8:00am:
Morning juice drank and to-go cup full. 

9:45am:
Booth setup at market with 2 hours to spare and a rumble in the tummy. 

10:00am:
Quiet time at nearby coffee shop sipping tea to warm the body and fight off tummy rumbles. 

10:40am:
Return to booth to find that neighbor has broken one of my clocks. 

10:41am:
Get in cat fight with clock breaker because she is refusing to compensate me my cost.  She has no idea I've barely eaten in 4 days. 

10:55am:
Win the cat fight by taking a pair of her earrings which she intends to sell. 

11:00am:
Drank to-go mug of juice while preparing for the flood of customers to come.

12:00pm:
Market opens and tummy is satisfied. 

12:10pm:
No flood of customers and tummy is starting to rumble. 

12:50pm:
Feeling light headed when Dearly Beloved calls to say he's bringing me some juice. 

1:00pm:
Hoping for that juice to arrive before I make a fool of myself by passing out. 

1:15pm:
Juice arrives!! 

1:16pm:
Juice is drank and that husband is eating dumplings covered in curry sauce.  

2:00pm:
Mom arrives to work booth so I can take a break and spend time with my family. 

2:45pm:
Eat fried egg taco.  Peppered.  Mayo-ed.  Delicious!

4:00pm:
Leave home after not spending anytime with family loving the food in my belly.

4:30pm-6:00pm:
Hanging out waiting for customers. Any customers.  Occasionally taking toffee samples from nearby booth. 

6:05pm:
Buy glass of wine and slowly sip for the next hour while chatting with my Indie Made crew who have also resorted to drinking. 

8:00pm:
Drive home as fast as my cold slow Rabbit will take my hungry grumpy self. 

8:40pm:
F*uck it!  Cook up and eat veggies instead of juicing.  Throw in some scrambled egg and cheese for perfection and pour a glass of Cabernet juice. 

9:00pm:
Bliss. 

I had a big oops on day 3.  Things were going well up until late into the afternoon when I suddenly felt so so fatigued. G-Sauce had been snacking on crackers throughout the day and was in a far better mood than he had been for days, so I decided to try some food.  I got a banana and peanut butter ready to nibble and feel better, spoon in hand, but the gosh darned thing just would not go down my gullet.  It was about this time that my family sat down and dug into some pizza, G included, making me feel REALLY hungry.  I juiced up some juice and drank. Then I juiced up another cup and put it in a to-go mug.  Nana arrived to watch the kids while we went out to see The Descendants (good movie).  I drank my juice on the way and was feeling pretty good when we got to the theatre.  We walked in and I noticed that G had stopped at the concession line.  I told him I would go get us some seats while he got what he wanted, for he had obviously given up on juice for the day.  He joined me in the theatre a bit later with a beer and my biggest weakness... A BIG tub of popcorn with extra butter.  Yes, I ate.  I ate more popcorn than my shriveled up stomach wanted me to.  It was yummy.  Surprisingly, I woke up wanting juice this morning. 

In other news, I will be setup at The Procrastinators Market today and tomorrow on 9th and Myrtle, downtown Boise, from 12-8pm.  Do stop by and check it out. 

Day 2 was, as expected, a bit more difficult than day 1.  I found that my stomach was slightly growly all day long and that my sense of smell was heightened.  Every time I opened the pantry to get some ginger to juice or make something for the kids, there was an amazing whoosh of spices that would fill my nose and make me want to eat.  I probably drank more glasses of juice than the day before because I was feeling hungrier.  Juicing is still tasting good.

One of the tricks I'm figuring out is that the juice is way more satisfying if you sit down and treat it like a meal.  Really enjoy every sip of it and take your time drinking it.  After having a glass of juice, my body feel totally satisfied.  The satisfaction wears off a lot quicker than when eating food, but satisfied none the less.  I've not been craving anything specific and I don't feel like I'm lacking in nutrients.  

Here are a couple of photos:

This is what our refrigerator looks like currently...

this was my lunch.  I love the layering that sometimes happens with the juice.  I believe this cup had beets, sprouts, carrot, ginger, spinach and kiwi.  Or something close.

 

I would say that overall day 1 went juicy sweet.  I didn't ever feel hungrier than I usually feel during the day and the fresh juice was tasty.  My mouth did water a couple of times while out in the world.  A world full of restaurants and nice houses cooking up wonderful smelling food things.  I smelled nachos, steak, fried chickens.  Q-Bear had my mouth watering during dinner time when she made french toast for her and Screamers (who of course wouldn't eat any).  From what I can tell, that girl whips up a good batch of french toast.  Not that I could have eaten it even on a normal day (gluten allergy).

I did feel a little grouchy in the evening hours.  I was getting tired and G-Sauce had just cheated by eating potato chips and left to go play poker for the night.  Screamers was also especially scream-y for the evening.  I think I would have been able to stay in a decent mood if these 4 factors hadn't happened all at once.

