It's not easy being green.

School has started this week! And I am kicking off the year with yet another good idea gone bad. Kaboomtown was a warmup. Great Wolf Lodge? Please, that was one night. This week, I'm taking on 3 days of well-intentioned torture.

I'm doing a juice fast.

Because:
A. My house and the people in it were sick all summer long. And this is the first week of school, aka, germs'r'us. I need an immunity boost.

B. I don't take vitamins. Not for any particular reason, I just don't remember to take them. Like ever. I cannot tell you how many bottles of vitamins have come into my medicine cabinet only to die a slow death by expiration. Surely 3 days of juice made from fresh veggies and fruits will be like a year of vitamins, right?

C. After the summer of sickness and lethargy, my motivation to get up at 4:45 am to work out is, shall we say, lacking. Maybe this will get my groove back. (Sadly, not the kind Stella had, which I doubt comes from blended kale).

I ordered premade, frozen juices so I wouldn't have to make them myself. Because if I'm buying a case of produce, I'm cooking it, probably with olive oil, parmesan and pasta - I'm not throwing it into the blender. Having spent the money, I'm committed, for three days at least. Finally, if all else fails --I'm counting on this blog to keep me on track. If I write it down, I have to do it.

Day 1, Drink 1: I pull out of the carpool lane and pop open the first juice. It's green. I've never drank anything green in my entire life, unless you count an overzealously sour-mixed frozen margarita. This juice is not a margarita.

First sip: tastes like apple-flavored grass, with a lot of sugar. Like someone took lawn mower clippings and whipped them up with Mott's. The look? Remember that evil green concoction Rene Russo drinks in The Thomas Crown Affair? When she's sitting on a balcony with Pierce Brosnan the morning after, and as his servant delivers her drink, she says, "I hate being a forgone conclusion."

You know what I hate? This juice. Also, I'd be in a much better mood if I were sipping this on a balcony with Pierce Brosnan. Forcing myself to gulp it down while driving to work? Not the same.

I read the label: apple juice, lemon juice, kale juice, carrot juice, collard juice. Collard juice? Why is that a thing? I like collards, but I eat them with bacon, onions and hot pepper vinegar. The way God intended. Not in a juice. Just. No. Also, how does this juice have 26 grams of sugar? I start calculating all the different foods I could have eaten for that much sugar. Not a good idea, as it just makes me simultaneously hungry and nauseated.

I finish as much of the sludge as I can, leaving an inch of weirdly grainy, chunky stuff in the bottom and head into the office. An hour later, my head hurts and I could kill someone for a cracker.

Day 1, Drink 2: this one's orange, which at least is an actual color of something drinkable. I set it on my desk. I try to make myself open it. No can do. I start bargaining with myself. I'll drink this one after I write an article. And open job numbers for new fact sheets, which is a task I avoid like the plague (which came to Yosemite this year, you know. But I won't get it because I'll be all healthy from this horrible juice. Maybe the plague would be better).

Finally, I've procrastinated as much as I can (juice-crastinate? I think I just invented a word) and I unscrew the lid. Smells like orange. Tastes like orange. With a LOT of ginger. Why? Never mind, I'm sure there's some health reason for ruining what could be a decent glass of OJ, but still. It's WAY better than the green one. It's slightly frozen in the center, but apart from that and the excessive ginger, it's pretty palatable.

One can only hope that juice #3 will be similarly not-awful. I peek at the bottle. Oh dear. Beets. Stay tuned...

UPDATE Day 1, Juice 3. I could not face it at lunch. I bought a teeny container of carrots and hummus. Which is basically juice, unliquified, right? (Juice. Unliquified. Sounds like a movie starring Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder. In the 90s. Sorry, hunger is making me stupid).

So this one is beets. I take a sip. SWEET JESUS that is awful! I mean. Really bad. It's the color purple. Think of Oprah, I tell myself, holding my nose. She faced discrimination and prison time in that movie. Surely I can drink one bottle of beet juice.

4 sips later ... and no. I just can't do it. It is literally the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth. Even if I hold my nose, as soon as I swallow, I taste ... dark, damp dirt. And not like the kind you brush off a fresh peach, but like the dirt from an ummarked grave. I taste evil. That's it; beets are evil. How did I not know this?

I think beet juice just knocked liver out of the top spot on my Most Hated Foods list, and those are not words I use lightly. I'm thinking of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, and yes, I realize that was a turnip, but you know what scene I'm talking about.

"As God is my witness, I'll never drink beet juice again."

Glass half full: this is my only beet juice for the day.
Glass half empty: there are 3 juices left.
And they're all green.