Blackberry Ninja

7 months ago, as we were moving into our new place, I had a vision of my future summer self, lounging on the hammock with raspberry lemonade made from the fruit I grew as pumpkin vines curled at my feet, ready to do my bidding.  However, things don't always turn out the way you want, as evidenced by my cat's complete incompetency at filing taxes.  So far this summer, my lemon tree has stopped growing and now has white fuzzy things on it that alarm me, those venomous squirrels have eaten most of our raspberries and strawberries, and I'm pretty sure those white fuzzy things might be alien eggs now that I think about it.  Anyways, as anyone know who has eaten fruit straight off the plant/tree/vine, it is about 182 kablillion times better than storebought, and I felt like my dreams were crushed beneath my feet.

Is it just me or does "an asshole" sound wrong?  "A asshole" sounds even more not right.  Maybe because "asshole" is usually used in the plural, as it is hard to limit yourself to just one asshole?  This particular squirrel, however, deserves singling out due to the ridiculous way he is holding the nut.  What are we, at a tea party?  USE YOUR PINKY FINGER ASSHOLE.

Anyways, my work has a giant blackberry bush that is blooming right by the exit to the parking lot.  The thing with this is that people in Oregon treat blackberry bushes like they're a communicable disease and typically don't approach blackberry bushes unless its with a bottle of planticide and full body armor (blackberry plants are very hurty).

If you can believe it, even the LEAVES are painful.  Forget chinese water torture, if I ever have to go torturing I will just whack people in the armpits with blackberry branches.

I  figured I would stop by one day after work, grab a few berries, and bring them back as a treat for LOML. It was then that I made the fatal mistake of tasting a delicious berry.  Flash forward to an hour after work ended and I am manically limping through the bushes (I stepped on a giant thorn because of the hole in the sole of my stupid vegan shoe) with blood all over my hands and scratches on my arms.  Every time a car came by I feel the need to duck in the bushes, thereby spilling my blackberries and making me screech insults at anything in the nearby vicinity.  I ate berries like I hadn't eaten in a year, and the madness didn't stop until I heard a bear*^,** in the bushes and ran away, screaming like a little girl.

delicious, magical fruit.

So I brought home whatever loot hadn't gone in my mouth and we devoured it in a matter of minutes.  The next day, I dragged LOML back there to get more, and we spent another hour, me with a little less enthusiasm as I am never anything but a classy lady in front of LOML.  Then two days later I was back again, and now I'm sitting at work wondering how I can slip out and pick berries for an hour without anyone noticing my absence, so this is evidently a new problem for me and I might need an intervention.

Now comes the point in the story where I really don't know how to end this, and all I really want to do is go pick berries and mash them in my face.  So I will just wrap this up with a picture of the chicken mask I want to buy.

I could name him Friar Chicken.  Get it?  Because it's so close to fried chicken?  Genius.

*I never actually saw the bear, and LOMLs assertions that there aren't bears in an office park remain unfounded until he can prove to me that there isn't a bear in there.

**Actually, it could have been a vampire, because I did have a lot of blood all over me.  Or a shark.   Regardless, a hasty retreat probably saved my life.

A mason jar of green crap

This is not my personal green juice, but I am entirely too lazy to take a picture, find the thingy that lets me upload it, upload it to iphoto, export it from iphoto, deal with the pressure of naming it god I'm getting stressed just thinking about all this so I stole this picture from another blog.  Honestly though, it looks just the same, except typically with me, there will be more green juice on the walls/counter and less in the mason jar.

Reason number one why I need a legitimate smartphone - so I can take pictures and EMAIL them immediately.  I am still cursed with a crappy phone that is ignorant to the will of my impatient nature.  Anyways, I thought it was about time I posted something about green living instead of pictures of my awesome cat/urine.  I decided to take it literally so you are getting something that is both green in color AND in lifestyle, try to contain your excitement.

