I fast.
• I have so much clarity.
• I have a lot of energy.

Best of all, I enter into this zen-like calm; a euphoric state where I forget my body and become closer to all that is consciousness and more than that, all that is love.  I start to see my higher self. (whoa, Jen come back to earth) – nah, it’s much nicer here…

A disclaimer: I am not doing this to lose weight.  Before starting this fast I had lost twenty pounds through changing my diet and exercising.  The weight loss of course, is definitely nice side effect, but overall I am doing this for me.  I can’t take off to Mexico to meditate in a cave for three days straight so maybe this is the next best thing.

P.S. I know people think they are looking out for you when they try to tell you what is “healthy” and “unhealthy” but before you start typing comments below regarding what you THINK – do some research – some hard, cold research.  People have been fasting for thousands of years (not to mention in prehistoric times food was not readily available and our bodies are adapted to be able to support fasting).  Animals fast naturally when they are sick.  You might take off on a vacation from work to clear your head.  You might sleep or rest your body after a grueling work out but what about our digestive system?  Doesn’t it seem unnatural to NEVER give it a break?

Summer in the City

I know, I know….I’m sorry I haven’t blogged in a while.  It’s funny though, I forget people actually read this thing until I stop writing on it for a little while and then have people writing me emails or seeing me and saying “Hey what’s the deal with your blog?  Dammit woman, WRITE!!”  Just kidding, they don’t say that last bit, but I know that’s what they mean.

Allow me to explain:  it is summertime in Chicago.  It’s this rare and fleeting season where everyone is social and out and about, myself included.  There are street festivals, music festivals, endless parties and I’ve been quite the social butterfly.  

Summer in the city and there’s cleavage cleavage cleavage.

I am dedicating this post to Chicago and its summer splendor.

There is this sense of adventure in the air every time the humidity hits you at night.  As the warm wind caresses your cheek you forget you’re in a huge city and are transported to a kinder place.  You let your guard down; you let your hair loose.  The nights seem endless not only because you have all the 4 a.m. bars memorized, but also because everyone is in the mood to be social and be seen.

You see friends you haven’t seen in years walking down the street; you pitch a spot at some music festival and make new ones.  There is a romance to the summer that isn’t captured at any other season.  The time stops, the days turn into nights with such an easy transition you almost miss the red sunset.

Then of course, there’s the city in all of her glory.  Rooftop parties give way to a postcard snapshot of the Chicago Skyline lit up like candles on birthday cakes.  As the humidity increases your dreams intensify, colors seem brighter, your friends: more beautiful.  You embrace chance encounters and passionate conversations while refilling your vodka tonic.  You don’t know the song but you keep dancing to it anyway, waiting for the rhythm to switch and make you feel new again, like you’ve never done this before.

 The night is yours.  You own it but can never tame it.  You thrive in its wilderness, the ignorance of where this night will take you, to whom the lake breeze blows you.  Summer in the city is swinging in the park at 2 a.m. and letting your wet skin breath in the night air with your good friends.  It’s an ice cold beer over some old buddies at a barbeque.  It’s a big bite of fresh mangoes and peaches with the juice running down your chin.  It’s a first kiss with a stranger.  It’s a moment so precious and beautiful.  It’s fleeting.

That being said, I’ll get back to my regular blogging in the fall.  Thanks for your understanding.

Love,

Jen

Why I Really DO Love My Solo Life

What the hell does it say about me when my friends send me articles like this:

 

 “Lol-this article made me think of you: Ladies if You Want to Pick Up, Wait Until You're Ovulating."

  

I guess the advice is useful and from an evolutionary and genetic standpoint, it makes sense, but WHAT exactly do my friends think of me if articles like this remind them of me?

I went to my parents’ house a few weeks ago. We went out to eat and afterwards my mother decided that we should go to the huge statue of the Virgin Mary (Virgén de Guadalupe) to pray. I’m not one to pray to Christian relics (read more here), but she’s my mother so I reluctantly sat on the bench with her looking at the flowers, candles and souvenirs: the physical embodiment of heartfelt prayers left at the Virgin’s concrete feet.

I watched my mother’s face as she focused hard on something. I asked her what she was praying for thinking that maybe her cousin’s passing had weighed heavier in her mind than I had originally thought.

She turned to me and said, “I am praying that you find a husband soon.”  

Oh.my.GOD!!! I didn’t know whether I should burst out laughing at this statement or take it seriously and thus take a more sensitive approach. I couldn’t hold it. I laughed. Hard.

“Yenny, you know that this is how Juliana found her husband. Her mother prayed and prayed to La Virgén and now look, she is getting married.”

“Oh, I thought she was getting married because she’s seven months pregnant, but I see your point, it must be because La Virgén willed it.”  

“Yenny, la Virgén makes miracles happen.”

What the….?!?! Me finding a boyfriend is not a miracle! Oh dear God, is it? Maybe, considering the shitty dates I’ve had lately. Well, in that case, I guess I used to be a little miracle machine – like for more than 6 years of my life and I can tell you it didn’t feel THAT miraculous.

