I love being subversive. When baking chocolate chip cookies, I sneak bites of dough like a goddamn renegade.

During my senior year at a religious high school, I quit the school-sanctioned OH, LET’S JUST CUT ALL PERSONALITY AND STUDENT VOICE FROM OUR STORIES newspaper to create an underground one, wanting to make that sanctimonious haven into a heaven of rebels. (Did I worry about publishing the “What it’s like to be gay at a catholic school” article in 2001? Yes. But I didn’t get kicked out. #thankgodpunintended)

And when the food giants like Nestle and Lay’s try to hook us with their seductive mouthfeel and bliss points (ow ow!), I am riot-ready with a self-imposed no-sugar challenge.

The past ninety days haven’t been easy (BUT WHAT IF THIS REALLY IS THE BEST BROWNIE IN THE WORLD AND THIS RESTAURANT THAT MAKES THEM GOES OUT OF BUSINESS BEFORE JUNE 15^TH? WHAT THEN?!), but I’ve made it here.

Lessons have been learned, and the most important one is:

I can do fucking anything.

Believe me, I thought I’d be the last person who could break the habit, especially because I was the person who, in February, was sitting in a HomeGoods parking lot gorging myself on a loaf of chocolate-orange bread, one of the FOUR BIG LOAVES I had to SPECIALLY ORDER because Great Harvest Bread Company doesn’t make it often and its store in Naperville might as well be in Dubai. There are few things more pathetic than gnawing on a sugarloaf inside your car, hoping no one pulls up next to you.

But I made it through these 90 days. Because I had reasons.

Reason #1:

When I was seven years old, my Grandma Rose and I both learned how to write in cursive.

In school, under Mrs. MacIntyre’s close watch, the classroom’s desks were each dolloped with a puff of shaving cream, and when I smoothed it out, it became an endlessly blank canvas for my tentative fingertip attempts at the swirling letters.

My fingers glided across the white, dancing letters from left to right instead of having them sit there in print, block-like and unsophisticated as a 1^st grader.

When I came home, Grandma Rose and I would practice with pen and ink. I needed to practice for school, and she needed to practice to regain her ability lost from her first stroke. She’d come to live with us, which was hard for me to understand given that this woman had been so strong and independent, forever gardening under the hot sun in a straw hat or walking to the grocery store to save gas.

And now, she held onto my arm as we walked slowly up and down the hallway, up and down, up and down, coaxing the right side of her body to remember how to walk again.

When I was a couple of years older, I helped my other grandma after she’d suffered a stroke by being summoned with a bell because her voice was too weak to call out and lifting her into her wheelchair and helping her go to the bathroom.

What did these women think, being helped by their granddaughter? Were they humbled? Embarrassed? Does it ever become easier to ask for help?

I’ve wondered what death my body holds in its web of veins, blood humming with the genetic promise of stroke, stroke, stroke.

Thanks to my peanut butter cookie – sour cream cheesecake – “Oh, let her have another. She’s my angel” grandmas who died before they should have, I’ve been warned.

This challenge was for them. I’m trying.

Reason #2:

Everything I mentioned in my previous post from March 22^nd about wanting to LEARN AND REMEMBER INFORMATION (check out this study), cuz I like goin’ to the smarty party on the daily.

Reason #3:

I knew it was improving me.

On the outset, I said that I was going to read Infinite Jest and avoid sugar for 90 days. Confession: Couldn’t get through Infinite Jest. (I take comfort that Amy, my childhood friend who has lived five minutes from me my whole life—except college—also didn’t finish it. p.s. Amy – LONG LIVE SHAVING CREAM CURSIVE, AMIRIGHT?)

But hey, check out the 1,872 pages I soared through just since May 15^th when I was supposed to be turning Infinite’s infinite pages:

Modern Romance by Azia Ansari, Shrill by Lindy West, Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and Women, Food and Desire by Alexandra Jamieson.

It wasn’t a matter of not reading. It was a matter of not wanting to read that particular book.

I didn’t feel as though I was becoming a better thinker or writer or reader. On the sugar-fast, I felt like my mood was more stable, my head was more clear, and my body was more mine.

There have been BRUTAL things I’ve made myself do because I felt like they were making me stronger/faster/better ::cough 3-hour-long Tracy Anderson workouts! cough:: but the Jester just wasn’t happening for me.

And that’s okay.

