Thursday, 17 May 2007

Day 6

After gifting the terrible lemons to an unsuspecting friend the night before (I felt guilty, but he couldn’t taste the difference), we were left with a bunch of limes. Luckily they were organic limes. I got up at 6:00, planning on implementing my SWF-right-before-I-leave policy, and started juicing my limes. It took a long time. This was the first run on the new juicer (the chem-lemons were juiced by hand), and I didn’t realize just how awesome our awesome juicer was until it took me almost 45 minutes to juice the limes. The juicer did give a lot more pulp, which, depending on what you read, is good or bad for the cleanse. With no time to strain, I mixed the juice, hopped in the shower, and tried to get ready while downing the drink as fast as possible. I finished about half of it with no more than 5 minutes to spare when…it hit. I’m sorry, what? Well, as I was racing to down the stuff I dumped a lot more salt in than I normally do, and that can change how you are affected by it. I, apparently, needed more salt. I spent the next 25 minutes in the bathroom, and then I had to just run to work and deal with it. Luckily, the trains were also running slow…though that did give me an excuse when I called in to say I was going to be late (I swear, they were running late!). My boyfriend ended up drinking the second half of my concoction, and he, too, was immediately affected. However, because it was only half, I don’t feel I was fully cleansed (…the eliminations never hit the “flushed” stage).

I made it to work with no accidents, and just hit up the restroom a lot until almost noon. The limes were pretty good for me, mild in the beginning, but it seemed like their acidity grew as the day went on (I don’t refrigerate my juice). My boyfriend said his tasted like the limes had gone bad by the end, maybe his had. He did, however, say that his fizzy water was really good. I don’t actually like carbonation (I shake it out of sodas before I drink them), so it wouldn’t be fun for me, though if you have the money and the predilection, I suppose it’s up to you. I imagine you’d get gas after a while, though.

After I got out of work my task was before me. Buy Organic Lemons. We had no limes left and our “best” source of groceries was out. I quickly went to Whole Foods, where they didn’t have organic lemons OR limes anywhere. I was so shocked I waited in line at the help desk, asked where they kept them and they said “nah, we don’t have any.” They even called the stockers who couldn’t say when they’d get them in. So I backtracked and went to Dean&Deluca. None. It was starting to get late by this time, and I was hoping places wouldn’t close. I hopped the train back to Brooklyn, and walked up and down the streets looking for likely grocers. I went to D’Agistino. Nada. At this point I was considering quitting the cleanse. There were no lemons and I would not put a non-organic lemon to my lips again. I started thinking about OJ, then I realized I’d have to find organic oranges. Things were not looking good.

I went to a tiny natural foods store, right as the grates were going down over businesses. They had them. I nearly jumped for joy. Then I proceeded to wipe them out. I got mostly lemons, and a couple days of limes for me. I made sure to get 10/day for the remaining six days so we wouldn’t have this problem again. As I paid for them, the clerk immediately realized what I was up to. “Master Cleanse?” she asked. I conceded. “I must have sold 90 lbs of lemons today,” she replied. It seems the entire city of New York is on the cleanse. (and there IS a lemon shortage due to erratic weather in CA, which has put farm workers out of jobs. To sign a quick letter to your senator to help them out, go here: www.ufw.org/freeze/ ) Some of the lemons were a little green, which worried me for juicing, but since lemons don’t ripen much after their picked, I just put them in the fridge and got out some tea. By this point, the first sip of the tea made my stomach gurgle, it knew what it was in for. And I knew what I was in for: another early morning. I tried to get to bed early, but it seems 11 is the best I can do, and with the fiasco in the morning I was setting my alarm for 5:00 again. Thrills.

Total lbs lost: 4

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