Oprah, my favorite talk-show prophet, has called it the most important room in the house. The master bedroom, she insists,  needs to be an oasis more than just a place to sleep. And it should never have a TV.

Any rap star on MTV’s Cribs presents his bedroom like its Downton Abbey. He opens the door with a gentle click and the room glows into focus. He always, always says, “Here’s where the magic happens.”

But Oprah doesn’t have kids who wake her up at six o’clock and who can be bribed to remain in a horizontal position only if she puts on her TV. She doesn’t have a husband, either. She has, instead, a person or two who she’s employed to change her sheets and replace her pillows every two months so she doesn’t have to sleep next to a million microscopic organisms that live in what looks like yellow coffee stains that hide underneath the pillowcase. She also probably never has to see her own dirty laundry piled in the corner of the room.

The rappers on MTV Cribs show off houses that in actuality, they barely inhabit. It might be more interesting to see the state of their hotel rooms after a night of ransacking the mini-bar. (Wait. There’s probably already a reality show for that.)

If you want the truth about the sorry state of the American master bedroom, you need to read Jeffrey Eugenides’ short story,  “Great Experiment,” from which this excerpt is taken:

It wasn’t the only master bedroom of its kind in Chicago. Across the country, the master bedrooms of more and more two-salaried, stressed-out couples were taking on the bear-den atmosphere of Kendall and Stephanie’s bedroom. In this suburban cave, this commuter-town hollow, two large, hirsute mammals had recently hibernated. Or were hibernating still. That twisted mass of bedsheet was where they slept. The saliva stains on the denuded pillows were evidence of a long winter spent drooling and dreaming. The socks and underpants scattered on the floor resembled the skins of rodents recently consumed.

In the far corner of the room was a hillock rising three feet in the air. This was the family wash. They’d used a hamper for a while and, for a while, the kids had dutifully tossed their dirty clothes in. But the hamper soon overflowed and the family had begun tossing their dirty clothes in its general direction. The hamper could still be there, for all Kendall knew, buried beneath the pyramid of laundry.

How had it happened in one generation? His parents’ bedroom had never looked like this. Kendall’s father had a dresser full of folded laundry, a closet full of tailored suits, and, every night, a neat, clean bed to climb into. Nowadays, if Kendall wanted to live as his own father had lived, he was going to have to hire a cleaning lady and a seamstress and a social secretary. He was going to have to hire a wife. Wouldn’t that be great? Stephanie could use one, too. Everybody needed a wife, and no one had one anymore.

The Master Bedroom might be where the magic happens, but the reason we call it “magic” is because it seems so unbelievable that  people consider physical intimacy amidst such disarray.

I hate my bedroom a lot of the time. Mostly, I hate it because it’s filled with clothes. I’d like a wife, for sure, as long as she had no ambitions and simply loved doing laundry and wouldn’t one day burn all of my clothes on the front lawn after years of being undervalued.

In fact, what might even be better is to go back to the old days, where people owned five good tops and five good bottoms and only one or two pairs of shoes. Each night, we’d hang up our day clothes and put on our one, single nightgown. On Sundays, we’d go to church or something and come home and walk around naked while someone did the wash. This special someone—who doesn’t even have to be human as long as he’s efficient—would wash, dry, fold and put away our clothes. And we’d all do very important things like sip tea and read novels.

Wouldn’t life be so much simpler?

Really, I don’t see any other way out of disorder, short of this tremendous proposition.

Wife, get me a network executive on the phone!

I have a reality TV show to make.

Read the rest of Jeffrey Eugenides’ fabulous short story here.

Image: “Master Bedroom” by wili_hybrid via flickr.

Yesterday, SuperWoman had the misfortune to wake up with a stomach bug. It seems Valentine’s Day gave her a virus. And it had nothing to do with love.

Yes, even superheroes get sick. Superwoman spent 36 hours in bed, with brief bouts in the bathroom, hugging the toilet bowl, worrying about germs the menfolk may have left.

So, should you come down with this wicked virus, here is SuperWoman’s advice to you.

