I have given up pretty much all of my earthly possessions. Some people don’t need drugs and alcohol to have a good time. I don’t even need socks.

I live for free in a walk-in closet in a friend’s apartment. I sleep on a salvaged mattress that smells like anti-freeze. Sometimes I imagine how the anti-freeze got spilled on the mattress, but those fantasies end quickly because inhaling anti-freeze fumes makes linear thought . . . I dunno.

I scavenge a lot of food from my roommates, Ben and Chopper. They put their cast-off food in a bag for me, and I check the bag for edible specimens. The bag is white and plastic and lines a short, white bin that fits under the sink.

Sometimes I scavenge food from the refrigerator or even a cupboard.

I do not own a phone. If I want to use a phone, I wake up very early, before Ben and Chopper are awake, and see if either of them are using their phone. If they aren’t, I use it for the whole day, and return it at night, after they’ve gone to sleep.

Neither do I own a car. But Ben does. If I need to get somewhere, I get up very early and climb into the back of the car and cover myself up with blankets. Then Ben and I play “chauffeur”. He drives me to his work. When we get there, I wait 5 minutes under the blankets, and then let myself out of the car and go about my business.

My business is climbing to the top of the parking garage, finding discarded pigeon feathers (and, if I’m lucky, whole pigeon corpses), and creating dream-catchers from them. I sell these handmade artifacts to many grateful patrons who are so eager to part with their money that they often throw it at me. That’s consumerism for you. Retail-therapy. A fool and his money . . . the anti-freeze is singing its lullaby.

As Andrea enters the kitchen, she sees no island. Andrea has hoped for an island in her kitchen for perhaps her whole life. To her it represents a steady point in the midst of whirling insanity. An island jutting up in the ocean of her kitchen would mean that man may take a stand against the unfeeling forces of nature and cry for order in the black cosmos. You can see how crushed she is in the tremor of her right eye. There. Hope has drained away in an instant.

She shows us an intensity that I have seen in the eyes of a person who has been overcome by the barren wastes of Antarctica. Who sees in the austerity of the landscape not possibility, but nothingness.

There’s a nobility in Joanna that surfaces in moments like these. She reads Andrea with total understanding. She suggests that an island may be added. Further, she turns to Chip and asks if he believes that the walls in the adjoining dining room could be covered in shiplap. He says that he believes such a thing may be possible.

In this moment, Andrea’s face changes. She acknowledges here that she has escaped the terror of a kitchen without an island. She acknowledges the joy that will be hers when she possesses a dining room whose walls will bear plain, rustic wooden boards, this “shiplap”.

However, look closer at her face. As a filmmaker I’ve become attuned to the myriad types of emotion. To me, even a program on HGTV is like a cereal aisle in a grocery store of human despair. So much variety.

And I see on Andrea’s face a mask of relief. By this I mean that her expression hides her true feelings. She has not truly felt a change.

In the moments when she believed she would not have an island in her kitchen, she contracted a kind of disease of dissatisfaction. She learned then that such abysses of disappointment do exist in human experience. Though the horror of living without an island in her kitchen has been avoided, nevertheless she has learned of the existence of such terror. Having witnessed the truth of the howling void within her, she will never again be free of it.

Andrea and her monosyllabic husband, Dan, choose this house.

Finally, it is demo day. But the truth is that demo day has already come and gone. A demo day of Andrea’s trust in a universe that cares about her desires. A demo day of her belief in a harmonious and meaningful existence. Unlike the house, Andrea will never be fixed.

Chip and Joanna see themselves as agents of order and harmony. I see them as purveyors of an impossible dream, one from which Andrea has only just awakened.

Chip is very funny. A comedic genius, I think.

In my dad’s veterinary clinic we had a bird, a cockatoo, named Cotton. Unlike parrots, cockatoos don’t get culture-wide credit for being able to talk. But they can, and Cotton could. He lived in a steel cage on wheels. We would wheel him up front so that people could see him and talk to him. Then we would wheel him into the back once he become over-stimulated and would not stop screaming.

All of us children spent a lot of time talking to Cotton, standing around the heavy cage watching him. We kept whole peanuts, in their shells, to give to Cotton. You would hold one out to him, and he would stick his grey, skeletal claws out of the cage and take it from you, and you would pretend not to feel revolted at the exchange.

