Cheezus saves.

Now that I'm living elsewhere after all that time in New York, I sometimes feel like I'm only just discovering things about adult life, in general, that everyone else has known forever. Things like the fact that people would rather drive five minutes than walk for ten. And that they do weird things in their cars during highway rush hour -- like, orifice-picking, nipple-scratching things -- even though they must be aware on some level that everyone see them. And that heating oil is apparently the most rare and expensive substance on the planet. And that outside of the cramped honeycomb of the city, household appliances are terrifyingly large and make conspiratorial noises in the night.
And then, of course, there's the part where, if you have a yard, one corner must at all times be designated as a shrine to the Gods of Junk Food and must always contain one or more highly processed, preservative-laden, brightly-packaged items in order to appease the angry and volatile deities of all things cheez-with-a-Z.

...Or at least, I assume there's a Cheez Shrine Rule written into our local ordinances? Because this is the state of things: at any given time, in the northwest corner of our little pocket yard, there is a half-eaten bag of Cheetos. Or a partially gnawed Slim Jim. Or -- once -- an un-drunk, unopened bottle of Arizona Raspberry Iced Tea with its safety seal still in place. (The nostalgic urge for a taste memory of middle school was overwhelming, but I mustered all my self-control and left it alone just in case it was a test of faith sent by the Cheez God.)

These items appear sometime during the night, or possibly the early morning, and stay for awhile -- untouched by anyone, I assume they are all also terrified of retribution at the hands of Cheezus -- and then ultimately vanish as mysteriously as they appeared. And since this is apparently just a Thing That Is Done out here in not-New-York, I've been rolling with it (albeit keeping an eye out, because if this isn't a gifts-for-the-oracle kind of situation, then some school-aged kid on our street must have one serious hole in his backpack.)

But today, it has all officially gone too far. Because when I walked out the door this morning, there it was.

  DUN.

DUN!

DUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!

Let me be clear: it's not that someone flouted the rules of the junk food shrine by leaving an empty Kit Kat wrapper in the yard.

It's that I am the God of Kit Kats, and SOMEONE HAS EATEN THAT WHICH IS RIGHTFULLY MINE.

Butterface

You know you're in trouble when you jolt awake, drenched in terror sweat, at 5:30am on the first day of 2012 -- not with exuberant joy at the arrival of the new year, not even with a hangover headache, but with the following thought rolling through your brain, marquee-style, in a high-volume wail:

OH MY GOD WHY DID I EAT SO MUCH BUTTER.

Let me be clear: I don't usually kick myself over butter. I adorn my popcorn with it; I smear my bread with it; I melt it into a golden pool in a cast-iron skillet and fry up my eggs with glee. I am not, in general, a guilty butter-eater. But on New Year's Day, I woke up with an acute, raging case of Butter Eater's Regret -- because on New Year's Eve, capping off a month of perhaps not the most controlled eating of my life, I had exceeded even my own, laissez-faire ethics in butter-related matters when I made a pot of pasta, and just before pouring it into a bowl, carelessly tossed a sizable pat of Land'o'Lakes in to melt beneath it.

A sizable pat which was now in my head, in snapshot form, dawdling in all its obscene enormity under the scrolling WHY WHY WHY WHY marquee like a creamy golden guilt bomb.

All of which is to say, I hope you'll all understand that when, unable to exorcise that image from my mind and swiftly succumbing to overwhelming feelings of failure and fatness, I went on the internet and allowed Gwyneth Paltrow to tell me what to do.

...Look, I was in a dark place, okay?! A DARK PLACE FULL OF BUTTER AND SADNESS.

And so, I:

a) googled juice cleanse recipes
b) clicked my way down a rabbit-hole to one of old Gwynnie's vanity-project GOOP newsletters from god-knows-when
c) lost my entire fucking mind, and then
d) went to Whole Foods, where I purchased protein powder and almond milk and wheatgrass supplements and a head of broccoli that cost seven dollars.

It's the seven-dollar broccoli that let me know I've really and truly lost it.

But even as I hauled vegetables, powders, mysterious substances and peculiar oils into the kitchen and stuffed them into the fridge, I really, honestly, thought that this was a good idea. After all, people do detoxes all the time! And they seem fine! And Gwyneth Paltrow is so thin!

So I went for it.

I mean, I am going for it.

And it's not that I've decided that it's not a good idea. It's not even that I'm not enjoying myself; the recipes are easy (albeit time-consuming), the food tastes good, and my lunch was so pretty that it deserved to have its picture taken. So while I'm still not sure I'll make it, and while I'll probably be back three days from now to confess a butter relapse, and while there are certain elements of this plan which I will under no circumstances put into action (castor oil, Gwyneth? CASTOR OIL?), I'd say that things are moving along quite nicely.

But, uh, speaking of things moving along nicely? I'm just gonna go ahead and answer the questions I know you're asking -- which is to say, yes, that's how it works. Yes, this cleanse is the equivalent of rinsing out your intestinal tract with an industrial-strength fire hose. And no, Gwyneth Paltrow probably hasn't taken a solid dump since sometime in 2006.

(But if this sounds like fun to you and you want to follow along, be my guest.)