I went to bed feeling satisfied in my tummy, did the 2 hour nighttime fight with Screamers, woke up with a kink in my neck but fully rested and am surprised to see that I slept for a full 8 hours and was still sleeping soundly when my alarm went off this morning.  I don't typically sleep so soundly or lengthly.  Perhaps it's because my kids both slept well too or maybe it's because I juiced all day.  I don't know.  Both.

Let's bring on day 2.  For some reason I expect today to be the hardest of all the days.  We shall see.

A few days ago we sat down and watched this documentary, Fat Sick and Nearly Dead, where this man who was suffering from obesity and some strange skin disease decided to take on a 100% juice diet for 60 days.  In the end he managed to clear up his disorder that he had been popping handfuls of pills daily to keep under control and lost nearly 100lbs.  I missed the last half of the show but what I saw was interesting and his results speak for themselves.

Fresh pressed juice is YUMMY!  For those of you who have never had a decent juicer or tried fresh juices, I highly recommend you get on that.  My only qualm with juicing is that it's a pain in the rear to clean the juicer and you end up with mass quantities of pulp.  There's a lot you can do with the pulp (baked goods, compost…) but how much pulp does a person really need laying around?  I made some carrot muffins from pulp once and found it to be a bit bland since all the yummy carrot juice had been extracted.  So we tend to just toss the bulk of our pulp.

After watching this documentary G-Sauce showed an interest in trying a juice cleanse.  I'm typically up for a challenge, especially ones that do a body good, so I told him I would join him on a 10 day juice fast or feast.  I suppose in our case it will be more of a juice feast since we won't be limiting the amount of juice we drink.  We start today.

Since I had tomato soup for dinner last night, which is basically juice anyway, I suppose maybe I started last night.  I'm sure I will come across some difficult times over the next few days.  I tend to eat a lot during the day, taking the time to enjoy every bite.  I prepare a lot of food for the kids all day, tasting things while preparing.  There's also the food that is left on plates after the little tummies are full which I am not above finishing off for them.  

I'm anticipating tomorrow to be the hardest.  Maybe the next day too.  I'm hoping that by day 4 I've had awesome will-power and am feeling grand.  I intend to keep a log on my blog and would appreciate any encouragement you might have to help me keep on the detox track.

Someday I will miss waking up at 2am to the silent stare of a nightmare frightened child breathing 4 inches from my face.  I will miss waking at 5am to the screaming demands of "CHOCOLATE TOAST… MAMA, MAMA… CHOCOLATE TOAST!!"  I will long for the surprise of jumping out of bed to quiet one child and find that another has either snuck into my bed or has to be stepped over to get to my door.  My heart will miss it's early morning bursts that is caused by the adrenaline of trying to keep a quiet house for anyone who is still sleeping.

Someday I will miss how no matter how much and what kind of food our kitchen is stocked with, it's never the right thing.  Or the right cup.  Or the right spoon.  

Someday I will miss reminding my 5 year old to get off of the toilet and move on to the next thing.  She gets quite comfortable sitting there.  I will miss how she "likes to take her time" and spends half an hour to do a 2 minute task while I wait and wait.   I will miss the way my 2 year old can fly off the hook if I put his left sock on before his right one when that is the way he wanted it done.  Or the right one first.  Or when he changes his mind halfway through.  Then all over again when the sock storm has cleared and his tootsies are covered, ready for shoes.

Someday I will miss making two peanut butter sandwiches completely different from each other, yet seemingly the same.  I will miss sorting out the mess of making sure everyone is happy with what they have, even if all they really want is the other… No matter what it is.  

Someday I will miss the mass quantities of stuff that somehow end up in my arms.  How every arrival back home I find myself left alone in the garage bogged down with so much stuff, that magically appeared, that I can't open the door to enter my home.  A home that can instantly become booby-trapped with little plastic hazards and things out of place creating many opportunities for an arms full lady to fall on her face.

I will, I WILL, miss nap time.  

Someday I will miss the tricks used to get everyone to stay at the table for the entirety of dinner.  I will miss the family chant of, " Eat it all up! Eat it all up! Eat it all up!  EAT IT!!!"  I will miss doing crazy dances as a reward for nibbles and bites taken.  I will miss getting up from the table 4 times before my first bite, and another 5 times before I've finished my cold food.  Q-Bears dinner time knock knock jokes will be missed along with her questions about all the bad things in the world, like tsunamis and the wrath of God.

Someday I will miss the way any mention of bedtime creates a huge hunger in little tummies.  I will miss making my kids brush their teeth twice because they just had to eat something after story time and tooth brushing.  I will miss screaming at Screamers at 10:30pm because he just won't go to bed in his bed.  Or my bed.  Or anywhere.  I will miss going to bed alone and waking to find that my whole family has joined me.  One of them sleeping sideways.  I will miss the comfort of my couch.