You were careful to hold the peanut so that Cotton would have to reach out of the cage. You did not want to put your hand into the cage. One of my younger brothers, Caspar, put his hand in Cotton’s cage, and received a ragged, fishhook shaped wound on his finger, down to the bone, when the bird bit him. Among other things, Cotton could say “Cotton’s a pretty bird” and “answer the phone” and “get off your ass and answer the phone”. These last two phrases he’d learned from his previous owners, both of whom, we deduced, were reluctant to take calls.

One day an odd new phrase surfaced in Cotton’s repertoire. “Jeffery is a sonofabitch,” Cotton asserted to me, through a mouthful of peanut, with my siblings gathered around the cage. My name is Jeffery. This stunned all of us children for a moment, and then we laughed. Keziah, my sister, said, “I agree”, which got a positive reaction and a renewed outburst of hilarity from the rest of the siblings. I smiled along. As the oldest, I felt I could stand to take this kind of heat.

He said it without inflection. Or without the standard inflection of an insult. If someone insults you, they tend to put a spin on the words, to help them cut deeper and get the point of the insult as close to the bone as possible. Cotton delivered his barb without rancor. He stated it as fact.

Cotton calling me a sonofabitch bothered me. Why would he say that to me? I knew that Cotton didn’t say anything to me in any meaningful sense, that he’d just consumed a collection of sounds and regurgitated it. But that meant that someone was teaching him how to do this. Who would spend the time necessary to teach the bird to insult me, and why would they do that? Even worse, maybe someone called me a sonofabitch offhandedly throughout the day so often that Cotton had picked it up without dedicated instruction.

A few weeks later, Cotton added another new phrase. “The moon will be turned to blood, Jeffrey,” he started to say. He said this in the same cadence in which he said “Cotton’s a pretty bird”—in an inconsequential lilt, with a twinge of mockery. The apocalyptic phrase would have been bothersome and eerie without including my name. But with my name it sounded like a threat.

I asked my dad if Roland had been talking to Cotton recently. Roland was a mentally ill man who visited the veterinary clinic often in order to talk to Cotton about the angel who lived in the clinic’s basement. My dad said that Roland had a falling out with Cotton—he claimed the bird was withholding information about the angel—and had not been by in nearly a month.

I began to resent Cotton. If I was at my dad’s clinic, I would walk past him without acknowledging him or handing him a peanut.

One day, after a few weeks of this, I was heading to the back to clean cages and passed Cotton. He tapped at the side of the cage with his claw. I looked at him. Cotton grasped one of the bars of his cage, stuck his head up to the bars, turned to look at me with one black eye. “Fear rules you, Jeffrey,” Cotton said. He turned his head to stare at me with his other eye. I kicked the cage hard. It spun on its wheels and slammed into the wall. Cotton screamed loudly. He appeared to be pulling at the bar of the cage. I stepped closer to see that when the cage made contact with the wall it had pinned one of Cotton’s claws there. I pulled the cage back and Cotton withdrew his leg, which quivered. There was no blood, but the knuckle of the claw had been damaged. The door to the back swished open and my dad charged through to see what was happening.

“I was spinning the cage and Cotton’s toe got smashed against the wall,” I said.

“Don’t do that,” my dad said.

“Okay,” I said.

Cotton did not talk after that. He became sullen and began to pull his own feathers out. He screeched constantly. You couldn’t keep a bird like that in a place of business. My dad gave him away. Roland eventually came back to talk to Cotton about the angel, to find that his conduit to the spirit world was gone. At first Roland seemed pleased that judgement had visited Cotton. But then I began finding notes around the clinic, allegedly signed by the angel. The notes said things like, “You have betrayed me, Jeffrey. Sincerely, Angel”. Or “The end of the world is coming, Jeffrey. March 12, 1996. Sincerely, Angel”. I found Roland placing one on the window air conditioning unit once.

A few weeks ago, my younger brother Caspar told me over whiskey that he’d taught Cotton to say things about me. It was a slow vengeance against Cotton for biting his finger. He still has the scar. He thought that the appeal of a talking bird would be diminished if the bird began to swear and issue vague threats. Caspar would accompany my dad to the clinic to watch basketball games (my dad had cable installed at the clinic for the purpose), and spend the entire time in the back, rehearsing lines with Cotton.

