DAY FOUR—I Think I Cheated!!

On Wednesday I woke up early to take Kaileigh to school and then take my mom for her weekly grocery shopping at Albertson’s. After I rolled out of bed, I noticed it. I had a dull ache running down both of my legs. It felt like all the toxins in my body were bouncing off my shin bones, battling to get out. Ugh. This to go along with the never-ending beating in my head. Throughout the morning I felt distracted, grumpy. I couldn’t focus for any length of time. As my mom and I were in the check-out lane chatting with the bagger, I noticed the guy in line right behind us. He stared at me blankly until we made eye contact. With a lopsided nod, he greeted me. I could smell the whisky seeping from his skin. His only purchase was a bottle of Wild Turkey. It was ten-thirty in the morning. I hurried my mom out of the store disturbed.


When I arrived home in the afternoon, I should have gone straight to the kitchen to bake the butternut squash, steam the asparagus and cook the pot roast for my mom. She needed it to each be pureed by the evening for dinner. But instead, my mind tilting, I crashed into my bed and wasn’t revived until hours later. I woke up serious. Debating. Maybe the drunk in the grocery store was my parallel—addicted to food, temperamental and sullen. Maybe the intention of this diet was to give me some clarity in my life. Find out what is truly important.

Daniel came home in the evening with a jar of peanut butter and some vegetables. Eureka. I slipped my index finger into the inside rim of the container and tasted the creamy nuttiness. That was it! My discovery. I think I heard the angels singing. I scooped it onto fat sticks of celery, apple slices, whole bananas—heck, I was spooning it out of the jar straight onto my tongue. Technically, I could eat nuts and seeds on this diet, but I wouldn’t want to be confronted by a purist. I don’t think peanut butter fit into the slender dress of the raw food diet, but at that point I was starting to lose it. Peanut butter was saving me from a mad-hatter tea party of French espresso and IN-N-OUT, animal style.