HOLY $H!T!!  I'm alone in the house for the next hour…..!!

We have a tree!  And it's just now December.  Wow!  I absolutely love having fresh Christmas trees in the house.  They make the whole home smell like the forest I grew up in.  

We may have jumped the gun a bit this year, but I was too excited and couldn't wait until Christmas was closer.  This is the first year that we have been able to relax at home during the holiday season.  Years past have claimed our minds and bodies making us push harder and harder day by day for an entire month (sometimes longer) to get custom jigsaw puzzle orders shipped out in time.  There was never time or energy to get a Christmas tree early enough to really enjoy it.  Usually by the time we would go out and pick one up, they would all be half dried out, picked over and marked half off.  It was usually just a couple of days before Christmas and we would look like zombies due to having worked long hours for extended periods of time.

I remember one year during our holiday rush, we would be out in the puzzle warehouse until 2am cutting puzzles.  Then a lot mornings I would get up extra early, pick up an Egg McMuffin and coffee, head out to the warehouse and start prepping puzzles to be cut by 6am.  Some of those late nights my lifelong friend Kelly would join us and bring us a bottle of whiskey and help us pack up boxes.  It's quite amazing that we never messed up an order in the wee hours of the puzzle buzzing nights.

Another year that was especially memorable was the year the Q-Bear was born.  She was due right in the middle of our holiday rush and I was miserably swollen.  So swollen that when I would go to the doctors, whoever I was seeing would poke my giant purple feet and go "hmmmm…."  Then they would tell me to do the impossible… Keep my feet elevated most of the day.  Right.  Like I can keep my feet elevated when my job requires me to stand 85% of the time and we're working into the night and through the weekends.  So we know this baby is coming any day and I'm supposed to stay off of my feet.  Puzzle orders are flying in and all have a deadline of the same day.  Baby didn't come so my doctor decided to induce me on the 14th.  Can you guess what the 13th was like in the puzzle factory (which we had moved into the basement of our new house, wanting to work from home because of becoming parents)?  It was insane.  I stayed up until about 11pm working with G-Sauce, then decided to try and get some sleep.  He stayed up to try and clear out a couple of days of work so we could go have this baby.  Around 1am I started having contractions and figured I would go downstairs and help with the work since I couldn't sleep anyway.  My contractions were light so we worked until 5:30am at which time we decided to go to the hospital.  We weren't supposed to be there until 7, but my contractions and nerves got the best of me.  Of course the contractions stopped once we got to the hospital and my doctor had to induce labor anyway.  Dearly Beloved was so tired from being up all night that he kept falling asleep while I was laboring.  When we got home with our little bundle a few days later (had to spend an extra day in the hospital because of feeding issues) we got right back to work.  

Our mailman absolutely hated us.  Somedays we would have up to 45 boxes stacked up outside our front door for him to pickup.  He would always come to our house around 6pm because he knew that he had to go empty his car out first, then come back.  He had to work late because of us.  It would be cold and dark out there and I loved standing near a window where I could hear him cussing while picking up all our boxes.

So this year the puzzle factory is happily living in Montana where all manufacturing is being taken care of by a family member.  We are home, not working ourselves crazy.  Instead we get to enjoy this holiday season.  We've put of a tree and strung some lights outside, the stocking have been hung with care.  I made an advent calendar for the kids which they will get to start digging into today.  I have also signed up to do a couple of local holiday shows with my jewelry.  It's all very fantastic.  I plan to enjoy that tree all month long.

This sweet, loving, little pup of ours who was so calm, gentle and shy when we brought her to her new home has done what all puppies must do.  She has become a pest!  I knew it would come but I must say I was hoping that it wouldn't.  She's been home with us for a week and a half and has quadrupled the amount of times you hear the word "no" in our home.  She doesn't go to sleep if either of the kids is playing in their rooms… When they too should be sleeping.  She is quick to grab and run off with anything fun looking or soft left at her level.  She is constantly crawling under the couch and getting stuck.  Her favorite game is to chase the kids and listen to them scream.  Her puppy teeth are sharp and have poked holes in some of my clothes.  She has pooped on the carpet which is the exact color of poo making it hard to find until the whole house smells of that poo smell.  She thinks it's time to wake up anytime I shift in my sleep during the night.  She has a great talent of backing the kids into corners and making them cry first thing in the morning.