“Why did you direct them at me?” I asked.

Caspar didn’t answer at first. Then he took a breath.

“Because you’re an easy person to blame. I was mad at you a lot, anyway. But you’re easy to blame. I mean you were.”

Caspar changed the tense from “you are easy to blame” to “you were easy to blame” to make me feel better. But the fact that he corrected himself made it seem that the present tense was correct, like I was still easy to blame.

“You have a lot of opinions about me,” I said. “Do you still think that fear rules me?”

“I think that fear rules you,” Caspar said. “But I don’t know what you mean by ‘still’.”

“Well, you taught Cotton to say that to me when you were ten,” I said. “Fear rules you, Jeffrey.”

“I didn’t teach him to say that, but whoever did was observant,” he said.

Sometimes I have an unbidden image in my mind of the angel standing at the bird cage, whispering to the bird inside, and the bird turning its head this way and that, staring into the empty air and repeating the words in its creaking voice.

I visited a chiropractor because my body was falling apart. My body is still falling apart. I don’t expect it to stop falling apart until it has come apart at the molecules.

The first thing the chiropractor said to me was, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Kurt Russell?” No one has ever told me that I look like Kurt Russell. “No,” I said. “No one’s ever told me that.” I tried to make it sound reasonable that someone might think that I look like Kurt Russell, and like I’d been waiting for someone to say it, and he finally had.

But I didn’t find the comparison apt. Here are the two components of Kurt Russell:

1 – He does not have eyes
2 – He is mostly a chin

Like Kurt Russell, I do not have any eyes to speak of, but I’m maybe only twenty percent a chin. Maybe just ten percent.

“People tell me I look like Kurt Russell,” the chiropractor said. And it’s true. You can definitely see why someone would say that about him.

I began to wonder if he’d told me that I look like Kurt Russell so that I would return the favor and tell him that he did too. Or maybe he told me that I looked like Kurt Russell so that I would realize that he did and then say that he did. Then he could write it down in a little book, or make a notch on his adjusting table.

Whenever I happen to cross paths with the chiropractor, he always notices me first, and always mentions that I look like Kurt Russell. “Hey, is that Kurt Russell?” he says. Or “I thought you were great in Tombstone!” Or “How’s Goldie?” I never have the chance to ambush him with the assertion that he looks like Kurt Russell. He always gets me first.

But now, whenever I’m forced to look at myself in the mirror, a situation I take pains to avoid, I find that I look increasingly like Kurt Russell. My eyes have receded even further, which I hadn’t thought possible. But their color has has grown less muddled, more crystalline. Like Kurt Russell, my eyes have become the color of light trapped in ice. And, even though it’s covered by a beard, my chin has annexed an alarming swath of my lower face.

It seems like the chiropractor’s perception of me has begun to overwhelm my own impression of myself. I cannot tell if I feel horror at fulfilling someone else’s vision of who I am, or if the horror is my reaction to the chiropractor prodding me toward freedom. Maybe I’m avoiding the relief of becoming not myself. I should let go and let myself become Kurt Russell. I should relax and let my chin grow and my spine straighten.

After the chiropractor first told me that I looked like Kurt Russell, he adjusted me. He took hold of me and began to put me back together. That’s not actually correct. He didn’t put me back together so much as help me fall apart in a different way. He began to mold me into a new shape, and I began to become something other than myself. I’m still falling apart. I’m still becoming not myself. And it’s an enormous relief. It’s such a relief to find myself in the process of becoming Kurt Russell.

On the bulletin board outside the co-op hangs a poster. In the center of the poster is a grainy black and white photo 5 kittens. Above the photo is the text “OUR KITTIES NEED HOMES”.

Below the photo, the following:

As you may remember, we posted a warning here about some people who had harassed our kittens. Apparently, that flyer ran afoul of some of the rules of the co-op bulletin board. Fair enough. The thing is, we still have kitties who need to find a home.

So here are some more in-depth descriptions of our cats, so you know when to expect when you come to meet these little fluffballs.