1. Invest in a good mattress.

You may not realize this until you are stuck in your bed all day. SuperWoman has made many mistakes buying mattresses. First, she bought just a mattress and used it with an old boxspring. (Bad idea. This was before the internet was easily available in her apartment. Nowadays, she would have researched that shit.) Next, feeling guilty about the horrible mattress/old boxspring situation, she bought a cheap mattress and boxspring. (Stupid, stupid.) Now she is stuck with the  damn thing, and so are her aching back and thighs, no matter how many pillows she puts around herself.

2. Stomach viruses come from somewhere, but you won’t be able to figure out where. 

Every winter, when SuperWoman gets one of these bugs, she wonders who she got it from. Was it the raunchy salad from the pizza place? The dirty backpack from preschool? Or was it that good deed she did, wheeling an old man with no legs to the bench outside of Target? What gave her the bug? This year, the sickness was so extreme that SuperWoman didn’t even have the energy to watch a full episode of Felicity (usually something that brings her much comfort).

Remember, these questions will do you no good. It doesn’t matter where you got the virus from. You have it. Now, to quote SuperWoman’s favorite children’s book, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt: “[You] can’t go over it…[you] can’t go under it…[you've] got to go through it!”

(Those people are so wise. Except for the fact that they’re hunting bears.)

3. Consider what will taste okay coming back up.

Apple juice, water, Gatorade aren’t too bad. I don’t know who got the crazy idea to tell sick people to drink flat soda. That stuff’s just horrible, even if you drink it when you’re well.

4. Water is amazing.

Part of SuperWoman’s problem—the reason she was splayed out on the bathroom floor for ten minutes at a time—was because she was dehydrated. (Duh.) She thought it would be silly to drink water if she was only going to throw it up, but her very wonderful doctor said to drink it anyway. (Those doctors, they really do know something! And we thought we could get all the answers from WebMd.) Once she started drinking water from a straw, her face got some color and the sun came out.

5. A stomach flu can be a religious experience.

Think about it: how often do you kneel before something? That gives the toilet bowl some level of divinity. And, in all honesty, where would we be without toilets? Aren’t toilets a sign that God exists? We get a hell of a lot less sick, overall, with toilets around. And sitting before one, or on one, does make us take stock of our life choices. (Like the importance of drinking lots of water.)

6. Songs go on the repeat cycle when you’re sick.

Inevitably, a song will get stuck in your head pre and post-vomiting. You will hate it by the end of the day. (SuperWoman had Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” and Whitney Houston’s “I Want to Dance with Somebody.”)

7. Even SuperWomen need to be nursed.

Every SuperWoman needs someone to take care of her when she’s sick: someone to bring her a warm compress and a glass of water, someone to open the blinds or close them. It makes a world of difference. A very sick person should never be alone.

It’s February 16th now, and so far, things are looking up for SuperWoman. Let’s just all cross our fingers that she’s the only one in her house who will suffer from this villainous virus. If only viruses could be zapped by laser beams, then SuperWoman could save the world. Toilets for everyone!

Part One: The Imagination

It was going to be hard, but it wasn’t going to be that hard. There were women who had orgasms. Orgasmic labor. 

Okay, maybe I wouldn’t have an orgasm. But it would be quick. A couple of hours at most, maybe an orgasm or two, and then my beautiful, wailing baby latching on to my plump, well-functioning breast.

Okay, okay. Even if it’s longer, say six hours, or ten, all is practically over once the pushing comes. 20 minutes, 30 tops. An hour if God is really pissed with you. But no more than that, really. Across town, someone will sit down to their soup and sandwich, and by the time they finish, my baby will have floated out of my vagina like a fish.

Childbirth couldn’t really be that hard.

Part Two: The Reality.

Psh.

Pitocin drip. Fetal heart monitor. Slow, almost nonexistent contractions. Hunger. Unplugging all the machinery to go to the bathroom. More contractions, harder. Blood. Look at all that blood….

Woah.

Oh, God. This is hard.

Hmph, no one was kidding.

Jesus. Where is my orgasm?

Um, what the fuck is this pain in my leg?

How am I supposed to push when I have this fucking pain in my LEG?

This baby is never going to come!

What do you mean, another inch? You said that 10 inches ago!

This baby is never going to come! I will be walking around forever with someone’s head in my vagina!

Part Three: The End. (Maybe)

10 hours labor. 3 hours pushing. Raw lady bits that need to be sewn up with no anesthetic. A child who looks nothing like me and has the head circumference the size of a cantaloupe.

This, my friends, is writing.

