In a Slump

You don't want to read this one, either. Additional details about me will be revealed that you will be unable to unlearn.








I'm in a slump. I can't get motivated. I don't feel like cleaning the house again because I swear I just did it. I'm bored with playing with the baby because we do the same things over and over. I don't want to go babysit because the talking and the talking and the talking, ugh, it's exhausting. I sort of worked out yesterday, but I half-assed it. And I quit early.

I'm loathe to say anything like this these days. One, I don't want this blog to be a place to bitch about my life. I've read some of those blogs, and they get kind of old. Two, as a SAHD, it seems like it's my job to put up a happy front. I feel like if I complain, the answer is simple: "you chose this, jackass." So whenever anyone asks me about it, it's wonderful! It's fantastic! We're having a fabulous time! My old full-time position was recently vacated by my replacement. My former supervisor jokingly asked me if I wanted my job back, and I said, "Ha! No thanks." A former co-worker, too, asked me if I was going to take my old job back. He thought this stay-at-home dad thing was just an arrangement for a few months, until the kid was old enough for day care, like any normal baby; he was flabbergasted when I said it was for years, not months. "Really?" he said. "Of course!" I replied. "It's so much fun!"

And it is, and I do love it. But man, I'm in a slump.

I know the answer I'll probably get, at least from my mother, is "get out there and connect with other parents! Go to the SAHD playdates! Go to their Dads' Nights Out!" And yes, I should. But who can be bothered? And Thumper's still napping through the playdates, and the Dads' Nights Out are during babysitting. I have been chatting with mothers at playgrounds more, but I haven't managed to wrangle the boy a girlfriend yet.

No, really I'm thinking it's time for a fast. There was a time when I tried to live by the principles of BFF's bible. It's largely about how to combine foods properly in healthy ways, like meat and bread don't go together because they require different enzymes from your stomach to digest. And melon is the perfect food for humans, but it shouldn't be eaten with anything else. That kind of stuff. I followed it very closely for a good six months, and didn't feel like it really changed my life. So I dropped most of it. But I did keep one aspect for several years after. Ready for it? This is the part you don't want to know: colonics.

Yep. Self-administered colonics. Twice a year. In combination with a week-long fast. Since cheapness counts, I couldn't imagine spending hundreds of dollars on a Colema board (you don't want to click on that), so I made one myself. With $60 worth of wood and a wastebasket from Target. And yes, I thought it was crazy, too. I thought BFF was crazy. But the craziness appealed to me, in a way. "Hey, won't this be wacky? I'll be one of those nuts who hoses out his insides! Hee hee!"

But strangely enough, the fasting and colonics made me feel incredible. I fasted by eating nothing and drinking sometimes carrot juice, sometimes grape juice, or carrot-grape juice. Sometimes just water. Sometimes I used solutions for the colonic other than plain water, like coffee and water, or garlic and water. The first day or two of the week-long fast, with nightly colonic sessions, I would be exhausted and hungry. By the third or fourth day, though, I started to feel recharged. Energized. And that gut-gnawing sensation of hunger was gone. By the end of the week, I was refreshed, renewed, ready to start again. I'd ease back into eating with light and healthy meals. It was like pushing a reset button.

But after a few years, I'd stopped smoking. I was working out more, losing weight, feeling good. I didn't feel like I needed a cleansing, a restarting. And the tedium part of the colonics, the preparation, the cleanup, started to get to me. Not to mention having to clean the juicer daily from all those grapes and carrots. So I decided I was done with it and threw out my board. I haven't fasted since, and it's been probably two or three years.

So now, in a slump and feeling like I really need a good renewal ritual, I'm thinking about fasting again. And since I've been eating a lot lately, snacking when I don't really need it, I want to re-learn that feeling of hunger as a positive thing, to remember that being hungry isn't so bad. I don't think I can get behind building a new board, and I certainly can't get behind buying one, so I'll just skip the colonics this time around.

Maybe I shouldn't use the words "get behind" and "colonics" in the same sentence, huh?

Anyway, does anybody else out there fast? I've never done it without the colonics, and I wonder if it will be the same jolt of power and energy that I remember.

So who's with me? Who's up for a week of emptying the vessel and starting over? Come on! I promise I'll stop saying the word "colonic" now.