I'm obsessed with things anti-cancer.  My kids mock me for it, yelling out "Cancer Fighter!" as they hold up a spear of broccoli at the dinner table.  In one of Anabel's poems at school describing me, one of the adjectives she used to explain me to the world was, indeed, anti-cancer.  And so here's my infamous smoothie, just in case you're as oddly obsessive about these things as I.  This makes 4-6 servings.  Just blend it all together in a blender.  The colors will dazzle you.

1 cup water
1 banana
2-3 big handfuls spinach
1/2 tsp. matcha green tea powder
2 tbsp. ground flax
1 cup frozen blueberries
1/8 of a lemon, unpeeled
1 " chunk of ginger, peeled
 
Look what Anabel went ahead and did to herself!
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She's the last one of our brood one would expect to dislocate an elbow, and yet sure enough, that's precisely what happened.  You sort of think you're home-free when they become teenagers and still haven't broken anything, and yet one quick peek at this ghastly monstrosity of an elbow is enough to indicate how other-than-home-free we actually are.   

She was home alone, babysitting her youngest brother when it all shook down.  In one of my more shaming moments as a parent, I chatted away obliviously with neighborhood parents as I picked up Jude and Lucy from their respective playdates.  And here's the shame part:  I'd left my cellphone at home, thinking I'd only be 15 minutes or so.  And I took my sweet time, let me tell you.  I didn't drive, I walked.  And slowly.  Meandering my way through the novel Springtime heat with my Ipod lulling me into a sun and acoustic music mixed stupor.  I relished the alone-ness and I stopped to breathe the lilac infused air around me more than once.  When I think of it, I feel a renewed anger at myself.  While I tracked the progress of butterflies,  Anabel was calling around frantically, trying to locate either one of  her absentee parents, all the time trying to keep her yelps to a minimum as her little brother watched with fear in his big brown eyes.  I'm sure as he looked at  her arm that looked a backwards picture of what it was supposed to be, elbow bump now on the inside of her forearm, he felt some trepidation.

She finally got her Dad's receptionist (his own cell phone had been turned off), who proceeded to interrupt him from the meeting he was in.  He was home in relatively short order and got her quickly to the ER.  It's all good.   The doctor there (with the aid of two male nurses) wrenched her elbow back where it belonged after having knocked her out with the same drugs that Michael Jackson was so infamously addicted to.  The only glitch is that she tried to bite one of them, which made me feel sort of proud.  My girl.  Unconscious and biting at the burly men she perceived were hurting her.  I love that kid and her elbow to bits.