Day 1 & 2

I forgot to post last night, so tonight is day one and day two. Lucky you guys!

Day 1:

So I set the first alarm to go off at 5:30. This is about the time of the first Muslim prayer of the day and I figured that would give me an hour to eat and drink since sunrise, according to the Islamic calendar I looked at, is at 6:30(ish). I woke up, got up and turned my alarm off and crawled back into bed for another half an hour. Getting up at six gave me time to eat and drink a bottle of water, but it felt rushed since I was taking care of all the animals at the same time - once they know that you're up they expect to be fed and walked and all that good stuff.

It's about 10 am now. I did a light workout at the gym before I came into work, not my usual routine - not because I couldn't drink water but because I had to be into work early (I'm scheduled to be at noon today but the other woman here had to go to the bank - she's in the process of buying a house - and the DMV because they sent her a new drivers license that she didn't request and it feels a little suspicious to her). 

So far so good on the water/food front.

I've set my phone alarm to buzz me at the appropriate times for salat. Not that I'm going to pray (since I have no space and don't know how and am dubious about the appropriateness of it in the first place) but to break up my day in the closest manner I can to a practicing Muslims day.

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It's 12:30 and I'm getting a little hungry. I miss not having a drink right beside me to sip, but I'm not *thirsty* yet.

I am, however, eyeing my sister's chicken nuggets. I know that they're terrible, I really do. But I love McDonald's chicken nuggets. A Mighty Kids Happy Meal with chicken nuggets and one of those blueberry-pomegranate smoothies. Mmmmm....

But no.

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Every ad I see in every product is for food or a restaurant. Even pictures of people catching fish is a reminder of food - for those of us who like seafood anyway.

I am, however, planning to make an avocado-tomato salad that my mother gave me a recipe for tonight. This has no bearing on anything, just me thinking about how good that would taste. I'm also thinking about the salsa that Heather was making last night and how, in spite of the metric ton of garlic in the recipe, it sounds like something I want to try. My Dad is really fond of salsa. Personally I'm a salsa con queso kind of gal.

I really don't want to make these posts all about food, but I haven't reached any deep (or shallow) spiritual insights as of yet.

Mostly I'm just mildly hungry and thirsty.

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Hunger is something that I'm not all that familiar with, to be honest. I'm never normally *hungry*, you understand? Like I eat at meal times because I know that I need to eat and I enjoy the food, but I don't get the stomach growling hunger if I skip a meal or eat a few hours late like some people do. And I've certainly never experienced the hunger of needing food and simply having it not be available. I imagine that that's several degrees above any kind of hunger I can imagine.

So the hunger isn't a problem, at least so far. I'd like to eat, but I'm not chewing the edge of the desk or anything. And I work a desk job in a nice air-conditioned building so it's not like I'm sweating and need water desperately. I'm well off in those respects. Of course my desk mate is eating KFC (again) across from me, so that's annoying. Again, I know KFC is not awesome, but it smells delicious.

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Full disclosure, I took a tiny sip of diet sweet tea because I couldn't explain to my sister why I couldn't drink it.

I suck.

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4:30 - And *now* that I've had that tiny sip, my throat is starting to feel dry. Bah. It wasn't even that great of a tea.

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It was made with Splenda. Blaaaaaarrrghhhh....

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5 ish - You know, I really need to figure out how to make my phones alarm vibrate and not make noise. I set it to silent, thinking that that would do it and I'd just feel/hear it buzz in my pocket, but nooo....it just says 'ALARM' when it goes off. How is that helpful? It's not, that's how. If it didn't remember the approximate times it was supposed to be going off I wouldn't notice it at all.

*frowns at phone*

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7 ish - I GET TO GO HOME EARLY! YYAAAAAYYYYY....

Of course now I have to avoid eating with the family because explaining experiments like this just a) confuses them and b) makes my Mom worry that I'm converting and not telling them. Which, to be fair, I was half way through becoming Catholic before I told them.

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8:40 - 'Iftar' pizza! Um. Well, it was delicious, as was my sweet tea. Admittedly there was pepperoni on my pizza but you can all pretend it was turkey pepperoni if it makes you feel better. Again, not *actually* Muslim, so pork and I are okay.

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Not really sure what the point was of setting my alarm to go off at 9:30 for the last prayer time. Not praying and not breaking up my day since my day is over! *goes back to playing Candy Crush*

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I'm wondering if this is going to be rather pointless, at least for me. I think that this is kind of like Lent. You get out of it what you put in. I'm putting in (basically) not eating lunch. People who believe are far more likely to get something back from Ramadan.

Day 2:

5:30 - *bleep*-ing alarm.

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6:30 - I stayed up after the 5:30 alarm, sort of. I mean I didn't go back to sleep, so that gave me more time to drink water and eat a little. Which was the point. But I didn't actually start being productive until a few minutes ago.

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Noonish - today is a good day to be lazy in. I'm really tired today, but I think that has more to do with my habit of staying up late than anything else. Sadly I have to go to the gym now and be to work at 3. Life is haaarrddd..../childish whining

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3 - My sister asked me to pick her up something to eat on the way into work. Going through the drive through at McDonald's is less fun when you're not eating anything.

Also, side note, people on your cell phones: When you get to the ordering spot, say 'Just one second' to the person on the phone, and make your order. DON'T tell the server that you need another second and then continue to talk about THINGS THAT ARE NOT FOOD on the cell phone. You will get honked at. A LOT.

GESTURES MAY HAVE BEEN MADE. YOU DESERVED ALL OF IT.

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Still no deep thoughts. Maybe I should add prayer to the mix? Not salat (again, questionable appropriateness and lack of practical knowledge).

I was listening to the Catholic station in the car and the speaker said something that bugs me. He said that the definition of faith is, 'Leaning so far on God that if He wasn't there, you'd fall over.' Which seems stupid. From a practical standpoint. All I can compare it to are the far too emotionally codependent people that I know. And I imagine it like that, where if one party leaves or dies or what have you then the other party collapses and can't function. Why would you want that? Why would God want that from you? That's idiocy. (I know that there are problems with this comparison, but it's my head and this is what comes up in it.)

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8:42 - I'm gonna eat my salad (delicious salad....) and drink a giant (no seriously, you have no idea) Mountain Dew Icee. I'm here until midnight so caffeine is my friend. 

Oh! And I broke the fast with a greek yogurt. To be honest, I thought I'd brought strawberry and it was pomegranate, so that was a little confusing at first (I didn't look at the label) - there were all these tiny hard things in the yogurt and I was disturbed trying to figure out which part of the strawberry they were....

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P.S.: Guys, it's almost 2 am here. Why did none of you stop me from drinking 52 oz. of Mountain Dew?