I had a conversation with some single friends of mine regarding everyone else’s’ emphasis on relationships. I didn’t notice when I was first starting my career how everyone always asked if I had a boyfriend. I must not have noticed because I gave them the right answer. I was always in a relationship; as such, people reacted very warmly to this asking me for details about whatever boyfriend I had at the time. It almost seemed comforting for others around me to know I had a boyfriend, especially my family, despite whether or not they liked the guy I was dating at the time.

Now all of a sudden someone asks and you say you’re not seeing anyone with a huge smile on your face and there’s still that silent awkward little pause or people say: oh don’t worry, you’ll find someone. Really? Oh good, I was worried that I was going to die alone with those nine cats that I’m allergic to in a lonely apartment on the south side with no friends and no children to take me to a nursing home. Thank you for reassuring that that won’t happen to me.

In these blogs, I feel as though maybe I focus on the bad parts of being single like the horrible dates, but truth be told, no one likes to read about the good ones because that’s boring. Also, I don’t go on good dates because I care too much about the blog and you fine people. 

But today I’d like to list the things I love about not being in a relationship:

• I have made SO MUCH art! I’m talking drawings, music, writing…
• I come and go as I please with no need to explain anything to anyone. Save for my job, I’m truly free to do what I want when I want without need for discussions or compromises.
• I’ve met so many new friends that I feel like I will know for life – some from having gone on dates with them and realizing that amazingly lovely friend vibe rather than a romantic one. Not being attached to a relationship opens doors for many other types of relationships to enter your life.
• I love finding comfort in feeling unsettled. It drives me more than most things in life. I am completely portable at all times. The world is my oyster – I can roam through it at any time seeking only to please and care for myself.
• There’s a sense of complete uncertainty that authors and poets romanticize in their memoirs that seems more prevalent when you’re single. The kind where you don’t know exactly where you’re going or how you’re going to get there, but you know you’re going somewhere. Freedom breeds a certain type of youth regardless of age where the ride of your life could be parked on the corner of the dance studio you pass by or it could be waiting for you downstairs from your favorite coffee shop.
• It’s summer and everyone tends to wear less clothing and since you’re single, you can look AND touch.  
• You actually have time between your job and career oriented activities to nurture your hobbies, go back to school, and hang out with new and old friends.
• You don’t feel dependent on anyone. You are a full and whole person on your own. Regardless of how independent you may feel in your relationship there will always be shared activities and things that the other person takes over doing for you because they’re better at it (like dividing household chores or finances or even being the “strong one” usually). When you’re alone there’s a growth that occurs that is unparalleled to growing with another person. Many times it’s from having to do those tasks you don’t like; or having to be that person that you’re not best at being (like the serious one when you thrive on being the fun one).
• I love being my own best company and being completely content without missing anyone else when I’m alone.

Things Not To Say to a Girl on a Date Part II

Sad that there is a Part II to this…read PART I here.

Note this is not the same person, but alas some men are just not that bright.  Ah...the joys of being single!  Here we go:

• Don’t call me “Sexy Mexy” on the first date. 
• This is only okay on the third date only if you’re funny enough to me to pull this off.  Very few are.
• Do not take photos of me on your phone while I’m putting oil in my car (because I started to smell something burning – a common occurrence when I drive my car) and then ask me to pose “like Megan Fox.”  Really?!?  Many thing are wrong with this:
• It draws awkward to attention to the fact that I have a really shitty car.
• I can pour my own oil, but shouldn’t you be offering to help or something?
• I bear no resemblance whatsoever to Megan Fox and I’m pretty sure she probably has a nicer car than I do.
• Why the hell am I driving you around?



My car looks pretty similar to this...

• Don’t ask me midway through our date if the other friend I was with the night you and I met is single. 
• Don’t take the last sushi roll and act like you’re going to feed it to me and then eat it yourself and laugh about it afterwards.
• I know I have big cheeks and some people think that’s cute but DO NOT pinch my cheeks.  I don’t need anyone making up for the years I’ve gone without seeing my grandmother.
• Don't lower the volume on my car radio.  I like my music loud and it also drowns out the sound of your voice thus creating a more pleasant environment for me.

Trust me, I wish I was making all of those up.  Had to drive the guy home and told him to get a book on ettiquette and not to call me.  Good times.

Las Lecciónes de Don Jesús: Part I

Start here.

It was raining when I arrived at his house.  I could see him from across the street watching me as I braced the rain without an umbrella carrying an oversized laundry bin up the stairs to the door.  It was so oddly characteristic of him to be watching out his window.

When you’re young, you have this romanticized vision of the elderly watching life happen to other people staring out of windows, but that’s not why it was so…Jesús Montenegro.  It was him because he’s got to be one of the most anxious people I know.  In fact, when I have my brief moments of neurosis I often blame him as being the genetic carrier and I as his offspring (once removed of course) get to now be neurotic about what else I carry in my genes too.

“Hola Abuelo!” I say smiling and wet.  He doesn’t seem to be receptive of my hug (maybe because of the rain) and he steps back to allow me and my dirty laundry to enter while chuckling.

“What is that?” He asks.

“Laundry,” I reply.