1 – Joey is a classic bad boy with a devil-may-care attitude. He smokes, but he’s cutting back and trying to quit. Is that a switchblade he’s pulling out? No, it’s just a comb. He likes looking good and charming the ladies. As a bonus, Joey’s new humans will receive a two month supply of feline nicotine patches.

2 – Did you hear an explosion? It’s just Dr. Mittens in the lab with another experiment gone haywire. He’s quiet and absent-minded, but don’t let that fool you! If you see him on the basketball court, slow your roll! He’s a threat from the outside, but isn’t afraid to drive. His favorite way to hydrate after some intense three-on-three? Milk.

3 – Ally McBeale, look out! Because here comes Catty McBeale, a no-nonsense career girl who believes that people who live below glass ceilings should throw rocks. She’s a feminist, but if we’re being honest, she loves cooking and knitting too. Don’t let this kitty get into the yarn . . . unless you want a beautiful, heirloom-quality afghan knitted overnight!

4 – Woah, woah, woah! Turn down that Joy Division 7 inch record, Skips! I can barely hear myself think! Skips is a real audiophile who loves new wave and post-punk almost as much as he loves reading compilations of Hitler’s speeches. He has some problems with much of what Hitler accomplished, but, says Skips, you have to admit that he was a world-class communicator and got results.

*We do not support this view of Hitler, but we’re trying to accurately reflect Skips’ deeply held convictions on the matter.*

5 – Don’t disturb Suzuki. She’s been meditating for 5 hours straight, experiencing ego death and a total dissolution of the self into the cosmic void. Her concentration is total . . . unless she happens to smell CATNIP. Then she becomes a total goofball! When she’s on one of her catnip binges, look out! If she met the buddha on the road, she might LICK HIM TO DEATH.

All of our cats are committed to sustainable agricultural practices and believe—strongly—in building topsoil.

Come see us soon to decide which of these little bundles you want to go home with!

And if you happen to know the couple who harassed our cats, let them know that we forgive them. We’re moving on.

I’ve been posting three times a week. I’m bumping that down to one a week. I’ll post every Thursday.

Thanks for reading. You’re the real hero.

The Eldritch Health Reusable Hot or Cold Compress is designed to provide comforting cold or hot therapy in an effective reusable system. The benefit to you? Two products for the price of one!

The Eldritch Health Reusable Hot or Cold Compress remains flexible when frozen. We have no idea how this is scientifically possible. It probably isn’t. But it’s true. It remains flexible when frozen.

The compress can be used hot as well. The unearthly substance within doesn’t care about your petty temperatures.

Use cold therapy for fast relief of pain and swelling, bumps and bruises, headaches and insect bites and toothaches. It’s flexible even when frozen. Yes, we’re being repetitive. But it still amazes us-we don’t understand how that’s possible.

Use hot therapy for soothing relief of sore and stiff joints, muscles aches and pain, muscle tension and cramps. When heated it remains flexible as well. That’s less surprising, we suppose, but worth mentioning.

Also worth mentioning: when heated the compress will move slightly. “Undulate” is a more descriptive word. It will undulate and make progress toward your face, for some reason. You’ll have to readjust it periodically, moving it back to the problem spot, and keeping it away from your face.

Warnings

Keep it away from your face. Under no circumstances should you fall asleep while using the compress.

Individuals with history of circulatory issues should not use the compress before consulting a physician. Individuals with history of possession should contact a priest.

Do not apply excessive weight to compress by sitting or leaning on compress, as compress may burst or leak. If the otherworldly substance inside gets loose, we’re all so screwed. Please do not let this happen.

Even though all efforts to save humanity will be a lost cause if the contents escape the compress, we still recommend flushing eyes with water. Do this regardless of whether or not the substance came into contact with anyone’s eyes. It’s just something to do for a few minutes as you await the end of all things.

Instructions

Cold Therapy:
1. Cool compress in freezer for at least 1 hour.

2. Remove compress from freezer. Test compress temperature for comfort level, then apply to injured area.

3. Place in freezer for future cold therapy use.

Hot Therapy:
1. Place a hand on the compress, and recite the ancient invocation, rolling the Rs:

Dem yon sethoth
Kem son rethoth
Kor elion tenthoth

2. The compress will heat to an ideal temperature. The compress knows the correct temperature to heal whatever malady you wish to treat. Trust the compress. The compress knows. If the compress feels hot to the touch, too hot for contact with human skin, you are wrong. Do not second-guess the compress. The compress hates nothing more than fear. Do not show the compress your fear. The compress sees your fear and will destroy you. The compress sees all.