Progesterone: a hormone which plummets in a woman’s fourth decade and may cause brief, intermittent bursts of psychotic behavior.

See also:

Children: Small screeching creatures who change settings on woman’s iPhone.

Husband: A man who “does dishes” by leaving large pots in the sink.

Dishes: Porcelain, plastic and glass items that magically appear only moments after they are put away.

Synonyms: Laundry

Antonyms: Freedom

Neighborhood Bank 

1: Asbestos-ridden financial building whose workers look like they crawled out of a hole in the ground.

2: Institution whereby citizens hand over hard-earned money and are told they cannot retrieve it for several days. (Citizens apparently do this willingly. White-haired and/or balding men get rich from the interest.)

See also:

Interest: something women with low-progesterone levels rarely have.

61° and raining

1: weather report for Friday, January 27th near Philadelphia

2: symptom of polar ice caps melting

3: sign of “end times”

4: weather which, combined with woman’s low progesterone levels, causes increased propensity toward psychotic behavior

Free and easy wanderer pills: magical, easy to swallow pills given by acupuncturist or herbalist which make Woman her usual enthusiastic, nurturing self

Tea 

1. archaic: universal antidote to common ailments such as seasonal affective disorder, anxiety, moments of existential crisis

2. modern: universal antidote to common ailments such as seasonal affective disorder, anxiety, moments of existential crisis

The good things about January, you say?

SuperWoman will admit, this list is a stretch. But it’s part of her master plan of “acceptance,” so humor her.

Here goes.

1. If you forget your groceries in the trunk of your car overnight, they will stay cold. (SuperWoman only did this twice.)

2. People will say “Happy New Year” well into the third week. Hearing the word “happy” is good.

3. Nowhere is the sound of a leaf-blower.

4. You can catch up with old friends over the internet, because no one is going outside.

5. Coats and scarves can sort of cover up the extra pounds you gained in December.

6. A lot of people were born in this month, apparently.

7. You can go to bed at 9 p.m. and almost no one will consider you a loser.

8. Women can reject that hideous ritual of shaving their legs.

9. You can catch up on past seasons of excellent television shows, like In Treatment (HBO), Downton Abbey (PBS), and Justified (FX). Oo la la, Timothy Olyphant.

10. The sun is far away, but chocolate is widely available.

Image of Timothy Olyphant via Wikia.

I have this issue with thinking everything that happens has some bigger meaning.

For the past few days, I’ve been fretting about my iPhone. You’d think the thing was a family member or something. I was at a museum with my kids, and when I went to the bathroom, my phone slipped out of my pocket and crashed on the floor. When I picked it up, I was awe-struck by the myriad cracks in the surface. Woah, I thought. That really is glass. And also, Shit. What do I do now?

This glass crack came on the heels of a lot of talk in my household about simplicity. See, my teaching jobs are not always entirely dependable. My son is going into kindergarten next year and we have to figure out where to send him. (Our dream is a private school.) We have this credit card debt thingie that we have to pay down before we start accruing interest. In other words, we need to be careful about money. We need to simplify.

There’s a lot to be said for making things simple. For one, it makes me feel a lot less anxiety than having too many options. Options, while I seem to like them, just end up equalling complications in my chest. And then there’s the Quaker thing, the focus on simplicity. I am a practicing neo-Quaker.

So the big question on my mind was, Do I replace this sucker? (Money!) Or do I fix this sucker? (Money!) Or do I just get a free phone and not have internet on my phone at all? That’s not the end of the world, is it? I mean, what do I actually need? People lived for a long time without internet access in their pockets. And if my husband hadn’t gotten me an iPhone for my birthday two years ago, I probably wouldn’t have ever bought one myself. So clearly, I should just get a simpler phone.

I struggled with this for days. I talked about it for days. (Said Husband was getting really weary about the whole thing.) I felt like the cracking glass may have been some sort of divine signal that I needed to practice mindfulness, be fully in every moment.

Still, for some reason, I wasn’t fully convinced. My iPhone is fun. I’ve grown really accustomed to it. I like having a camera and video and texting and music all at my fingertips, even if those fingertips sometimes get tired and should just remain still. And now the phones have this robot person who does stuff for you. I have often thought about how much I need one of those.