When I wake up tomorrow, I’m not gonna pull a Gilmore Girls Movie Night and down four boxes of Red Vines. Have I been keeping track of the things I want to try? Yes. (Don’t think I forgot about you, $10 dark chocolate and peanut butter bar that I hid from myself!) But my plan is this: Indulge less often to enjoy more.

And first on my list is a walk to the Lombard Dairy Queen with Amy because it doesn’t feel like summer without clinking a toast with our Blizzard cups. Cheers!

 

Hey, dudes. I can sign autographs later. For, like, the 1 percent of you who don’t recognize me, I was a background extra on the show Good Morning, Miss Bliss. That was the original name–as every true hipster in here knows–of the show Saved by the Bell.

 

Yeah, yeah, I bet it’s all coming back to you now. You just gotta MacGuyver those memories to the front of your brain. And you know what we’re about to do, right? We gotta grab our fanny packs and head over to Wicker Park so we can EAT some AC Sliders and Lisa Turtle Milkshakes at the Max.

 

It’s gonna be a Bayside reunion, and you totally have to come!

 

You’re one of us. You know who you are. Whatever happened to predictability? It’s still here—it’s you! You’ve watched Fuller House and you’ve CUT IT OUT and HAD MERCY and HOW RUDEd with the best of them. And now, here’s your chance to Marty McFly yourself away to a better time. Back to the early 90s when you had all that potential, before you Office Spaced your life. Fuckin’ A, man, you were just a boy meeting the world, busy hanging with Mr. Feeny and hottie Shawn Hunter and even hanging with Mr. Cooper.

 

This is what 2016 is all about. It’s your moment. You millennials never got to have an adolescence of endless selfies and facebook-documented epic nights, but you still want a neverending story of your childhood, complete with your own flying luckdragon—I know, I know—blew my mind too, that neverending story thing wasn’t a dog, guys.

 

Chicago, you are a SUCKER for nostalgia! You’re even throwing a Ferris Bueller parade in May. What’s it gonna be next? Scrabbling up the windows of a downtown skyscraper to have an adventure while you’re babysitting? Arriving to town a Perfect Stranger to your cousin, Larry Appleton?

 

Yes, it definitely makes sense to have the Max diner in Chicago, especially since this city was featured in Saved by the Bell…hmmm…never. Even though there might have been some California Dreams with it in L.A., that wasn’t going to happen. And it wasn’t going to be a hit if The Max opened in the original city of the show, (does anyone know what it was?) Indianapolis. I’m not joking.

 

Chicago, it’s you—you who wanted this magical candied bacon diner meant for a man-child. Don’t worry, Dustin Diamond won’t be there to stab you, although he IS being released from his four months in Wisconsin prison right around the time The Max will open, but let’s not think about that. Thinking about that will just tarnish your memories, and you don’t want them tarnished. You still want problems that never get too big for a 21-minute episode to solve. When you screw up, you want a Kelly Kapowski to forgive you. And when things get really bad, you still want to be able to count on a Mr. Belding. You want to choose your own adventure and it’s to relive the one you already lived!

 

All of these reboots aren’t an X-File conspiracy. YOU WANT TO BELIEVE that you can go back, and you can! Come on, Sister, Sisters, take your Twin Peaks and bask in the Malibu Sands of time—and if you really wanna maintain your hipster status, wear your glitter lapel tuxedo and bring a magic trick or two so that you can throwback to when the Max was actually run by a dude named Max—bonus points for giving advice to teenagers and then punctuating that advice with a matching gag – like holding up a fish with giant bulletholes in it and saying, “Holy Mackerel!” Yes, that’s how cheesy the jokes were. You just didn’t notice because you were 12. But now you notice that Uncle Jesse’s sexual innuendos get old pretty quickly throughout the new, 13 craptacular episodes. Come on, Preppy. You think you’re too cool for all this? This past week, dinner tickets for Saved by the Max sold out in 20 minutes. You’re not fooling anybody. I know you wanna go.

 

I mean, you hate that you want to go, but you’re gonna go anyway. And once you get there, it’s gonna be like you’re trying to resuscitate a dead memory rather than making a new one, and you can’t do anything but watch it happen. That’s what happened to me every time at the Max when the whole Zack Attack posse would swagger in. I sat in the back. You hung out there too, and you didn’t say anything either, even when Zach turned to you and talked straight to you. So, you’ve gotta come to the reunion to celebrate what once was. You and I still aren’t stars, but I know we can sing the theme song like Milli Vanilli, so lemme hear it:

When I wake up in the morning

And the ‘larm gives out a warning

I don’t think I’ll ever make it on time

By the time I grab my books

And I give myself a look

I’m at the corner just in time to see the BUS FLY BY!

