Ten long days are in the books

My ten day journey down The Master Cleanser path came to an end today. Words seem to fail me as I describe my level of excitement. As hard as that is to believe, here's an excerpt from an email I wrote earlier tonight.

The recovery starts tomorrow and lemme just tell you that I'm FUCKING EXCITED (sorry for that display of my limited lexicon) that the salt water purges are finito.

Perhaps my body excreted my vocabulary along with toxins?

Here's a quick run down of FAQ from my experience.

What was the hardest thing to give up during The MC?
The worst part of the cleanse was abstaining from the social aspects of dining. It creeps out some folks to have a non-eater sitting at the table watching folks eat. The experience was a bit weird for me, too.

What happens next?
There is a three day recovery period during which I reintroduce my body to something besides lemonade. Day 1 is OJ Day; basically OJ is substituted for the lemonade. Day 2 is the more of the same with veggie broth/soup in the evening. Day 3 is OJ for the morning, soup during mid day and real, chewable vegetables for dinner. Day 4 is chicken fried steak. :)

What is the first thing you're going to eat once the recovery period is over?
The jury is still out on this, but I'll likely stop in for some soup at Jenni's Noodle House or some pho (real) at some place where no one speaks English.

Did you lose any weight?
Yep, 15 pounds, but I expect that some of that will return once I start chewing again.

Are you going to become a vegetarian now?
I've strongly considered it for health reasons, but there are too many dishes that I dig that involve meat or meat related items. Of course, April is vegetarian month, a.k.a. sushi month, so I'll be a vegetarian then. I'm going to work towards making smarter choices regardless of my meat-a-tarian / vegetarian slant.

This MC ain't got nothing on me

It is after Noon on Day 5, which means that there are officially a fewer number of hours left in my Master Cleanser journey than the amount that I have already invested. Kick. Ass.

In short, Day 3 sucked. Apparently on of the side effects of the MC is that you may get a cold or some cold like symptoms due to you body taking its revenge on you for drinking way too much and eating way too much red meat. I'm sure I had a fever, but didn't get probed to make it official. I was ready to conk out. But I sucked it up. I'm not getting beat by too many glasses of lemonade.

I'll spare you the gory details, but my evening of "sleep" on Day 3 resembled the depictions of a junkie going through heroin withdrawals. I could not get warm no matter how many blankets I used or how much I peed on myself. KIDDING. I also couldn't stop hacking up junk from my lungs. Nyquil would be my standard answer for this type of misery, but no dice due to the MC.

Is passing out from delirium the wrong way to fall asleep?

Waking up at 4:30 AM sucks

Day 2 on the MC was a tough one for the kid. First, I have to fly to Ft. Worth on Monday mornings so I was up at 4:30 AM to insure that my quart of salt water had fully processed prior to getting stuck on a plane. The salt water nearly made my puke even after I adjusted it from 2 tablespoons to 2 teaspoons. I think my stomach knew what was coming and wanted to stage a revolt.

I arrived at my client site with enough lemons and syrup to make my lemonade for the day. But, there really isn’t a convenient place to make it. And by convenient I mean a place where folks can’t see what you’re doing. I didn’t want to have answer a bunch of questions about what was going on. I ended up sitting on a picnic table outside the break room to do my mixing.

Day 2 passed without any severe hunger pangs or urgent calls from Mother Nature. I did duck out of a meeting early to go drink some lemonade when I began to feel faint.

My early waking time started to catch up with my around 7:30 when I left the office. I seemed to be stuck on slow; I’d like to have had an Airborne to fight off the cold that I felt creeping up on me. No dice.

I returned to my ho-tel after a run to Central Mark-up to fetch more syrup and lemons and a lemon juicer. Three dozen lemons, a pint of syrup and the juicer set me back $32.99. I need to open a grocery store.

It may have cost ten bucks, but the juicer is so choice. If you have the means... Don’t underestimate the utility of a lemon juicer when you need to squeeze a dozen per day.