The amount of emotional energy I was devoting to this situation was unhealthy.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading Anne Lamott’s book Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. Her humor makes me downright giddy, but she also has plenty of serious moments I’ve enjoyed reading before I turn off my book light and fall asleep. In one story, she talks about how much her young son wanted to go hang-gliding. He was too young, but he really, really wanted to go, and she really, really wanted to make him happy while also making the right decision. So she asked God if She could just take a moment of Her very important day to give her a sign.

God did.

It came in the form of relief. Lamott was watching a woman dance and decided, What the Hell, and joined her. As she danced, she imagined how she’d feel if she told her son he couldn’t go hang-gliding the next day. She felt a wave of relief wash over her. When she imagined letting him go, she felt terror. So that was her answer.

I’m not describing it so well, but buy the book and you’ll get a better idea.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that I’ve often felt that wave of relief  that alerts me that something true and right has just happened; I just never recognized it as spiritual or divine. Once, when I found out I was going to be laid off from my job and I was four months pregnant, I was strangely flooded by relief. It turned out to be a good thing, in the end. It put me in the place I’m in now, which is a much better place than where I was before.

So I’ve been looking for this feeling of relief, this sign that would tell me the right answer about my iPhone. I asked God, new iPhone?

God:

Me: Old-type phone with no internet access?

God: Eh. Maybe. I don’t know.

Today, as the cracked iPhone got bulkier and uglier and harder to use, I decided I needed to make a final decision. In the morning, I found out I had made a huge career gaffe in applying to a job I’d dearly like to have. It was hugely upsetting. When I got off the phone, I went on the Apple website. You know, just to kill some time.

I appealed to God once again. Old phone?

God: Um. 

New iPhone?

God: Oh yes. You deserve it, Jana. You’ve been on an emotional whirlwind and you just get right on up and get it.

And so I did. You can’t argue with God.

And that is my story on iPhones and spirituality.

Image: First Day by frogsthatmoo via Flickr.

For most of my life, I’ve had my head buried in a book. Things just never felt right if I didn’t have another world to escape to.

Last summer, though, on my journey through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, I got out of my comfort zone and put myself through a week of reading deprivation. I didn’t read anything: email, blogs, Facebook status updates, books, magazines, news headlines. For the first few days, I didn’t know what to do with myself. And then I started to feel happier.

It’s not that reading doesn’t make me happy. If I hadn’t developed an addiction to reading in adolescence, I might never have made it through. But what I realized in my week of reading deprivation, was that reading had been a tool that made me lazy. It was instant gratification, something so much easier than sitting down to do what was infinitely harder and what I should have been doing all the time: writing. Writing fiction, specifically.

I’ve always been a writer. I can’t paint or draw or play music or sing (I really can’t sing), but I can imagine and use words to tell a story. Even when I can’t effectively do that (because I am still working on a story that I began FOUR FRIGGING YEARS AGO!), I have a deep desire to tell stories, to explore a character’s inner world. The problem with reading too much of other people’s fiction is that it gets in the way of my own voice. Someone else guides me. That feels good at first, so good that I might never need to write another word, since there are so many people doing such a good job of it already. And then I am like the raisin in Langston Hughes’ poem, drying up in the sun, my butt making a big, immoveable dent in the living room couch.

So lately, I’ve found myself inadvertently depriving myself of books, especially fiction. It’s not like I haven’t tried to read. Since the beginning of December, I’ve read the first few pages of Angela’s Ashes, Caleb’s Crossing, The Measure of a Man, The Leftovers, The Bookseller of Kabul, and When God Was a Woman. Then I’ve added them to the sloppy pile on my bedside table. At some point, I would like to finish all of these books. Just not now.

Now, I need to write. My writing is like my child: sometimes, a huge pain in my ass, and others, my saving grace, the thing I love most dearly. (Usually, a pain in my ass, but we are inextricably bound and so I must sit here and endure.)

Instead of reading novels over the past few months, I’ve sat in my attic and wrote stuff. I bought a comfortable chair that slides nicely into my desk. I taped some pictures and postcards on the wall, even cleaned up a little bit. I’m excited about an idea I have for a novel, about the unexpected journey the characters will take.

I’m not even going to let that evil Terry Gross get in my head with all the questions she wants to ask about how it is that I became a National Book Award Winner. Nope, Terry. I just don’t have the time. You just go interview your poets and your musicians and your war correspondents. I’m too busy to think about the interview you’re dying to have with me.