It’s all right, cuz I’m saved by the bell!

 

 

I used to dance with a cheeky cowboy named Cinnamon. He was the only black man who would frequent Cadillac Ranch, my favorite line-dancing joint, and he had rhythm oozing out of his spurs.

But that’s not the cinnamon I’m talking about today. I’m talking about the three different cinnamons in my house: Ceylon, Korintje, and Saigon. Turns out, they taste different from each other–thanks to you, absence of sugar!

Over the past few weeks (35 days in! Over 1/3 finished and no added sugars yet!), I feel as though my taste buds have come into focus. It’s like taking the film off the face of a new watch. Everything is sharper. More distinctive. More beautiful.

My least favorite cinnamon is Ceylon (Thanks a lot, Whole Foods and the monopoly Ceylon has over you!), which is the best for you and the least liver-damage-causing.

My favorite is Korintje, which seems available to buy only at elitist spice houses.

Ceylon’s too “I’m trying to be sweet!” and annoying about it, while Korintje is more flavorful, like it was kissed by chai. That’s right, it tastes like a flirty giggle.

Saigon is somewhere in between and by far the cheapest and readily available. (Least healthy = cheapest = ‘Merica.)

But the point is, there’s a difference to me now. It’s revelatory—on par with what I imagine colorblind people feel when being told there are numbers they can’t see embedded in those odd, intestinal cartoon circles.

What more flavors are out there that I’ve never noticed? It’ like discovering a new land! A tiny patch (not even a hectare big, whatever a hectare is) that no one wants or cares about, but whatever, I’m sticking my flag in it, dammit!

A pioneer of cinnamons today, a frontierswoman of who-knows-what tomorrow!

p.s. Walnuts taste buttery! #wtfthat’sawesome

I just ambled home from my first pottery class since junior year of college, and I’m muddy and triumphant. I made three bowls (two of them are all right!), and I’m in the class with one other student, a freshman at Willowbrook High School. So there’s a lot of hands-on help to recreate scenes from Ghost.

This morning, I was so tired. I could barely drag myself out of bed. I skipped my morning exercise and was in a crappy mood all day long. (Disclaimer: It might be because a particular student is trying to just hang out in my classroom during my lunch. It’s the only time I have to myself from 8:33 a.m. to 2:17 p.m., and I need to recharge. It doesn’t help that this guy has said, “”I think I wanna do my problem/solution TED Talk on how women are really over-blowing this whole feminist thing. Did you know that some of them don’t shave their armpits? And what are they complaining about anyway? We gave them the right to vote, like, 80 years ago.” ) I almost talked myself into skipping yoga class after school, since I had the pottery class later in the evening and I wouldn’t want to be overexerting myself, now would I? But I cajoled myself into going, and it gave me more energy. I’m more energetic now than I have been all day. It seems counter-intuitive, but the more active I am, the more energy I have. As soon as I get going, I’m a perpetual motion machine.

And now that I’m going on the no-sugar crusade, I’ve built up some momentum, and I feel unstoppable. Or at least, less stoppable. Over the weekend, Aunt Marilyn visited, and Steve and I took her out to one of our favorite eateries: Davanti. There, they have one of my all-time favorite desserts in the world: the brown butter blondie. It tastes like nailing the high notes in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” With caramel.

I urged them to order it so Aunt Marilyn could try it, and they did. It came out, warm and perfect, and I hid my nose behind my mint tea so that I wouldn’t be able to catch its alluring perfume. And I was fine. It was less of a big deal than I thought it would be.

Now, if only I could rein in the new addiction…apples with gobs of peanut butter…mmmm

I’ve reached my favorite part of Infinite Jest thus far– David Foster Wallace was ahead of his time, wisely forecasting the current concept of FaceTime phone calls. He went one step further, satirically predicting we’d all want to escape this technological reality in which we are no longer able to freely “blemish-scan” or “nostril-explore” or adjust our genitals because we are being LOOKED AT AS WE SPEAK. Oh, the horror! In the book, the wealthy among us demand “videophone masks that were really quite a lot better-looking” than we are in person, and it results in all of us emperors wearing no clothes (or, rather, all wearing masks, so we might as well just go back to no video on our phone calls). Hardy har har. Chuckles galore.