If used on children, monitor closely. Do not leave the compress with children unattended. Please, please, handle the compress with respect and reverence, and do not leave it alone with children. We’re begging you.

Price at Walmart: $2.98

Jeff switched between Power Point slides with an expert hand. Next slide. Next slide. Flawless.

He pitched his voice at the speakerphone to his right.

“And those are the specs on the Singe, our disruptive toaster oven. Our materials and engineering are better, as I think I demonstrated, and the unit cost is lower, as you can see here. So that’s all I have, by way of information. And of course, most of you have seen these details before this meeting. If you don’t mind me being direct . . .”

“The ball’s in our court, Jeff,” a voice on the other line said. Jeff recognized it as belonging to Meredith, an upper-level executive with the massive retail chain Bullseye. Getting the Singe into a store with national distribution would be a leap toward stability for Jeff’s fledgling operation. Jeff’s stomach was like an Oyamel fir tree in Mexico during winter—full of migrating Monarch butterflies.

“I think we have the information we need to make a decision,” Meredith continued. “Can you give us a minute to toss some things around here? Do you mind if I put you on hold for a minute or two?”

“If that works for you guys, sounds great to me,” Jeff said.

“Okay. We’ll be back with you in a minute.” Hold music lurched on.

Jeff bit his lip, and tapped his fist on the desk. He kept himself under control. He knew that the deal wasn’t done yet. But he felt good. His dad had been sure that the market didn’t need another toaster oven. Well, we’ll see about that, Jeff thought. He grimaced. The thought seemed rote and insubstantial. He wanted to take action in the world and externalize a feeling of triumph. He got out of his chair. He prepared to do a big fist pump. He envisioned some of the best fist pumps he’d ever seen. He thought of Macaulay Culkin as Kevin in Home Alone. He clenched his hand. He thought of Joshua Jackson as Charlie in The Mighty Ducks. He unclenched his hand. The memory of those first-rate fist pumps discouraged him. He couldn’t equal them. Why was he trying?

Then he saw a package of almonds on his desk. He’d have a couple almonds. A couple of celebratory almonds. He shook a few loose from the package. He thought about tossing one in the air. What? Was he going to suddenly become the cool guy who can catch almonds in his mouth? He placed the almonds in his mouth very carefully. He started munching the almonds, and felt a deep satisfaction.

At that moment, the hold music turned off with a click. Meredith’s voice came through.

“Jeff?” it said.

Jeff struggled to swallow the almonds. As he did, the silence extended.

“Jeff,” Meredith said, “are you there?”

“Yesh,” Jeff said, through the almonds.

There was a pause on the other end.

“Are you okay?” Meredith said.

“Yeah,” Jeff said, finally swallowing. “You just caught me in a mouthful of almonds.”

There was a long pause on the other end.

“Almonds, Jeff?” Meredith said. “And you feel like we caught you, huh?”

“Um. Yeah. I had a couple of almonds while you were all talking and everything.”

“Did you know that we were coming back?” Meredith’s voice had had frozen over and the chill crawled up Jeff’s back.

“I would have hoped that you realized,” she continued, ”that you were only going to be on hold a couple minutes? I said that, I’m pretty sure.”

“You did, Meredith,” said Tony, another executive at Bullseye. “I heard you.”

“Sorry about the almonds,” Jeff said.

“I’m sorry, but I asked a question,” Meredith said. “Did you know we were coming back?”

“Yes,” Jeff said. He found swallowing hard again, even without almonds.

“And you still decided to go ahead and have a mouthful of almonds? You couldn’t wait?” Meredith’s voice was growing more intense without getting louder.

Jeff cleared his throat.

“Well, I wanted to enjoy a couple almonds . . .” Jeff trailed off.

Meredith sighed loudly.

“This is an issue. You could have just waited for your almonds. We think your proposal looks solid. We think the partnership works on paper. But frankly, this whole almond thing is a flag on the play. Does everyone else feel the same way?”