I’m writing.

Image: “Whimbun” by shoeke5 via Flickr using a Creative Commons license. 

Welcome to 2012, year of the apocalypse! Did you notice how unusually warm the weather is? That’s because the world is going to end.

No matter.

SuperWoman thinks resolutions should happen all year long, not just at the beginning of a new year. But she’s a sucker for any chance for reflection and self-improvement. What, that surprises you? Well then you’ve obviously never battled the Traffic Monster Machine or the Inflammable Wolf and then took a quiet breather on a grassy knoll in New Zealand. It’s divine.

Superwoman will not vow to lose weight or join a gym. She joined a gym once, and she remembers it as a dark time in her life when she woke at 5 in the morning to climb on a smelly Stairmaster while fat mean breathed heavily all around her. She will not do that again. (Sorry, fat men.)

No, what SuperWoman is resolving to do is something much larger, much bigger. She is picking a word, a concept, and “setting her intention” (as the yogis say), for the entire year. SuperWoman can’t remember what her word was last year, so it must not have worked out.

Here are the words she was considering, but rejected out of necessity or because they were just plain boring:

Cleanliness

Asceticism 

Spacious Accommodations (two words, but SuperWomen are allowed to cheat)

Even-Temperedness (virtually impossible as her progesterone levels plummet)

Instead, she settled on the word “acceptance.”

Here is a list of the things SuperWoman is going to try to accept as she sits cross legged on her mountain each morning:

Accept people as they are, and don’t try to change them or offer ways they can improve. (And if she must, at least utilize nice stationery.)

Accept herself, her superness and her flaws. (Though there are so terribly few, despite what her husband would have you believe.)

Accept the past instead of wondering how or why something bad happened. Accept that the future is unknown. (Unless she goes to a really good psychic.)

Accept that her husband will probably never put his clothes in the hamper. (Though she can continue to shove them under the bed, out of sight.)

Accept that her daughter’s teeth may never fully come in, that she may be 21 years old and still drooling all over her hands. 

Accept that money comes and goes like rain. (Prepare for droughts. Lots of them.)

Accept that throughout the world, and especially in New Jersey, people will continue to use apostrophes incorrectly. (Wait. She doesn’t know that she should accept that.)

How many grandpops are they selling in there, do you think?

SuperWoman can go even further, but she suspects those seven things will get her through the month of January.

What is your word for 2012?

The question I’ve been getting a lot this year from Mr. B is how, exactly, Santa gets down the chimney on Christmas Eve.

When I was a kid, I was confused by this whole process as well, since we didn’t have a chimney. We had a steel door with a deadbolt. If it was strong enough to keep out monsters, I didn’t know how Santa could possibly get through it. That and my poster of Michael Jackson (who I’d watched transform into a werewolf on TV) kept me up for hours some nights.

Lucky for Mr. B, most of the people he knows have chimneys, so he doesn’t have to worry about the deadbolt. But he is concerned how someone with such a big body squeezes down the chimney and gets into our house. The only answer I’ve been able to give him thus far is a pretty lame one: “Magic!”

This Christmas, I’ve come up with a few others. Feel free to pull them out of your red hat when you get unexpectedly bombarded by the rationality of small children.

Answer #1

Spanx

Answer #2

Santa steals a UPS truck and tells the reindeer to get in the back. They tailgate across the world. Santa wears his red suit under a dull brown jacket and delivers the packages to the front door, interrupting parents during their late-night eggnog. 

Answer #3

In lieu of using a chimney, God and Jesus go ahead of the sleigh and jimmy everyone’s door open with an old American Express credit card. As usual, God admonishes Jesus. “We’d get through this a lot faster if your hair wasn’t in your eyes. When are you planning to cut it?”

Answer #4

Chimneys are like vaginas; they stretch and have a ring of fire at the end.

Answer #5

Santa spends months on his giant computer ordering items online, putting elves in charge of tracking packages to each good child’s household. Flying through the air all night is for chumps. (He has become quite enamored with modern technology.)

Answer #6

Mary and Mrs. Claus start a massive letter writing campaign to mothers across the world, encouraging them to please leave their doors unlocked in the spirit of Christmas. Every year, Santa’s suit gets really dirty from soot and Mrs. Claus is running out of Stain Stick.