He doesn’t waste time with the pleasantries of small talk or ask where I’m coming from but instead walks me down to the basement and leads me to his washer and dryer.  This is another uncanny characteristic of my grandfather.  Work always comes first. 

When I was in high school, I was the first of my friends to get a job.  In my family, as in many Latino families, there was such a strong emphasis on working that sometimes it trumped the value of studying.  One who does not work must therefore be lazy, goes the logic.  And let me tell you, when you are raised my a mother like mine, the last thing you want is to be called lazy.

We walk back upstairs to the kitchen and make some tea.  I pull out my journal and say “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

He looks at the journal and then back at me and says that he doesn’t feel good and that sometimes when you don’t feel good you are in no mood to tell stories.  I sit back quietly and rethink my approach.

The reason I find myself in Little Village visiting my 86-year-old grandfather is because I want to document some of the rich living history we have as a family.  My grandfather was born and raised in Mexico and in all of my 27 years I don’t remember the last time I sat across from him to really have a conversation with him about himself, who he is, what he was, his passions, life lessons and what fills his mind these days alone in his house. 

I’m not here to place a hatch mark on my good deeds list, I am here to write and my subject doesn’t feel like talking.  I put my journal away and start telling him about my day.  He tells me about his aches and pains and then I start asking him random questions about my uncles and aunts. 

“What year was Uncle Adrian born?”

“1950.” He fires back barely blinking.  Don Jesús’ memory, even in his old age, is sharper than mine.  He remembers names, dates, times, places but I must warn the reader that my abuelito isn’t this cute old man we imagine our elders to be.  He’s tall with a strong build, broad shoulders and a shiny bald head on which he always wears a hat.  He’s tan with brown freckles dotting his still handsome, yet much older face.  At 86 years old, he is probably healthier than most 60 year old men.  He rarely eats red meats or sugars, only drinks tequila on special occasions, limits his bread consumption and eats his five – seven servings of fruits and vegetables daily.  He walks on his treadmill for exercise during the colder days.  In short, he has the type of discipline I wish I had inherited instead of the neurosis I did inherit.  It’s fairly easy to see why he isn’t the type of person to inspire pity, that is, until you start asking him how he’s feeling.

“My stomach hurts.”  I grimace.  I had just gotten him to forget about his maladies for a good twenty minutes.  I find myself treating him like a child: trying to trick him into forgetting about his body; trying to trick him into retreating into those stored memories of his mind and get so lost in there that he makes the same face I make when I write.  Once I accomplish this, I pour some more tea and start again.

To be continued….

Obama, Osama, Yo' Mama and a Llama

Something wasn’t sitting right with me when I woke up to two text messages from friends and a BBC news alert on my phone this morning. It’s not just that I had been having nightmares for the past two weeks. I’d gotten used to waking up startled and examining my body for bullet wounds or bites from wild animals. This morning was different; I didn’t wake up to a nightmare, I woke up what many would call “justice being served,” ten years late.

Justice is such a tricky little word. It means so much to so many that its meaning begins to become this diluted version of righteousness before your very eyes. All across my social media feeds my fellow countrymen and women were rejoicing at the death of Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. 9/11: a date weighted so heavily in our young history. We all know where we were when it happened. For me as well as for many of my generation: it will be a story we tell our children, our grandchildren...

Examining everyone’s reaction this morning I finally see that we weren’t just a country in mourning in the months that followed the attacks. We were a country in defeat. 3,000 deaths no longer meant grief, instead it meant: how could some third world countryman outsmart me? I’m American. I come from the best country in the world!

And so we sent out our troops, invaded countries with no REAL basis for being there. It was like watching doctors provide temporary pain relief for the external symptoms without ever addressing the disease. All this happening, while folks paraded in the streets trying to be appeased by a little monkey’s plan for retaliation against mysterious forces that were as intangible as they were hidden.

America, I thought we were making progress, truly. I watched history as a black family moved into the most prestigious white house in the country. I saw little instances of change slowly but surely, reaffirming a recovery from eight years of hell that forced me to hide my passport while I was abroad.

I was even back on the road a couple of months ago proudly telling everyone that I was an American, a Chicagoan; a Patriot.

This morning: all of a sudden, I’m back in 2002 and there are these bloodthirsty people chanting “America! America!” I know I won’t be of popular opinion today, but there was something very disturbing about all relishing in the death of someone; not just death but what we could assume to be the brutal killing of someone. I could follow logic quite well; an eye for an eye; tooth for tooth, but this isn’t the logic I am partial to.

I am not in mourning for Osama Bin Laden.  When you participate in war there are consequences and casualties. That is a reality for everyone: whether you are in the military, love someone in the military, are in Senate seats signing bills or just some plain patriot like me.

I won’t, however, parade around touting the American flag today. This is not a victory I want to celebrate. It doesn’t bring back 3,000 lives; there is no closure to some wounds even ten years later with the death of terrorist. Just ask the survivors of concentration camps if the death of Hitler made them feel better about what they've experienced.

The only upside to this is that my tax dollars won’t go to funding ten more years wasted to “bring justice home” and I won’t have to listen to the same people asking, “whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden?” as an easy critique of any unpopular administration. At least politically, we can let this one rest in peace.