So every morningish (sometimes I'm lazy and just eat a half a hamburger bun) I whip up either a green smoothie or juice.  It takes some time but I'm always happier when I do and it's not really that hard to prepare.  If you read other green or raw food blogs, green juice enthusiasts like to boast that it feels like it gives them "superpowers" or that "their cells are brimming with energy" (not an exaggeration.)  While I love these people for their naivete when it comes to superpowers, and envy them their ability to find happiness in a smoothie, this is a falsehood. (seriously, you have to EARN superpowers, by being bitten by a spider or coming from another planet or wearing a cape in public without shame. If it were as easy as drinking a beverage with vegetables in it pretty sure I would have the ability to levitate the chocolate chips from the pantry into the living room, or some superpower that's even better than that one because I'm not very creative right now.)  But anyways, I feel like these bloggers are giving people a sense of expectation about the juice that isn't very realistic and might also lead to fatalities if people take these exclamations too seriously.

So I'm gonna lay out all the reasons why I think you should all be making green smoothies and I'm going to judge you if you don't:

1. I will judge you if you don't.  Seriously, some mornings I cram a solitary bun half into my mouth with shame and try to hide the evidence as quickly as possible, but the mornings I bring a green juice?  I take my motherfucking time*.  And why?  Because I'm better than you people with your egg mc Muffins that contributed 1.5 gallons of cow gas to the ozone.**  Or at least that's what I tell myself.  You can tell yourself that too, if you start drinking them.

2.  Salads are the mother%^&%*ing worst.  I hate them.  It took me a long time to admit it.  They are messy and I always drop lettuce on my lap and they taste like the opposite of pizza, even if its a salad pizza, and don't get me started on those. A few years ago, I got into an all-raw phase where every day for lunch I would eat a giant salad and I would always try to find the magic ingredient that would make me love them, so by the end my salads had avocados, flax seeds, chia seeds, some weird seaweed thing, "raw bacon", and countless other ingredients that raw people try to delude themselves into thinking tastes as good as a hamburger.

This is what raw bacon looks like when it's made well.  Mine was not made well.  I did, however, grow to like it because I drowned it in salt and liquid smoke.

 In short, I never got over hating salads and had a fairly unfortunate reaction from the seaweed.  Don't get me wrong, I never felt better after the raw food trial, but if you buy a raw lasagna, that shit does NOT taste like lasagna, despite the blank-eyed protests of the lady behind the counter.  But back to the smoothies, you can BLEND in your greens, thereby getting the equivalent (or more) of a salad and you can disguise it with fruit or cocoa powder, which is apparently a health food in the raw community, which almost makes up for that seaweed atrocity.

3. They actually taste good.  To me.  LOML hates them, but this is a man who would eat a nerds blizzard for breakfast everyday and be perfectly content.  But I think once you get the right ratio of veggies/ fruit or find out what you like, you can learn to love them.

4.  You really do feel good.  Not good enough to perform feats of magic, but better than if you ate a  milkshake crammed with candy at 7 am and don't have a stomach of stone.

5. I had another reason, but I forget it, so I'm gonna put up a warning here to not drop a mason jar on your foot because it will hurt a lot and you may swear and wake up other grouchy members of the household and Pan does NOT like to be woken up.

6.  I remembered.  The whole reason why it's green is that every morning you have about NO waste, and you can use veggies from your own garden.  And fruits,  unless some asshole squirrel ate all your strawberries too.  Blast them.  Anyhoo, I made mine this morning with the kale I grow all by myself in a dresser I found on the street:

In case you care enough to make one, I added a mango, parsley, cinnamon, cardamom, and water and it was pretty damn good.

So that is the story of why you should drink your veggies instead of eating them, and if I haven't inspired you to try one, I hope to have at least instilled a healthy dose of fear of eating an egg mcmuffin in my presence.

*This would work better if I lived in New York and could travel by subway where I could judge a larger number of people and they are unlikely to be drinking green stuff, not in an office where there are at most three other people there when I eat breakfast, and they don't even seem to eat anything.

**Unsubstantiated number.