Sometimes you just have to make your morning smoothie in the laundry room. For the past few years I maintained a pretty strict regime of morning smoothie consumption and post-smoothie exercise. I practice this ritual as both a tactical offensive against the downward slide into dad-bod paunchiness and a general ward against aging. Rage, rage against the dying of the light and drink a spinach and fruit smoothie. The exercise and smoothie part constitutes the crescendo of my anal retentive morning routine. Get up at 5:20, journal writing and excessive coffee consumption, smoothie, exercise, parenting, work. I adhere to these behaviors with monastic dedication.
I was never a smoothie drinker before I adopted this routine. I admit to having purchased several Naked juices in the past, but I have never visited a Jamba Juice. When breakfast restaurants offer the choice of a smoothie as a beverage (or is it an entree?), I select the non-smoothie option with the most bacon. Smoothies entered my world by way of the Malibu based, self-help, fitness guru Rich Roll, who extolled the virtue of his morning smoothie consisting of an exotic array of exotically priced superfood ingredients. This uber healthy elixir kept him fit, healthy, and capable of tremendous feats of endurance well into his 50s. While not yet in my 50’s I plan to head there some day and want to do so with as much vitality as I feel now…which is a shadow of my 20s and 30s, but you have to stem the bleeding at some point.
Because I lack the access to boutique health food stores and produce markets, not to mention the bank account of an average Malibu hills resident, I concocted my own recipe of banana, vegan protein powder, spinach, frozen fruit, oat milk and OJ. When optimally measured it looks a healthy shade of green; unnatural but palatable. More often my smoothie comes out looking like industrial waste. My daughter loves to point out how gross particular renditions look, or frequently asks me to score the taste of my creation. “How is it today daddy?” “Pretty good kiddo. I give it a 9.” “Well it looks DIS-GUS-TING!,” hysterical laughter ensues.
I said goodbye to a dear friend a few months ago. I loaded a fresh bounty of green drink makings into my trusty Nutra Ninja blender and after I turned on the machine and it purred a few gasps of blending glory it simply stopped. I unplugged and plugged in my breakfast buddy, pushed buttons with increasing concern, looked at the bottom of the carafe as if that would have done anything, but the message was clear: I’d be having toast for breakfast. I refuse to knock my stalwart morning companion, this most valuable 20% off coupon purchase from the Bed Bath and Beyond. As I ratched up my daily use and stress on the humble bargain priced appliance, it tried to keep up but simply could not. Upon its demise, and having wasted a carafe of minimally masticated frozen fruit, vegan protein powder, spinach, oat milk and OJ, I determined it time for an upgrade. I bought a Vitamix.
I never struggle to rationalize the impulse purchase of some new, and often expensive, piece of gear, tool or really anything. So while some would scoff at the idea of impulse buying a $400 blender while the old blender sits smoking on the counter, these people clearly have not enjoyed the culinary perfection of the Vitamix. I uphold the Vitamix to be the single greatest countertop appliance ever purchased in my household. It chops, purees and somehow makes soup, features I regard with casual disinterest. It blends. And that is all one needs to know. The simple harmony of stainless steel blades churning in an escalating series of speeds, attack smoothie ingredients with surgical precision. I turn the dial to the ‘glass with snowflake’ symbol, flip the toggle and the Vitamix begins a dance of pulses and sorcery as it prepares my morning delicacy. No thinking or superfluous effort required. It brings a tear to my eye to think about the exquisite performance of this stupidly expensive blender. The jet-engine-esque sound it makes, however, can be heard throughout the house and our entire neighborhood.
Weekday mornings begin with the aforementioned routine of focused reflection and devolve into the phase of 9 year old ridicule and vomit faces at my brownish-green sludge. I build my routine, and the timing of it, around my need to ready myself before the chaos of the day truly begins. During the school year I get my daughter up when I’m done writing and mainlining caffeine and she eats breakfast while I exercise. She then gets dressed and ready for school while I make my smoothie. By this time my wife has usually walked the dog. Lunch has been made. Essential, and always misplaced, afternoon soccer gear has been located and we are prepared for school carpool. The house hums in a well choreographed flow. The activity builds from quiet contemplation to the monstrous roar of the Vitamix as if to say, “Be prepared for another green powered day of awesome!”
I thrive on the precision of these routines. The lesser demons of my nature crave this level of regimentation and focus. It serves my tendency to myopically focus on one particular detail or set of activities that typify the behavior of my manic mood swings. I do A, B, C on autopilot and then I can focus all of my remaining energy on whatever idea or passion has captured my attention for that moment. I cannot completely disregard the benefits of this level of rigidity. Over the years I pointed this zealotry at my career, at endurance events, ambitious home improvement projects, and other fly-by-night pursuits. Welding class? Check. Bike racing? Yep. Buy a farm? Why not? In many instances the attention and dedication to routine proved to be a key to success, at least right before the wheels fell off and I plummeted back down into the deep. In those moments routine shone like a light in the dark, something regular, expected, safe. I climbed that routine out of the pit of worthlessness, despair and failure and propeled myself forward into the next great thing.
As a parent of a non-crib or college bound human, summer becomes a sort of purgatory. The liminal space of cobbled together camps and activities that serve as a life-raft of sanity until the kids go the fuck back to school in the fall. Everyone loves summer except the parent shelling out thousands of dollars worth of distractions just to maintain sanity and semi-realistic work hours. Monday and Wednesday–mountain bike camp. Tuesday and Thursday enrichment program at the school. Friday aerial gymnastics. But mountain bike camp starts at 8:45 and goes to 3:00. Enrichment camp begins promptly at 9 and goes until 4. Aerial, god bless them for trying, is 10-1. What the hell am I supposed to do with 3 hours of sanity bracketed by carpool and other bullshit…on a Friday of all days? You make do. You adjust. You stay alive.
The benefit of school is that my daughter, in her adorably toe-headed, back-talking sprightliness, is out the door by 7:30. That equates to roughly an hour of frantic breakfast, dressing, hairbrushing, and lunch making; a gauntlet but a precise one. During the summer with the schedule all over the place and the general atmosphere of repose and respite heavy in the air, nothing works the way it should. My kid sleeps late. My wife sleeps late. The dog sleeps somewhat then becomes annoying. Everyone enjoys a morning in Jimmy Buffet’s house but me. I am up. I am writing and chugging black coffee the way I always do.
I need this optimization to keep the train on the track. I am ready to blend at 6:30. No one else is ready for blending at 6:30. I have come to accept this fact, part of a larger attempt to try and let a lot of my bullshit and fixation go. Mindfulness helps. The meds help even more. The pages upon pages of journal exposition all support my effort to not be so wound up, not be so uptight about ritual, about control, about the swing to and from my dramatic poles. All of this is a process. Some days I accept the encroachment on my regimented framework more readily than others. I fight the urge to look at the clock and wonder when everyone will get up, when the day can begin and I can finally get on my way. Other days it really does not matter. I can simply let it go and embrace a few more minutes of silence, a gift really. An unexpected, and at times inconvenient feeling gift that I should not be so quick to discard even if I did not ask for it. And when in doubt I can always fire up my jet engine and make my smoothie behind the closed door of the laundry room.
August 2023
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