Despite all of this puppy behavior, she is still undeniably a good puppy.  Yes, I have to admit it.  We have only had one thing destroyed by her which can be replaced for about $1.50.  She has had a couple of accidents in the house, but is basically house broken.  She does great in the car even without being put in a kennel.  She knows how to sit and has been getting better about staying when told, though her attention span could use some expanding on that one.  She has been quick to learn how to walk on a leash with me and already sits at my side when I stop walking.  If she gets in trouble for doing something she seems to remember to not do it again.  We step on her a lot, but that's only because she always wants to be so close to us.  She's very fond of the kids and even though they can't handle her excitement when they're cranky, they love her too.  Not bad for 11 weeks, right?

Unfortunately she is impossible to take a photo of.  She's just a shiny black fluffy thing that looks like a black cloud or something similar when photographed.  She's growing fast too and I'd really like to get some good puppy pictures.  I'll keep trying and share some photos when I snap any that actually resemble a puppy.

My good friend, Lady Vox, posted a blog post recently whining about this statement:

“If more females would sit down and be ladies, then more males would stand up and be gentlemen.”

She has some decent points about how it's not exactly up to the woman to decide how that man over there is going to treat her.  Either he's kind or he's not.

Her post, along with an incident at lunch the other day, got me wondering why the word "woman" is so often used negatively and categorically.  G-Sauce and I were at a beer house working and having lunch recently when this girl (I'm not going to call her a woman per her wish) about my age came in and started looking over the drink selections.  Our friendly neighborhood barman seemed to know her and asked if she would like a glass of wine.  Her response made me feel very uncomfortable, and let it be known that I was sitting a few feet away from her drinking a glass of wine.  She very loudly laughed and half way hollered "Wine?!  Who comes to a beer house and drinks wine?  Women, that's who.  Women who aren't as cool as me and you."

At first I was thinking that she's ignorant and should know that some people, like me, actually have a medical reason to not drink beer and that doesn't make me not cool.  Sure they have a couple gluten free beers there, but they just don't usually taste that great to me, so I chose wine.  Then I was thinking that what really made me feel uncomfortable was the way she said women.  It was like a dirty word coming out of her politically incorrect mouth.  What is a woman?  And, what's so bad about being one?

wom·an [woom-uhn]
1. the female human being (distinguished from man).
*Yup, that's me.
2. an adult female person.
*Sure, I'm this too.
3. a female attendant to a lady of rank.
*I will be my own lady of rank, a female one.
4. a wife.
*Got this one covered.
5. the nature, characteristics, or feelings often attributed to women; womanliness.
*This seems a little vague since to define "womanliness" I would first like to fully understand the meaning of "woman."  However, I am not exactly masculine or girlish so I'll mark an X on this one too.
6. a sweetheart or paramour; mistress.
*Yes, but not illicit.
7. a female employee or representative: A woman from the real estate agency called.
*Well I think this just basically means I wear my vagina while working.
8. a female person who cleans house, cooks, etc.; housekeeper: The woman will be in to clean today.
*I cook and do a bit of cleaning (though I do save the big stuff for my cleaning lady… who is a woman).
9. women collectively: Woman is no longer subordinate to man.
*Hear Ye!!  This should take away any misconceptions about the present status of a woman.

I don't see anything bad on this list of definitions for woman.  Nothing worth shunning or speaking down upon, especially if you yourself are an adult female person.
 

With Q-Bear in public kindergarten, it feels like she never has school.  First off there is the whole thing about how kindergartners in Idaho only attend school for 2 1/2 hours a day.  Sometimes they even have "half" days where she seriously is supposed to show up and stay for an hour and a half… And we have to bring her so she doesn't have a absence marked against her!  She spends a lot more time at home with us than any of us are used to.

I was surprised last week when I learned that school is closed for an entire week for Thanksgiving and 2 weeks for Christmas.  I remember going to school up until the day before Thanksgiving and having that day be a half day with a party.  I'm pretty sure I didn't get a full 2 weeks off for Christmas either.

I'm sure most of this is from budget cuts in our schools which sickens me.  Screamers has school at his Montessori, which we pay for, up until Thanksgiving day.  I guess you get what you pay for and somewhere along the line my taxes didn't make it to our public schools.

My solution for getting Q-Bear out of the house this week, and the last time school was closed (3 days off because of parent teacher conferences) is to put her in a day camp.  I'm paying $30 a day for her to go play and do nothing educational other than learning to avoid the kid who likes to get in her face and cough or blow snot on her.  I think I would rather pay her teacher and have her go to school, keeping her schedule someone normal.  Though, I would prefer she went to school all day.

If all 18 kids in her class paid $15 to go to school for their 2 1/2 hours, their teacher would have $270 in her pocket.  Twice that if the 20 kids from the morning class paid her as well.  I have a feeling that is plenty more than she makes on an ordinary day and it's only half of what I'm paying for Q-Bear to have something to do today.  Then again, I'm sure there would be an uproar if public schools started asking for a few bucks to stay open a couple extra days before the holidays.

Where did we go wrong?