Monday, September 13, 2010

The Juicy Life--Day 39 of My 40 Day Juice Feast

Yesterday I had an amazing experience. It started at 8 a.m. when I got to meet a certain beautiful Guinea Piglet:

That's the lovely Mauri, tricking out our groovy ride. She is an incredible lady--warm, caring, classy, and so dang nice! Mauri is on day 38 of a juice feast that is going on much longer than mine, and she is being coached by the incomparable David Rainosheck himself, so it was so much fun to compare juicing notes. She was drinking a tea that he gave her the recipe for, that I am definitely going to try. If I have to be in a car with anyone for 6 hours, I would pick her!

(Has anyone else noticed that raw people are so much nicer than regular people? Why is that? Because seriously, I have had the honor of meeting THE most amazing people this year...)

The other person on our road trip was Thubten (Tube-ten) who is one very interesting cat!

He went on an extended juice feast last year. He's also released more than 100 pounds and is still faithfully working on it. He has had a lot of "lives" already in this one, including being a social media consultant, a wedding planner and officiator, working with AOL when it WAS the internet, and took vows in India where he lived as a Tibetan monk. He is just fascinating, and every time you meet him, you just want to hear more! Oh, and he's really nice, too!

So with my wonderful co-travelers, we zip up the I-5 to the International Day of Juice Feasting! (With a couple of potty breaks each way, God bless Mauri! These things are very important to a juice feaster!)

The conference itself was just incredible. Dave and Teresa lined up wonderful speakers, including a Pharmocognocist, Brian J. Wright, who told us exactly what is in all that lovely juice which makes it so powerful. And he's not too hard on the eyes, either, ladies:

(Oh come on! A brilliant, non-drinking, raw vegan single doctor who happens to look like a flippin' movie star and I'm not supposed to notice that he's hot? I'm only human!)

We heard from Elaina Love, who made me cry when she talked about helping Dave, and about losing her precious son to Leukemia last year. She is a beautiful spirit, inside and out. All the raw food leaders crack me up with how excited they get about their detox symptoms: "I had to wake up in the middle of the night to cough out phlegm balls! Isn't that great!" Well, better out than in, as they say, but I haven't enjoyed my boils and pus pockets near as much as Dave liked his! Maybe I'm doing it wrong?!

Matt Monarch warned us about the fact that eating clean and especially juice feasting will make your cells clean and tight and that going back to a SAD diet after that can be really harmful for you. I decided I don't mind being at the point of no-return. It arms me with all the more reason to resist temptation. I also appreciated knowing that I am going to have to watch the calories a bit more now. If the trade-off is being around for my kids and maybe meeting my grandchildren, I would say it is all more than worth it! Oh, and he talked about cleaning out the poop-chute a lot. You know, because he's Matt!

Angela Stokes Monarch talked about compulsive eating, which y'all know, is a topic that is very close to me. She also talked a lot of potty talk. These raw food leaders are all potty-mouths, in the best way. I kept wanting to break out in Penni's song: "Does it float, does it float like a boat? If it sinks, and it stinks, then you're sicker than you think!" Wouldn't that have been awesome, to lead the whole group in that rousing sing along?!

Instead my dear friend:

spoke eloquently and from the heart, and made me cry several times, which was no good for my mascara situation, at all. But I forgive him because he is wonderful. Then he led us all in a toast to the entire staff at The Tree of Life and to Piter Crazier, the Wild Grass Messiah. And what did we drink to toast them? Wild-grass juice, of course!


Ok, I may have been a little nervous about trying it. But I'm telling you, it was not bad! Certainly no worse than the onion/cantaloupe juice I made that one time! It did taste a little like what I imagine going out and grazing on the lawn for a while might be like. But it is such a nutritional powerhouse, I might just get out there and chomp on my front yard right now! Wild grass is definitely going to be a part of my juicy life in the future.

And then, oh yeah, this happened:



I didn't know I was going to be a speaker before the lovely Tresa announced it to the crowd! So I panicked but Mauri calmed me down and told me I would not spontaneously combust or anything. Also, I guess the "real name" cat is out of the pajamas. That wasn't planned either, obviously, but honestly, it isn't a big deal. I feel a little silly that I used a screen name to begin with. But I reveal a lot of intimate stuff about my kids, and details about my early family life, and I felt like using a screen name would protect them a little. There are a lot of different people on the internet, if you catch my drift...but most people are good and nice and wonderful, I am finding. It's just the ones that are a few blades short of a wheat-grass juice that I worry about...but not anyone here in the Mansion! I feel so blessed to have found you all. So, um, hi, my name is Heather. You can still call me Mallory if that is what you're used to. Or Bob. I've always liked the name Bob. lol Call me what you like, just don't call me late to dinner! (thank you! thank you very much! I'll be here all week! Remember to tip your servers...)

So I spoke, and I managed to get in a shout out for my favorite virtual mansion and all my Ridiculously Radiant Rehabbers, and afterward I hugged about a thousand people who told me that my shaky-kneed stammering presentation managed to speak to them and inspire them after all. I can do ALL things, through the One who sent me...

Afterward, I got to meet so many awesome Rehabbers:


And we hugged and smiled and blissed out on juicy togetherness. And Priss even played the ukelele. :)

And I headed home with the two nicest most interesting peeps a juicy girl could ever be lucky enough to road trip with. (We would have made room in the car for you, Penni!)

And the gorgeous (seriously, the girl is gorgeous!) Mauri surprised the heck out of me and gave me a present!

As if the incredible gift of her friendship was not amazing enough! But it turned out to be an awesome book with hundreds of juice recipes and luscious pictures that made me drool all the way back to Portland. But wait, what page is the cantaloupe/onion juice on? Because I know it must be in there but I can't seem to find it...maybe I should write to the author! (I think my scary juice combos scared Mauri and she felt she had to intervene for the good of mankind! She may be right!)

Thank you, so, so much Mauri! I love it SO MUCH and I'm going to use it this morning and make something that you know, tastes good! I believe it can be done, now!

All in all, a juicy day indeed!

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