BLAAAGH

Hey. Hi. I'm exhausted. This post is gonna be lame. I don't know what happened. Doing the raw thing got not fun in the past day or two. Spiritually, yesterday was awesome. I was feeling good good good. But my head has lost some focusing abilities. Also, today I got nauseated at work and lost my appetite. Weird. And I keep getting leg cramps in the same spot. Somebody call the wambulance.

Basically my will to live is slowly wasting away. Just kidding. But eating hasn't been fun for a couple of days. Except for the peaches I got at Cox Farms. Those were aaaaaahhh. Even the tasty stuff is too much for me these days, though. I feel like my taste buds have been brought out of a coma. I had some snap peas and red peppers the other day and I could hardly handle the power of the flavor. It was shocking. I made some chocomole (using avocadoes, dates, cacao powder, etc.) and I could only have a couple of spoonfuls at one sitting. Food now has too much flavor. What is that?

Todays conclusion: going raw makes one a little dumber, somewhat more physically uncomfortable, and unable to eat much food when hungry. I bet you my reflexes aren't 100% presently, either. You could punch me right now and expect no retaliation.

At least my skin is considerably more glowing. :)

Ugh,
Kassie

Everybody pees.

My bladder has commandeered control over my body and is currently in charge. My brain isn't happy about it, but is not powerful enough to coup. My heart finds it amusing. She's not fighting to regain control. So I guess this is how it's gonna be for a while.

I haven't noticed any unpleasant side effects yet except that it seems that I am in a constant state of tinkling. I. P. Freely. I wasn't expecting this. Of course, most of what I eat now is just water in different packages. Sometimes it's green, stringy water. Sometimes it's orange and tangy water. Water going in and out, in and out. How painful are catheters?

Pleasant surprises:
! I haven't been unusually hungry or tired. Kassie-the-people-eater remains dormant. I don't know how to react to this discovery. Not only that, but I don't crave anything either. What's happening to me?!?!?! Is it possible that Arby's roast beef is infused with addictive chemicals? Maybe they just slaughter the really attractive, popular dude cows that all the lady cows want to make babies with. I, too, used to lust after that beef. No more? Wha? What am I to do!??!

@ My energy level remains fairly consistent all the day long. I have forgotten what this feels like. I'm used to sugar highs and food comas. To be honest, it kinda makes me feel boring. I can be a good time when I've had one too many fried Mars bars (which is one). But only for about an hour. Then I'm asleep curled up in a ball on your couch.

# I will never peel another orange in this life. I've always hated it anyway. As yummy as an orange can be, there's too much at risk on the quest for the fleshy goodness. You get all sticky and acid squirts into your eyeballs and orange gets under your nails and then you suspect the orange has a personal vendetta against you and then you feel crazy for projecting human emotions onto a small, helpless, mute piece of fruit. So you're left feeling a mixture of aggravation, paranoia and guilt. What a horrible experience. On the other hand, juicing oranges is wonderfully therapeutic and deeeelicious. I'm all about the juice. Juicy juice juice. Down into my belly.

K, that's enough for today. The end.

Holla back!

Ravaging the Garden of Eden

So I just got back from my first trip to the organic foods store. I came home with about 350 lbs. of produce that cost somewhere in the ballpark of one million dollars. This will probably last me three days. I'm not gonna lie, I will be super pumped when I make it that far.

So, Kassafrass, just what is "going raw"? Not completely sure, but what I could glean from my not-so-extensive research, going raw is like living (at least orally - easy, kids) as those ancestors of ours did before someone found out where the fire had been hiding for all those years. It's eating raw, "living" foods that have not been chemically altered or heated up to the point of the denaturing of important enzymes, proteins, nutrients, etc. And I'm pretty sure any milk products are out, unless someone can loan me a goat. Who had been raised free range and sans hormones. Mmm?

Well, when I first heard of this concept of living off the land/going back and becoming one with our roots, the spirited hippie inside of me was so excited she immediately tore off all her clothes and cliff-dove into the nearest mountain lake. Awesome. I liked it. Plus, there have been all these studies and ballywho (ballywha?) raised about how this crap in our over-processed food is giving us cancer and asthma and obesity and male-patterned baldness...sounds like a good idea to see what happens when I don't have to deal with all these damaging additions.

On the other hand, the physiologist inside me wonders, will my kidneys get bored? My liver will posit, what am I, chopped? (I know, straight off a Laffy Taffy wrapper. I hate myself a little.) Balance is important, too. Whatevs. I'm gonna go for it and see what happens.

I guarantee you this won't be like a year long thing. Probably won't be a Thanksgiving long thing. Right now it's looking like a Labor Day thing, if not a, hey TGIF! thing. I definitely will do it long enough to experience a physical change that can be recorded. I went to the doctor today and they recorded my pre-raw condition. Surprisingly, I'm in great health. Mrs. Doctor Lady even asked me if I exercise a lot because my results seemed indicative of such a lifestyle. Heh heh. Oooooh . Not enough, Doctor Lady, not enough. (p.s. Dr. Lady looked and acted like a grown up Daria. Remember her? MTV? My first impression was initially doubting, but then it turned into a mixture of empathetic pity and affection. Med school wasn't fun for you, was it Dr. Daria Lady?)

Final pre-raw observations:

1. Eating raw seems to include a lot of "juicing" and "blending". Pretty much, you gather things off of trees and plants, smoosh them all together, and drink them, just like our ancestors did. Apparently the blender preceded fire (hmm). Also, it seems that the raw food diet was created by the toothless. Now my teeth can finally just sit back, relax, and work on looking pretty.

2. Raw foods take more preparation than the cornucopia of refined foods from which I generally glut myself. For example, my Honey Nut Cheerios prep in the morning is 93% remembering who/where I am and what one does in a kitchen, 7% locating spoon and bowl/milk and cereal. Combined prep. time: 30 sec. Hard to beat. This will take some adjustment.

3. My poor body is gonna be way confused about where all that refinery went. I'm pretty sure in my blood there are microscopic peanut m&ms floating around with the red and white blood cells. My bod's gonna look at me like this:
Also, I haven't found a good raw staple to replace it. Any suggestions?

4. I really can't handle being too hungry. Food is like food to me. It's not the stomach pain or the lethargy that kills me. That's just kinda annoying. And it's not that I'll miss the social eating engagements. I'm too cheap to go out to eat regularly (damn you Chicfila!) The problem, however, is that starting sometime in the past five-ish years, whenever I reach the point of relative starvation, I get possessed by this neurotic, Chicken Little, Alzheimer'sy version of myself. I get disoriented and irritable, scared of nothing in particular, and certain that the world is shortly going to end. My dad suffers from the same phenomenon. The ladies in his office refuse to work in the afternoon unless he's had a sandwich. Because he loses his mind. You don't want to be conscious when my father is restructuring your jaw on an empty stomach. He's a grumplestiltskin.

5. My friend Heather told me that she used to work for a guy who made his own organic carrot juice and drank so much of it that his skin actually turned orange. Does this mean that if I drink enough carob smoothies I can finally become a black woman?! W00t! I guess only in body, not in spirit. Not good enough. Perhaps I need to juice Mo'nique.

I'll keep you posted on the development of these observations in the coming days and weeks. And if you find me unusually snappy, hook a sister up with a banana or sumfin. Tanks very mooch.

Day T - 1 and I am terrified...

Sometimes a girl's gotta, you know, completely change the direction certain aspects of her life are headed. I tend to do this at least fortnightly, but I've gotten out of the habit as of late. I have become existentially out of shape, if you will (will you?). So what am I going to do about it?

I've decided to go raw. In a couple of different ways. Firstly, I am quite literally going to stop eating foods that are not raw. I have my reasons, they range from wanting to draw closer to God via purification of mi templo yo, to deciding that eating whatever you want/whenever you want is for wussies. Regardless, this is gonna be hilarious and painful. I'm probably going to lose 79% of my friend pool and, according to a raw food website I read yesterday, at the beginning of this process I may experience diarrhea, pimples, rashes (?), dizziness, headaches, and random and inexplicable mucous discharge. HOT. I secretly hope to discover a new side effect. Like hearing other people's thoughts.

My second rawness choice is this blog itself. It terrifies me. I tend to think that I am insane. I literally would rather burn all the journals I've ever written from my deathbed than let anyone I've ever encountered ever read them. Nobody needs to see that stuff. I'd rather you keep your naive caricatures of who you all think I am floating in your minds for eternity. But, alas, due to my weakness for dares (especially ones of the double-dog variety), and also with the encouragement of not a few people confessing to me that they would buy 20 of my books if I ever wrote one (I tend to think that you are insane, too) I have created this blog in order to overcome my fear of your eventual fear of the real, raw Kassie Cardon.

So welcome to the madness! I have tasted it, and it is quite tangy, juicy, and untampered with.

I promise each blog with be at least this long, so as likely as not Roxanne is the only person who will actually read any of this. Which is comforting. Hey, Roxanne! Jens Lekman was on "This American Life" today!! NPR is cutting edge! Jens is incredible!