Reject a Hit: Runny Babbit

I'm so excited to have another piece published in Writer's Digest this month!

It's their back of the book column named "Reject a Hit" where they ask you to spoof-reject a famous book. This was a fun one to write. I spoof-rejected Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook by Shel Silverstein. My husband Tim suggested it while we were driving to the U.P. for the Fourth of July and it was too irresistible. Instead of enjoying the views of the Mackinac Bridge, I was writing and giggling in the passenger seat with my notebook.

Pick up the November issue of Writer's Digest to read all their great articles (it's my fav writers' mag)! Here's my piece (with text below).

If you haven't read Runny Babbit with your kids, it's a must! Also, it's a fine hit among adults and we've actually gotten physical over whose turn it was to read the next poem aloud. (Kids meanwhile have left the room and started the car. On fire.)

Dear Mr. Silverstein,

Thank you for submitting your pildren’s choetry book, "Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook." At first, I found it cather ratching. I took it home to let it sit awhile, and I had a little fun with it, too, dalking the wog and serving dicken chinner for supper. But, unfortunately, it wore thin and soon my family asked me to nook cormally and leave the wog out of it.

But I didn't give up yet. I took it to a Tarent Peacher meeting. While they argued over dyslexia funding, I shared a sick little laugh over Runny Babbit with my neighbor, the gym teacher. We agreed – your book could be a Four de Torce – but would be the bane of teachers everywhere. I thought it was a "no" for your book at this point. But when Principal Houghton burrowed her frows at us across the empty library, I reconsidered yet again.

Finally I took it to our Meditorial Eeting at the agency. A small scuffle broke out for the pages of your book. Everyone wanted to rolve the siddles in your poems. Rita lost an earring in the deal and Earl blew up a spowl of baghetti in the microwave. But the worst was when Adam put his phone on silent to recite your rhymes out loud, standing on a chair.

And... he missed a long-awaited call for a fix-sigure deal at auction. It's put our agency in jinancial feopardy. We needed that deal. Without it, we can't publish your bamn dook or anyone else's for that matter.

Tonight, my hamily is fungry, my post on the PTA is a ping of the thast and my bagency is ankrupt.

It's a definite no. You've surely put the run on this babbit.

Literary Agent,

Chandace Kapple

10-Day Smoothie Cleanse, plus a bag of Whoppers

I decided to do the 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse. It involved blending spinach and kale and fruit. I felt confident I could trick my taste buds into consuming what my dad calls "rabbit food." I could do this. For 10 days. And eat nothing else. For 10 days. I recruited a friend to do it with me. For 10 days.

3 days, tops.

Day 1: I realize my blender has a "smoothie" button. (Had previously only been acquainted with the "milkshake" button.) I make the first smoothie with a lot of show, fingers running about the recipe with authority. I can feel my cells plump with nutrition. Spinach is consumed. Sugar is not. I walk around with a cocky air all day, one smoothie healthier. Until my head starts pounding at about 4 p.m. This is expected. I settle into being nasty to everyone around me and hold steady.

Day 2: Starving. My body is pulsing from all the green I’ve shoved into it. But I won’t relent. Not on Day 2. That would be an embarrassment for all involved. By 4 p.m., the headache is back and I’m meaner than ever. I decide to bike nearly 2 hours on a glorious fall day. It feels delicious until I bonk in the last half hour. I have to drag my body into the house and apply it to the couch. I sip the last of my smoothie slack-jawed.

Day 3: Get me a grilled chicken breast, someone, now. It’s “allowed” on the smoothie cleanse if, and only if, I can’t stand the starvation. That is correct. I can’t stand the starvation. My arms and legs are weak and lousy after 3 days of nothing but nutrition. I make a mistake then. I do some figuring. The smoothies amount to only 400 calories for the ENTIRE DAY. I am shocked. The only thing harder would be Naked and Afraid.

Day 4: A small Halloween-sized bag of Whoppers is consumed. 100 calories. They are glorious. They taste almost as good as the chicken breast did. I savor each one, allowing the waxy chocolate to disgust and appease me all at once.

Day 5: Wake with a blistering sense of shame. I did not even make it halfway. And worse, I woke up and thought about the Whoppers before I did my own children. I continue making the smoothies, announcing loudly to anyone who will listen that they are, again, only 400 calories for the ENTIRE DAY. My family says nothing. They also do not comment on the tiny Whoppers bags starting to dot the landscape.

Day 6: My partner in crime is holding firm. She has asked me to not send her calorie counts or to talk about Whoppers. I am trying to explain to her that I’m training for a bike race. I will disintegrate into thin air on this diet with one burst of effort on my bike. She asks me how Whoppers fit into my training plan.