Answer #7

The North Pole melted some time ago because of global warming and depletion of fossil fuels. All the reindeer and elves fell into the sea. For all we know, Santa is floating on a big block of ice somewhere, with tiny fish as his only sustenance. It’s God’s lesson to us that we should recycle and buy hybrid cars.

On the bright side, your parents will still buy you presents! Weee!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good eve!

Image: “Where’s Santa” by AlwaysThirteen via Flickr using a Creative Commons license.

You haven’t heard much from SuperWoman lately, because she’s busy. See, Autumn is her season. She goes and goes and goes, and kind of likes it that way.

But now that winter is coming, SuperWoman can feel it in her bones. (And in her stomach and thighs, unfortunately.) Once red and flaming, she is now like a brown leaf withering in someone’s forgotten garden.

She’s not dead, though. She’s a leaf with eyes who brings blog posts to good boys and girls. (Sit on that one for a minute. A leaf with eyes. If you can’t imagine that, you must not believe in the magic of Christmas.)

Here are some of SuperWoman’s observations at the onset of Winter.

Observation #1: Winter makes you hungry.

Aren’t you hungrier? It’s weird. For a few months there, SuperWoman could get by on peppermint tea and trail mix. But now, even macaroni and cheese won’t do for lunch. By 3 p.m., her stomach is writhing for something else. Something with a lot of trans fats.

Observation #2 (based on Observation #1): We are all animals.

This is true in so many ways, but before she gets all Grinch-like and Hobbesian, SuperWoman just wants to focus on the effect seasons can have on a person. Most humans (most, mind you) have the capacity for rationality and even spirituality. Still, when winter comes, their bodies convince them it’s time to find a cave and sleep for a long, long time. Usually they have jobs or kids, so that’s not always possible. But the fact that the season brings with it a desire to lie on the couch and watch movies alongside tea and cookies means we are not so unlike animals. (Except bears don’t have DVD players. Does PETA know about this?)

Observation #3 (which is not only an observation, but more a hypothetical scenario in which SuperWoman wants you to participate): What if men handled Christmas?

SuperWoman knows what you’re thinking. Men run everything in our culture. Men  with long graying beards who hover in the sky or near the North Pole. Locally, the men who run things are ones with names like Boner that they force us to pronounce “Bay-ner.” (Where is Freud when you need him?)

When SuperWoman looks around, however, she sees women in charge of Christmas.

Take, for example, Christmas cards. Do men give a reindeer’s ass about Christmas cards? Unlikely. Every year, SuperWoman designs a delightful card full of glossy pictures, then hims and haws over how good it looks before she orders it, then puts off buying the stamps, then, finally, tries to go through the process of addressing them before yelling at her husband to DO SOMETHING!

Let me assure you, behind every card addressed in male penmanship, there is an angry woman.

SuperWoman recognizes, in this unnecessarily long, drawn out process, that she is really only writing Christmas cards for other women. Uncles don’t care if one Christmas card is taped to the back of their front door or draped along a string in the foyer. They don’t see the importance of receiving a new picture of someone’s children with no personalized message, especially when all of those pictures are available on Facebook for less than the cost of a stamp.

SuperWoman suspects that if men managed Christmas, they’d be fine with store bought Christmas cookies, with ornaments thrown like confetti into a short, stubby tree, with half-dark lights strung in jagged, un-jolly triangles on the outside of the house.

Oh, and what about gifts? A man will buy his family gifts, certainly, but he won’t take two whole months browsing and thinking and discussing options with his partner before just going ahead and doing it on Christmas Eve. He’ll run through the mall, picking up whatever pretty item dangles itself in his path.

There is no one right way to do these things, which is why SuperWoman’s sometimes-partner-in-crime, SuperMan, is going to take over next year.

(So don’t expect a Christmas card in 2012.)

Observation #4: December is nice. It’s January and February that suck.

SuperWoman doesn’t know how to get around it. January and February really do suck. This, and not Jesus’ birth, is why the holiday was invented. We need a bunch of frilly things to entertain us all as we go stir crazy in our caves.

And it’s also the reason pomegranate martinis were invented. If you need something chock-full of antioxidants and numbing characteristics, gulp, don’t sip the following concoction: