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HERBS DON'T COUNT!!!

Long have I suspected the universe to be a malevolent, capricious place, and now in my possession are three digits which unequivocally prove this to be the case. Forgive the emo outburst in Victorian-tinted prose, but I cannot help myself, for I have now been on the Enbridge Hunger Strike for 33.5 hours and I have, according to the bathroom scale…

gained three pounds.

I mean, I’ve been drinking plenty of water, but bitch, please. None of those people at Gitmo who got waterboarded gained any weight.Swearing off the San Pel and switching to low-salt tap water, on general anti-water-retention principles. A friend on facebook suggested I put lemon in the water if I’m worried about water retention, and since I’m out of lemons but have grapefruits and Shahee is always going on about the healing and cleansing properties of grapefruit, I will slice some of that up and put it in my tap water.

Things had been going well. I’d fought through the initial hunger pangs, distracting myself with work and many, many glasses of San Pellegrino water, and worked right through for 20 hours so by the time I got to bed there was no question about being too hungry to sleep. All was well once I’d woken up, and the afternoon and early evening went just fine, with actually fewer hunger pangs than yesterday and an amazing realization that if you don’t eat, your teeth stay shiny and clean even while you sleep, even if you brush your teeth before bedtime. That was an interesting piece of trivia: starvation=no morning breath.

As for bitchiness, well, that is definitely one department in which I demonstrated my native talent, this time unrestrained by any sugar comas or protein hangovers. I posted a ban-worthy comment at Gawker and a possible-suspension-worthy one at WordPress.com. If I weren’t me, I’d think I was obnoxious; well, I am obnoxious but I am also me and both Gawker and WordPress seem to find I’m worth keeping around for at least a little while longer.

From the department of TMI comes news that a hunger strike is much easier once you’ve cleared out the bowels. For whatever reason, having food in your system, even old food, makes you hungrier. That tickbox checked, things are much easier to bear in the hunger pang department. Right up until…

9pm. The neighbors downstairs cook up some fried chicken.

Fried. Chicken. FRIED CHICKEN. FRIED CHICKEN!!!

As my friend Rich said on Facebook, “Fried chicken recipes would have made the Mahatma fall off his hunger strike.” I split the difference between cheating and not with a vegan granola bar, which I am reliably informed counts as a Tic Tac if you’re a regular meat eater, as I am. So, thanks, veganism, now I probably lost weight because of all the gas in my colon causes a slight hover/Hindenberg effect when I step on the scale.

Then I watched three hours of Food Network. Sorry, Guy, I love you, but when you showed us the double Harvard burger with the fried onions, bacon, cheese, and fried peppers with barbeque sauce, I had to shut it off. Somehow Iron Chef is easier to bear because who in hell eats that stuff anyway? It looks like show-business food, because it is show-business food, and if you doubt me, think back to the last time your mouth watered at television competition food. See?

It is beginning to look like I can tough it out till the end, which is 4pm today. I still have 8 hours of sleeping to do, after all, and I’m not one of those Adderall addicts who sleep eats. Sure, I have a business meeting in a pub at 2pm tomorrow, but hey! Gin is a clear liquid, right? RIGHT?

Remedios Varo empty

If midnight is the witching hour, 2am must be the bitching hour, particularly if one has undertaken an ecologically-themed 48-hour hunger strike at 4pm of the previous day.

One was practical. One washed all the pots and pans and dishes so that one could no longer smell the delicious, mouth-watering bacon and french toast which one had had for brunch that day. One cut up, bagged and froze the leftovers so that they would be ready for one when one wished to break one’s fast. Or in case one gave in and had to make a green smoothie (one has gotten special pardon from one’s raw vegan chef consultant in advance, as one is practical about these things).

One had a cup of green tea.

One slipped and absent-mindedly had a piece of green apple while one was cutting it up to freeze, but one is not perfect OKAY???

And now one is up typing and doing tomorrow’s work because: a) one is too hungry to go to bed and b) one had that cup of green tea, and duh, caffeine.

One also had a strange urge to flip through all the cookbooks in the house, which one was able to resist only when one found one’s self staring at a recipe for silken tofu salad dressing with one’s mouth watering even though there was no picture, although that may in fact have been a mercy, for have you ever laid eyes on silken tofu on a salad? It looks like the canopy of the rainforest after a huge flock of seagulls have opened the guano bomb bays on it.

All of which is to say that one not only would kill for one of these (truly one of Canada’s greatest culinary achievements, even if you count ketchup chips) but one is slowly coming to identify with them.