Day 6, Evening: In bed, I think about never talking to her again.

Day 7: Go completely off the rails. Discover a smoothie is great with a bowl of ice cream.

Day 8: I weigh in. I have lost 3 lbs. I am overjoyed. I frantically try to regain traction on the smoothie cleanse. If I cleanse the next three days, I can lose 6 lbs. total. (This, the mathematical model for dieters everywhere.) The last of the Whoppers are disposed of through consumption and I vow to buy no more.

Day 9: Only 2 days to go. The smoothie cleanse has been way easier than I thought it would be. I have chicken breast for lunch and dinner. I also resume my relationship with Whoppers in the checkout lane at Tom’s by midday. I was never addicted to them before this but it’s clear now they are tied directly to the effects of spinach.

Day 10: A smoothie in the morning and the 10^th day is checked off. I am relieved. I can continue eating my favorites without the guilt.

In the end: My friend, who never wavered, lost 10 lbs. I lost 2 lbs., hard fought after multiple negotiations with the scale, on and off, on and off, one foot raised, looking West.

But: The biggest plus of taking on the 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse is that it’s been three weeks and I’m still drinking green smoothies every day. My cells are, in fact, plumped. I am a robust model of how the greatness of kale can be drowned in the sweet taste of strawberries or peaches.

While I didn't have the willpower for 10 days, I still recommend the book - 100 smoothie recipes that are easy to follow. Look, it's turned a girl who eats bags of Halloween candy into a girl who (also) eats bags of spinach and kale. Bags.

And: My children and husband are eating smoothies too! We are cranking through spinach and swiss chard and baby kale like a regular herd of rabbits around here.

The Health Benefits of a Brewfest

We came across a delightful new workout in August: The Microbrew & Music Festival. We highly recommend it. Alas, we know it seems at odds with our early morning bike rides and late evening runs. But it turned out to be the perfect complement to the many health benefits currently sought by these 30-something women.

So it began:

We collected our friends in our vehicles and set out into the night—without children of any size or shape. We immediately did what we won’t let them do: turned up the radio and waved to strangers at stoplights.

It was our warm-up. We were feeling stodgy and stiff from a summer of providing constant maid and chaperone services. But tonight was different. We looked good in our new workout clothes: dark denim blue jeans (so new that a millimeter of shrinkage hadn’t yet produced the muffin), cute blouses, accessories and, ensuring a month’s worth of chiropractic adjustments, high-heeled boots.

A feeling of well-being came over us. The casting off of our ratty, holey sweatpants gave a thrill much like that of matching Nike duds bought at the start of every diet.

We weren’t even at the Brewfest yet and our mental health was improving, our waistline muffin-free.

In a half-hour we were inside the gates. There were beer tents in full circle. It was the most nourishing thing we’d seen since school let out in June.

“How many drink tickets come with our armbands?” Immediately, we wanted to know how healthy we were going to get.

“Five.” Five seemed like a serious workout with the added bonus that we wouldn’t be sore in the morning.

We set out, with a healthy interest in a renovated bus occupied by a goateed man handing frothy beverages out one of the side passenger windows.

But we didn’t get far. We kept running into people we hadn’t seen all summer due to the strict confines of our maid and chaperone services. There were introductions, re-introductions and a fair amount of high-fiving. Our emotional health was climbing, and rapidly. We started to feel human again and, dare we say, on track to our fastest mile ever.

“What are you drinking?” As is customary, we compared training plans each time before moving on.

As we progressed ever closer to the bearded man, we noticed he was being assisted by a friend of ours… who works at a health club. More high-fiving. Proof that we were on to something.

In an hour, we were warmed up. We were shocked to see we’d used only one drink ticket. It appeared that a night of freedom, while trapped inside a fence, was invigorating with or without liquid sustenance. We secretly prided ourselves on our low intake of calories.

Next, we decided to hit the silent disco, highly recommended by the bus driver.
But it sounded ridiculous, didn’t it, to gather in a quiet room with people and work up a sweat?

Or just like a gym.

We donned the headsets and were immediately overcome with a groove unlike any found on the stations radioed into a treadmill headset. This was where the squats, lunges and salutes to the sun came in. The workout began in earnest. We hit our stride.

At last, when we couldn’t do another single heel-to-butt kick, we headed over to the outdoor concert for the cool down. We were coming into the finale and it felt good. There was a lot of hooting and hollering, like a finish line at a race. Our legs ached, we were drenched in sweat and we had blisters on every toe. If we’d had a timing chip on, we’d been taking the podium.

And, it was only 10 p.m. We still had time to stretch and hit the showers before heading to bed… for our regularly scheduled workout the very next morning.

May you find ways to enjoy a good workout, wherever it may be.