But this addict-riddled book has made me wonder—can anyone truly be a non-addict?  Is that only possible for Tibetan monks who have no attachments? I find myself replacing one addiction (sugar) with another (huh-yeah ALMONDS and obscene globs of peanut butter on tiny slivers of apple). I know that getting over this sugar addiction isn’t about willpower. It’s about setting up my own chemicals for success (i.e. not letting myself get hungry or stressed, because if I do, I’ll crave sugar). And to choose not to let anything else control me (cravings, mood swings caused by what I eat, becoming hangry).

I watched some interviews of David Foster Wallace over the weekend, and I was struck by his self-awareness (Charlie Rose interview, I’m lookin’ at you!). If someone so intelligent and thoughtful couldn’t think his way out of his own addictions, what hope is there for the rest of us?

 

I lost 2 pounds.

No joke. I weighed myself the first day, then proceeded to eat about 50 almonds so that I wouldn’t break down and rob the local Dairy Queen (holding up the joint with a whipped cream gun, perhaps?) And I thought about the 100 almonds I ate yesterday as I weighed myself today, and was shocked. Two pounds. Just…gone. Which is a crazy coincidence, because David Gillespie, author of Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat, says that we each “eat 2 pounds of added sugar a week.” Well, I can assure him that I don’t normally eat 5000 almonds per week, either. But, there you have it. Except, now I have two pounds less of it. Sha-bam!

 

“Yeah, I could eat.”

If you’re like me, you’re always up for noshing on a little sumpin’ sumpin’. A friend wants to go out to eat, but I just had dinner? Eh, I’m sure I can whip up some hunger on the way to the restaurant. I thought it was just me—that I was one of those people who’s just constantly somewhat hungry. Turns out, I was wrong:

“When you are addicted to sugar and your appetite is stuck half-on, you can keep eating and eating and eating.” David Gillespie, it’s like you KNOW ME!

But it’s not supposed to be like that: “Once you are fructose-free and your appetite control is working, it will be counting your calories for you and will stop you in your tracks if you eat too much.” Looking forward to when that kicks in, buddy!

 

I really don’t want to become dumber.

The MOST CONVINCING science that made it easier for me to not feel like I was missing out was a study that shows how sugar hurts one’s ability to “learn and remember information,” and even though omega-3 fatty acids can “help minimize the damage,” there’s still been damage.

And, since I’m getting my body baby-ready, it makes it even easier to say no, since I’m also killing my sugar addiction for future little me:

“Fructose definitely affects iodine metabolism, which affects your baby’s IQ (and not in a good way).” (And also copper metabolism, which can screw with the baby’s growth of the developing muscles and organs.) Thanks for the heads up, Gillespie!

Do I want my future child (yet-unconceived, DAD, don’t even ask) to be a prodigy who beats Carolyn at Jeopardy or creates the next Internet or invents a convenient way to have a manatee as a pet? Yes. Yes, I do. So, I’ll do my best to give him/her the best chance possible by keeping this no sugar thing up THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PREGNANCY. (No, the pregnancy hasn’t started yet, Dad! Don’t worry! I’ll keep you posted!)

 

Not a shock, but worth a note:

Sleep has definitely gotten more sound. I have always been a light sleeper, but for years, I’ve laid awake in bed for an hour or so before finally falling asleep, and even when sleep would come, it felt as though I would just skim the surface of sleep the entire night and would wake up groggy. In the past week, I’ve definitely slept more soundly and have woken up feeling more refreshed than I have in a LONG WHILE, probably since the days when I couldn’t wait to get up and build some towers out of our used-toothbrushing-paper-water-cup-collection:

One week down! Check back in next week for another update.

“She did not know he had tried to stop. He always lasted a week, or two weeks, or maybe two days, and then he’d think and decide to have some in his home one more last time. “ – David Foster Wallace

And so it begins. Today was the first step to breaking the addiction that had me sneaking cupcakes in the car on the way home from the city, planning on giving a box of donut holes to a friend but ending up eating them myself, ordering a dessert at a restaurant and one to-go because I knew I’d want more, more, always more (Uncommon Ground’s Flourless Chocolate Cake, I’m lookin’ at you!!!)

I made it through today. I’ll make it through tomorrow. It wasn’t even that bad.