An enthusiastic room full of people exhaled their agreement. They all felt that the almond thing was an issue.

“I definitely think it’s an issue, Meredith,” said Tony, slightly after everyone else.

“We’re looking for high quality folks in our business partners. We’re looking for virtue and character. And we’re looking for impeccable conference call etiquette. Our founder, Sam Plainton, suffered irreversible kidney damage because of his proud refusal to end a call early in order to urinate. Many of the execs here have distended bladders for the same reason. It’s part of our company culture. And the fact that you can’t control yourself around almonds is  . . . I guess . . . alarm bells are ringing. Everyone else feels the same way, right?”

Everyone on Meredith’s end of the call gave hearty assent.

“Ding, ding, ding,” said Tony. “I can for sure hear alarm bells, Meredith.”

“So we’ll have to table this thing for now,” Meredith said. “If we’re still interested, we’ll get in touch next quarter.”

“Hold on,” Jeff said.

“Bye, Jeff,” the group on the other end of the call said.

“Bye,” Jeff said.

He stood there for a little while. He took the package of almonds off his desk and placed it in the trash.

He looked around. This was extremely disappointing. He’d hoped that big orders from Bullseye would mean they could start paying down some of their debt. He felt defeated.

They were right. He didn’t have the self-control necessary to just avoid the almonds for a few minutes more. If only he had the confidence to fist pump. That would have prevented this whole mess.

Standing in the middle of his office, Jeff clenched his fist. He narrowed his eyes. He stood there. He unclenched his fist.

Maybe tomorrow, he thought.

On the bulletin board outside the co-op hangs a poster. In the center of the poster is a grainy black and white photo of a man and a woman in their mid-twenties. Above the photo is the text “HAVE YOU SEEN THESE PEOPLE?”

Below the photo, the following:

Do not let these people near your cats. They claim to be extremely perceptive about cats, but they do not actually KNOW ANYTHING. They exposed our cats to verbal abuse, cannabis fumes wafted from their clothes, and they especially traumatized our little kittens with their questionable haircuts.

Ways that they really hurt our cats feelings:

1 – They didn’t like that we had a poster up in the garage of that little kitten hanging from a tree branch that says “hang in there”. They asked if the kittens seemed nervous seeing another kitten in peril like that. The kittens recoiled from this as it seemed to suggest that they were weak and could not handle the poster. We answered that they were fine with it.

2 – They appeared to have a problem with our garage in general. They poked around and asked if the kittens had ever gotten stuck behind our refrigerators. The kittens rolled their eyes at the idea that getting stuck behind the refrigerator was a big deal at all. (They get stuck behind the refrigerators constantly.)

3 – They asked if we always feed the kittens dog food. The answer is that the kittens prefer dog food. The kittens felt judged by this question as though they have to kowtow to the dog/cat binary that society forces on them. Suzuki in particular bristled at this suggestion.

4 – They had questions about why Skips was wearing tin foil armor like a knight. Uhhh, because if you were facing a fire-breathing dragon like Ahazorod, you would want to be protected, wouldn’t you? Skips did his “crazy eyes” when he heard them ask about this.

5 – They expressed concern that we were making Skips fight Ahazarod. We’ve never forced Skips to do anything. The “dragon” Ahazarod (a 30 pound raccoon that lives in the willow tree out back) sneaks into the garage on a nightly basis to steal the cats dog food.  Skips defends his castle. He can stick up for himself.

6 – They wondered why we couldn’t close the garage up better so Ahazarod wouldn’t be able to get in. We explained that the kittens would never want to live a life under lock and key. The cats have imbibed our fervent libertarian principles and would never accept “safety” at the cost of liberty.

At this point our kittens were done with these people. We got the message and asked them to leave. They did leave, but the damage was done. Our kittens have barely felt up to squeezing behind the refrigerators or fending Ahazarod off in the night. They’ve become surly and irritable, and will barely touch their dog food.

Please, be vigilant and keep these people away from your impressionable kitties. Don’t let them suffer the hell our cats are going through. These people do not understand cats, and they never will. Consider yourselves WARNED.

http://www.whole30freek.com
October 07, 2016

Question Friday #28

What’s up, my fellow WHOLE FOOD FREEKS?

