I’ve been watching TV with Jenni and as I hear her talking I realize that the experience for her is nothing but an endless string of food associations.

They were doing a piece on the air quality in China on the Daily Show, and as it’s going on, I hear her mumbling about crispy noodles.

She actually covers her eyes to hide from the pizza commercials.

She has decided that we will spend Saturday morning from 7-11am in an all you can eat breakfast buffet. I’ve warned her that stuffing yourself after a fast might cause some gastrointestinal distress, but she’s gone on record saying that she’s not going to let some puking keep her from scrambled cheese eggs, bacon, sausage, crispy home fries, hash browns, eggs benedict, waffles with peanut butter, and blueberry pancakes.

Making it through the day fueled only by lemons wasn’t too trying. The Smooth Moves tea, did perhaps move me a bit more than I am accustomed to, but certainly with nothing near the violence that giardia loosed upon me in Mauritania.

I managed to power through the midafternoon slump with a minimum of sleeping to come home and find Jenni in a remarkably good mood. She may well have been delirious from hunger, but her mood was unmistakably positive.

Normally when a happy person and a grumpy person have to hang out in close quarters their moods tend to average out — one gets a bit happier and the other gets a bit more mellow. Her giddy confusion overpowered my grumpiness, so I guess the cleansing is working? Though I suppose the day she spent sunning herself by the pool and doing fuck all may well be working as well.

I still wouldn’t say that I’m distinctly hungry. I don’t really feel empty, the idea of eating just sounds more and more appealing. I get up and wander around as I’m writing, and if I don’t pay attention my feet carry me to stand in front of the fridge.

I’ve managed to not stick anything in my mouth just yet. That’ll be a tough decision, do I stick to my guns and spit the food out or do I just figure I’ve failed already and go ahead and swallow? Hopefully I don’t get to the point of having to make that call. ☺

(I had about six different things I intended to write here. About one and a half of them actually made it into the computer. Apparently food is a necessary part of the fixing ideas into my head. This perhaps does not bode well for my day at the office tomorrow.)

Jenni was watching master cleanse videos last night and I learned a bit more about the theory behind the process.

After a couple of days of no food, your bodies natural reaction is to stop “excreting” as it is frequently referred to in cleansing circles. To keep the excetions coming we employ some excretion aids.

Apparently there are two schools of laxitive thought in the cleansing literature. One can either go with a herbal tea or sea salt and water. The herbal tea has the advantage of not tasting like a glass of salt water, but apparently onsets with a greater ferocity. The fellow in the video recommended that if you have a long commute that you avoid the tea, as there are few things more embarassing that dumping a half gallon on lemon juice in your drawers.

The reason for the lemon juice / maple syrup / cayenne pepper concoction is still beyond me. So far the main benefit seems to be how confusing a taste it is. While my taste buds are grappling with the infrequently combined tastes of pepper and syrup, it distracts me from the lack of any food in my stomach.