On Saturday, I had an epiphany—

I was putting off working out (doing chores in my workout gear, cuz the time I’m wearing my workout stuff equals the time I’m working out, right?) and I stopped, mid-mirror-washing—Hey. Working out is doing something hard for your body now that’s eventually good. The same thing as breaking your sugar addiction. So if you can’t just do a mere half an hour workout, how are you going to sustain a 90-day journey to break this addiction for once and for all?

Humbled, I Tracy Anderson-ed the heck out of the workout.

I don’t want to be overwhelmed with shame craving, intimidating as two pages without a paragraph break.

I’m going to last for more than a week, two weeks. There is no “one more last time.” This is it.

At “Poems While You Wait,” you commission a poem to be written within fifteen minutes. You give them the inspiration, frolic for a bit, and pick up your poem, post-frolic. I told Mandy that I wanted to do this for realsies one day, and she took it upon herself to break me into the biz by giving me the inspiration for my first “Poems While You Wait” piece:

“Finding my path, in a non-God-y way” – Mandy

 

To find your path

 

Well, the first thing it to avoid all breadcrumbs.

You don’t want to go where you’ve already been, darling!

One way is this:

A spinning globe.

Eyes closed.

A daring exclamation point of a fingertip.

There!

 

Another way is lists:

The arched gingerbread trellis, yes,

But you’d forsake the “approaching mermaids” road sign.

A tightrope balance, to be sure,

To moonbounce down

Into a skydive interrobang.

 

Of course, you could always just begin in medias res,

Right now, you see, you’re already doing it!

Cast a smile at the crowd over your shoulder

And swagger away into an endless ellipsis

 

Flip a three-sided coin for your answer.

And…flip!

You see which one to do?

Were you disappointed?

If you flip long enough,

You will never stretch those wings you’ve been hiding all along.

I know. I know you believe them to be ungainly as lobster claws

And spreading yourself vulnerable open—

Your body does not know this,

has never spoken in anything but its native armor,

fluent in fortification.

But you must, sweet.

Stretch them wide, so you can teach yourself

Their language of flight,

Word by word,

Mile by mile.

 

 

 

From the ages of four to ten, every May’s Lombard Lilac Parade would find me sunburning on the sidelines of the road, tolerating the endless marching bands and the swarm of oldsters on low-riding carpets (how did those fezzes stay on their heads as they buzzed about? Did I have to become an old man in order to get my turn on one of them?) to eventually behold the gem of the humid afternoon: The Lilac Princess Float.

I had no idea how these princesses were chosen to win this prestigious honor. I imagined a Hogwartsian arrival of the news, perhaps via a bumblebee clutching a bundle of lilac blossoms, and I dreamed of the day I’d roll through the streets of Lombard like a lavender Elsa who’d be able to grow a harrowingly fierce castle made out of goddamn flowers.

Unfortunately, I never reigned over the Lombardian peasantry as princess, and I assumed my time would never come.

Oh, but I was wrong. My time has come to serve Lombard in a different way. The adult version of being the Lilac Princess is, of course, receiving an invitation to have your home be part of the town’s house walk.

It was quite an honor to be invited, even though there was a notable dearth of special delivery bumblebees.

How improbable this invitation was!

As a child, I was embarrassed that my home didn’t look like everyone else’s. Or anyone else’s. Mom used to refer to it as a “gingerbread house,” but Rory more aptly encapsulated its dark 70s flair by calling it a mushroom.

Mom used to shred our address, forever wanting to fly under the radar and not draw attention to our existence so that our identities wouldn’t be immediately stolen by the criminals who forever waited in the wings as garbage-diving enthusiasts. Mom never wanted to let anyone in the house and distrusted strangers with the conviction of a Waco militiaman.

So, inviting strangers into the home to check it out and hear its stories is a bit of a shift from the status quo. Mom would have looked at this as an opportunity for would-be robbers to case the joint and find all of its security weaknesses. (Spoiler alert: none.)

But I’m going to look at this as an opportunity to have my childhood home kick ass with its hidden gem qualities and history. (“The best wedding ever happened right here, motherfuckers!”) –Yes, that will be in the docent’s cue card and he will have to solemnly read that out loud to the gaggle of Golden Girls standing on our steps in their orthopedic shoes.

We’re gonna rock this as hard as a Shriner on a street carpet.

 

“You know what they say, girls. The longer the stem…”