Kipling here!

Jessie and I are back in town with the kids, and that means I’m back on the blog. While we were in Seattle, we made some new friends and a couple of videos—of both the cooking and workout variety—that you’ll be seeing in the next few weeks (#editinglikecrazy). But enough about that!

What better way to jumpstart the ol’ blogger metabolism than by doing a few writerly laps on a quick question from a reader?

Commander Kip,

My wife and I struggle to be on the same page with our diets and goals. She’s aggressive and consistent about her Whole30 resets where I’m more likely to do a Whole5, then a Whole3 followed by a Whole4, followed by two beers and a (small) bag of Kettle Chips a night until the end of the month.

That lack of conviction irritates my wife, but I’m just not invested in the path she’s taken. Is there a way for me to take a less stringent approach to the resets? And do you have any words of wisdom that might help smooth things over with my lady?

Part-of-the-Whole in San Diego

Part,

It’s not an easy path, and it’s not for everyone. Making good decisions about what you eat will always have benefits, even if you’re inconsistent. But you won’t truly reset until you follow the rules for 30 consecutive days. That’s just how the program works. Sorry! #notsorry

However, it’s also good to remember that every partner in a relationship will have different levels of commitment to the system.

You might not guess it, but Jessie is WAY more into setting tough goals and hitting them than I am. So I know EXACTLY where you’re coming from. Because she’s such an over-achiever, oftentimes my role is to cheer her on and be as supportive as possible.

For instance, while we were on vacation, Jessie really wanted my help eating as CLEAN as possible. So we go out for dinner at The Table, which we’ve been hearing amazing things about, and as soon as we sit down Jessie picks up the wine List.

She’s a SHARP lady, but she can still be a SPACE-CADET. Alcohol is not a whole food (for the noobs).

Here’s how I handled it:

1 – I looked deep into her eyes

2 – I smiled and jogged my eyebrows up and down several times

3 – I took the wine list from her, and started going over it, casually

4 – Still looking down at the list, I said “Oooh, I thought you were trying to stay on the wagon”

A quick analysis of those steps.

1 – I made a connection with her

2 – I let her know we were having fun and that I cared about her

3 – I didn’t look her in the eye while confronting her

4 – I said something that implied the correct action without COMMANDING it

This worked. At this point we could have an open conversation about her goals. She thought maybe one glass of wine would be fine. I reminded her that that’s not how the system functions. She thought maybe the vacation could be a little more free and fun. I reminded her that she has high-standards for herself, and would prefer to stay strong. She was quiet for around a full minute, and then agreed.

In hindsight, The Table was a poor choice. Nothing there really worked for Jessie’s exacting standards. The conceit of the restaurant is that they twist blue-collar sandwiches with wicked flair, but that means that every entree is bread-based. Jessie settled on having some fries, but—since deep-fried is not Whole30 friendly—she ended up with an order of steamed potato wedges. The kitchen at The Table was incredibly accommodating.

You will not believe the respect that I have for that woman! She will not compromise on her commitment to consistency. She watched me take down an enormous Philly Cheesesteak and three glasses of an amazing Rioja. For the cheesesteak, they cook the onions in an Russian Imperial Stout reduction, and use Manchego instead of Cheese Whiz. It’s so rich that I almost regretted the full order of wings I had as an appetizer, but I POWERED through. When the meal was over, I looked at Jessie with eyes shining with admiration. She seemed to be doing some forearm exercises, clenching and unclenching her fists with gusto. She just doesn’t QUIT.

I have so much RESPECT for her incredibly high-standards.

My point, Part, is that it’s entirely possible to set different levels of commitment within the relationship, as long as the lines of communication remain open. Keep that in mind, and you’ll be fine.

I held Jessie’s hand as I steered my Rascal Mobility Travel Scooter down the street. I felt her wiry strength in my fleshy paw. While I panted in the passenger’s seat, spent from the effort of hoisting myself into the van, Jessie easily lifted the scooter into the back and shut the door.

She’s so strong, PEOPLE. Her standards could not be higher.

That’s it for now! Next week Jessie will be doing back to back half-marathons and I’ll be trying out a new insulin pump. You better believe we’ll keep you posted!

-Kip