Cleansing during insomnia

Okay so why is it I am my most insane in the middle of the night?  I am like one of those creepy weirdos who stay up at night with secret habits...I am my MOST vulnerable at night.  I notice my stretch marks, my thighs, my wrinkles, my bad habits, my obscene addition to caffeine and I start researching all kinds of things - on the menu today was a 21 day cleanse...yes, cleanse.  Two shakes a day, a million supplements and a brown rice powder soup...um, rice powder...not even rice itself. For the girl who bitched the ENTIRE day of Yom Kippur because I could not have coffee, I think THIS is a good idea?  Well yes, in theory.  Don't we all want to feel younger, stronger and thinner?  Don't we all want amazing skin (I mean c'mon, Gyneth Paltrow endorses it...how bad could it be?), don't we want unlimited energy, nine hours of sleep and a clean colon?  And for only $500 you too can have this...along with 21 days of hunger, headaches, fatigue and bad skin while you "detox".  Only I can think that's an interesting proposition.  I tried for ONE day to forgo cream for non fat milk in my coffee and made a face to anyone who watched me and yet 21 days of rice powder soup and colonics I find attractive?  I was even encouraged to take the healthy eating and clean lifestyle quiz to see if I have any unhealthy eating habits or addictions...for this I need a quiz?

So I think maybe I can try a pre cleanse cleanse...veggies, fruit, weaning off coffee...but no, not this girl - boring.  I like it all or nothing baby.  And then I consider my schedule.  Can I start AFTER Halloween?  Seriously...Joseph and I have had a yearly ritual since having kids.  We trick or treat, we put everyone to bed, we rifle through buckets.  I call it Mommy Tax.  They pay it and I don't care if they like it.  I would sell everyone of them for a frozen snickers.   So then I consider post Halloween - I could be "clean" in time for the Thanksgiving carb parade.  Hmmm...So how serious can I be?  Placing my cleansing diet around holidays whose sole purpose is gorging...??

I think for a busy mom of four it makes sense although admittedly I am attempting it figure out how I can cleanse and still have coffee.  I can't find that part of the diet yet but I'm looking.

I might even blog about it.  After a few days on a cleanse I should be a sobbing, shaking, miserable mess in need of love, sugar and caffeine.  Perfect.

If I Were a Rich Man...

Settling into the Jewish holidays for me means shopping, eating, entertaining and lots of whining from the kids about how many hours we are in synagogue and how much we can't eat on Yom Kippur.  I get it.  It's not easy being Jewish...let's face it, we do a lot of stuff - especially over the high holidays.  I can do most of the fasting without complaining but I would give $500 to the first person who can get me a diet coke.  Caffeine is the great nemesis.  So as I am shuffling about from one sermon to the next in very uncomfortable shoes and a dress I would rather turn into a set of cotton pajamas, I realize I can't place my head where it should be.  Am I grateful? Sure...I just faced a lot from a personal place...am I pissed?  Well hell yes...I don't deserve Cancer.  Am I overwhelmed?  Uh...yeah...see above but overall, I am supposed to be feeling something and I can't get there.  I'm trying - I tried all week but it's just not that magical place I see in my dreams.  In service today - yes, I am on the computer during Yom Kippur...I'll cover this next year...we move in like cattle, book in hand, caffeine headache, blisters from my new shoes we stop to wait for the Rabbi to finish so we can enter the sanctuary.  I see Maddie reach for a tallit and pause...closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, whispering the prayer as she places it lovingly over her shoulders and prepares to enter.  Then it hits me.  It's why I am here.  It's why I have always been here.  Tradition.  It's the gift we give to our children...the gift of a legacy, an identity, a place, a belonging...it's home.  It's nearly 6000 years of tradition - watered down a bit, not so factory new but as she placed the prayer shawl over her shoulders, she became one with millions of people, at that moment, who do the very same thing.  My relationship with Gd is fussy - we fight, we don't talk and it will be what it is but what the holidays mean to me is tradition.  It's the challah on Shabbat - it's never changing.  It's the family and the food and prayers and the candles...it's blessing my children over candle light on Friday night, it's bringing them to the Torah for the first time at their b'nai mitzvah, it's handing them over to their betrothed under the huppa, it's eating bagels on Sunday morning, it's making caramel apples over Rosh Hashana...it's what they expect, it's who they are, it's how we do it and it's our gift to them...tradition.  It's what Tevye sang about in Fiddler on the Roof and it's what I feel today.

I went to synagogue this morning hungry and irritated about the parking but left with the gift of why we are here and why we have always been here.  It's for our children...L'dor v'ador.  From generation to generation.

Watching my girls read the prayers, smile, yawn and occasionally giggle out of boredom I am good.  I am good because they are home and when they are home, I am at peace.

43

43.  Fourty Three.  It's really something.  I can review my life in so many ways...I can place value on it based on money, status, kids but in the end, I really am just happy.  I've blogged before about arrival and it really is a place I enjoy.  Arrival means I no longer care about things that don't matter.  Vanity?  You mean for a girl with only one breast and no hair for most of last year?  You mean hips and stretch marks  - permanent trophies of childbirth?  A bit of failing vision?  Slightly deaf?  A creak here and there when I get up too fast?  But with all of that, I see clearer than I ever have, hear joy and block out toxic sound and getting up fast means I am chasing someone...likely my little boy, and I am fine with the creaks.

So while my body may not be that of a 20 year old, my mind and soul are that of a sage.  The girlfriends I have in my life are truer and more dear to me than I have ever had.  My home, when full of people is full of warmth and when I crawl into bed at night and insomnia gets me, I crawl into bed with my children because I know watching them sleep will be something I won't be able to do much longer...

Olivia said to me I am the best mommy in all the trees and Jack said I was his best girl...Maddie reminds me every day while I should be proud and Ava bases all of her decisions from a moral angle...at 23 my life was just starting and now, 20 years later, it's cooking at full heat.  While my body isn't factory new any longer, I wouldn't have it any other way.  Well to be honest, I would have it exactly the way it is but with folded laundry.

Happy birthday to me.