Poo in peace my friends. Poo in peace.

Hello my lovelies.  It’s been entirely too long since I’ve blogged.  I know.  I know.  I suck, but it’s a New Year and I’m not going to resolve to do better, cuz then it’s pretty darn a given I won’t.   But I shall make it up to you now by changing your life, your marriage, your relationship…. bringing me to the subject of this post….poo.

Ladies/Gents, everyone poo’s, but not all poo’s are the same.  When a man poo’s, it literally smells like something that died a week ago crawled out of his butt.  Harsh, but true and when that odor slaps you in the face, you pray for anything, anything that will make it go away.  You buy spray, but then you just smell glade and shit.  You buy candles, but even Yankee is not strong enough.  They burn matches and matches and matches….but alas.  Poo.  What to do, what to do about the poo?

Doody Free Poo Pourri.

I have the solution, stumbled upon it.  Poo Pourri.  I’m not sure about you, but i’ve never gotten a white elephant gift worth a shit (pun intended) until this year.  I was skeptical, but I’ll try anything once or rather, I’ll have him try anything once.  You spray the bowl before you go, a pleasant aroma drifts in – then 45 minutes later he comes out of the bathroom and as you face the door in horror waiting for glade lavender shit, you smell, a lovely citrusy aroma.  A scent that is pleasant.  The same pleasant scent you sprayed 45 minutes ago.  Voila….Poo Pourri.  You’re shocked.  I was shocked, but seriously.  This stuff is amazing.  I found I needed to stock up, I could never run out of Poo Pourri at home and I certainly needed some for the road.  No more potentially embarrassing mishaps in public, no more hiding out in the stall until the bathroom is clear and slinking out before another unfortunate soul walks in to the waft.  Poo Pourri.  It’s available at Amazon (see the link below) in many lovely flavors (scents) (odors) like Doody Free, Deja Poo, and Sh*ttin Pretty.  You can also scoop it up at your local Hallmark.

Enjoy Ladies & Gents.  Enjoy.

Get your Poo Pourri here: Poo Pourri, Doody Free – 4 oz Bottle

Sh*t I Can’t Live Without, Now – Arduro Universal Dashboard Mount

Let’s face it, 95% of the gadgets I bring home are useless, feeble, short-term in the amusement category, or just plain crap.  This includes most of the stuff I seduced into buying from Groupon Goods and Woot.  Example, the schoodie (hoodie scarf) seemed like a GREAT idea.  The hood does not stay up and it’s crazy awkward.  The schoodie is a good idea FAIL!  However, now and again, I take a bold leap of faith and end up with a jewel.  When I find one of those dear readers, I’m going to tell you about them, the minute I remember to.

Tonight’s thing I didn’t know I couldn’t live without until I had it is the Arduro U Grip Plus Dashboard Mount for smart phones (hello mouthful).  It’s  a dashboard mount for your phone and it is GOOD.  It doesn’t slip around, it’s not glued on there, it’s just a great suction device and it sticks where nothing would stick before in my car.  It has a 360 swivel so you can make your smart phone vertical or horizontal and you can swivel it from side to side.  The Grip expands so it fits any phone.  My iphone 4 fits, my friends iphone 5 fits, my fiancee’s galaxy fits.  The only one we haven’t managed to try out is the monster Samsung Note.  Other than that PERFECT.  Since I use my phone for music, speakerphone chatting (only at red lights), and GPS, it’s key to have a great hands free device.  Try this one.  You’ll love.

Below is a link to the device on Amazon.

Happy Riding!

Juice Angry. Juice Happy. Juice Sad.

As promised, here is the last installment of my latest juicing saga.  I call this a tale of 3 juice personalities and I want to use this time to tell you how the juice made me feel the last time around.

Let’s level set.  After my last juice cleanse, I said “Do the pre-cleanse!” I continue to prove I can not be trusted to take my own advice.  I ignored the pre-cleanse again.  I also determined up front that I would not give up caffeine.  I gave up my Fat Free Half and Half and Splenda in favor of black coffee sweetened with Agave nectar, but I didn’t even consider ditching the caffeine after the last fiasco.  I also purposely purchased some cucumbers, lemons, and spring-mix salad…just in case.  Better to break and eat cucumbers than, well everything.

I should also say my co-workers were reluctant for me to embark upon this experiment because apparently my last juice cleanse made me, “juice angry.”  If you read my last series of posts, you can see clear illustrations of my juice anger in my attitude to the “liars” that claimed to not be hungry.  Not my finest moment, but as anyone who has ever been to Wal-Mart or the self-checkout line can attest, certainly not my worst either.  Either way, the juicing basically made me Hangry for 48 hours.

This last time around, Day one was not as miserable as last time.  Maybe it was because I drank coffee, maybe it is because I knew what to expect.  I was starving.  I drank a ton of water, which helped, but I was starving.  Nina and I traded emails through the day and at first she, “wasn’t hungry at all.”  By mid-afternoon there was a list of shameful things she would have done for Chinese food.  I avoided the veggies, but I did drink an extra juice.

The next two days were much much better.  I finally experienced this not so hungry Zen feeling everyone yaps about.  I mean I was still hungry and ogled food, but I wasn’t starving or angry.  I was actually jovially resigned,  I lost about 2 pounds on day one and kept going down which contributed to me being juice happy.  At the end, I even extended two days and lost a total of 8 pounds.  Yay Juice!

So, what about Juice sad?  Where does juice sad come in?  It came in on the tail end (pun intended) of day two with some rather intense gas and frequent trips to the restroom so my body could have its juice revenge.  I actually left work so I could spend quality time on my personal can rather than fearing someone would recognize my shoes in the ladies room at work.  I was pretty sure I was dying of healthiness.  This phase passed, but it was sort of miserable while it lasted.

Final verdict, I again say go for it!  Especially if you’re doing it to cleanse.  Those 8 pounds didn’t stay off after I got back on food, but a good 4 of them did and most importantly, it motivated me to keep eating better.  The down side, it’s expensive.  At $50-$75 a day for juice, it’s not economical, but if you have the dough – try it and let me know how it goes.

I Juice? Part 2 – Suja and Whole Food Juice Reviews.

Greetings and Salutations.  I realize this post is many days behind the initial post on my second/third juicing experience.  I have no excuse.  I suck.  But, better late than never!  As I mentioned in the first part of this post, I juice? Still? Seriously? https://prettydamnuseful.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/i-juice/, I strayed from just Blueprint juices this time around.  Actually – I only had one Blueprint Juice, the Cinnamon Cashew Milk and we all know from the first time around, I find this drink to be heavenly.  This time around I mixed juices from Suja and Whole Foods to create my own custom, you don’t have a damn degree in juicing either, cleanse.  So for all you blueprinters or first time users of these products, here are my thoughts on the juices I tried from each brand.

One last note, I tried to follow the Blueprint type format So each day I drank 3 green juices, 2 fruit juices, and a nut milk.

 

The Suja Cleanse Juice Line.

Suja Juices

So, overall, the Suja juices were comparable to Blueprint juices.  The Suja juices were cheaper at whole foods, $6.99 a bottle in comparison to $8.99 a bottle and the nut milk (almond coconut) was also $6.99 in comparison to the $11.99 price tag on the Cinnamon Cashew Milk.  I’d like to make one note, the Suja juices are named by their benefit (I guess) so the cute names aren’t mine.  I actually found them annoying because I had to try to remember what’s in them and the name.  Just a nit.  Here’s brief overview of the juices I tried:

• Green Supreme – This was supposed to be the last green juice of the day.  I didn’t look that up until day 2, so I started with this juice.  Oh well.  This can be described as Salad in a bottle.  If you like the Kale Blueprint juice – you’ll like this one.  If you don’t like that one, you won’t.  It wasn’t particularly sweet and while I like green juice, my experience is most people find this one to be outright yucky.   Nina found it to be “grassy”.
• Glow – This was still salad in a bottle, not much sweeter than the Blueprint green juice and while it had some extra stuff, tasted very similarly to Green Supreme.
• FIJI – Not sure I could differentiate between this one and Glow.
• Fuel – Tastes like carrots.  If you like carrots, you’ll like this one.  If you don’t, you won’t, but as the second juice of the day, it is no PAM (Pineapple Apple Mint from Blueprint).
• Vanilla Cloud – The Suja answer to the Cinnamon Cashew Milk…. For $5 less, it passes and it is good, sweet, and filling.  It is however, not nearly as heavenly as the Cinnamon Cashew Milk.  However, don’t get me wrong, it is very very good – especially after a day of basically vegetable juices.
• Purify – I didn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole.  This kid does NOT do beets.

Whole Food Juices

Whole Foods Fresh Squeezed Juices

Whole Foods also has a line of fresh pressed juices.  While I was staring at the dwindling juice choices in the aisle, another helpful customer pointed out the Whole Foods Juices stating they were cheaper, but she wouldn’t drink them because they aren’t Organic.  I find that hard to believe.  Isn’t everything at Whole Foods Organic?  Either way, they were cheaper and available and organic or not – I do not really care.  I believe on my trip their juice bottles were in the $5.99/$6.99 range.  Also, they have cute names, but for some irrational reason they don’t irritate me as much as the Suja names.  My peeves don’t have to make sense, they are mine.   I tried two of the juices there:

• Greens with Envy: Contains: Green Kale, Curly Parsley, Baby Spinach, Broccoli, Cucumber, Bartlett Pears, Pineapples, Lemon.  This green juice was actually quite sweet to me.  I think the pineapple made the difference, but it was DEFINITELY sweeter than either the Blueprint or the Suja green juices.  It almost felt like a green juice cheat.  It was good though.  I couldn’t say much about the nutritional information because the label wasn’t detailed enough to compare to the other brands, but this is definitely the most delicious of the juices, especially for green juice haters.
• Belly Rub:  Contains: Green Cabbage, Bartlett Pears, Pineapples, Curly Parsley, Fresh Mint, Fresh Ginger.  This was the closest thing to PAM I found.  A co-worker examined the bottle and reminded me that the cabbage diet was used to and I quote “clean you right out” so I should be careful.  Between you and me, this juice gave me killer gas.  I actually had to excuse myself to the bathroom and then wait it out until empty to “unload”.  I guess cabbage can be quite brutal.  The juice was tasty, but may be best consumed when you are not likely to be in public or around people that can hear or smell for a while.

My final verdict – if you want to save a little money over Blueprint (and it’s actually cheaper at your store)  go for Suja.  It seemed to be basically same difference to me and the juices were pretty tasty.  If you REALLY hate green juice, ease into it with the Whole Foods Greens With Envy.  It’s much less Salad in a Bottle.  If you are a regular juicer, this may seem a bit on the sweet end of the spectrum for you.

In my next post – I’ll talk about my four/five-ish day experience and how it compared to the first juice cleanse I did.  I shall call this post Juice Angry.  Juice Crazy.  Juice Happy.

For more information on Suja Cleanses see: http://www.sujajuice.com/collections/juice-cleanses

For more information on Whole Foods juices see: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/service/cold-pressed-raw-juice