All I Want Is A Normal Life

I’ve decided to start eating fish again. The bottom line is that I’m just too sick most of the time. I’m paying attention to my protein and fiber. I’m getting tons of good foods. But I’m just sick all the time, and I can’t take it anymore. My throat still constantly burns and is red and inflamed. I’ve tried every topical thing I can try, and the most I can hope for is a little temporary relief through topical analgesics. Gargling, sleeping, drinking tea… all of this is just irritating me and doesn’t seem to be helping my throat at all. I mean yes, I do really need to sleep at least 8 hours per night regardless of my wellness, my diet, and everything. I can’t compromise on that anymore. But even sleeping more than 8 hours per night, I’m still really sick.

We need a lifestyle change of some sort.

I feel like I’m just seeing a best friend after months of not talking. There was SO much stuff I wanted to write about… everything from the cyber-bullying case (briefly: It’s awful that the girl killed herself after being bullied by the mother… that woman -the mother- is a sick individual who should be in a mental institution. It’s people like this who make our society bad in the ways it’s bad. But at the same time, there’s no *explicit* law that if someone harassed someone else into killing themselves, that the harasser is a murderer. I mean, I could call you every day and tell you that everyone hated you and you should die, but you are ultimately responsible for if you kill yourself as a result of that… and, for whatever is right or wrong here, that’s the way our society is put together -or should be-. I can’t sue McDonalds for seducing me with trashy food that ultimately will kill me) to Mary Poppins (briefly: watched it last night for the first time, and OH MY GOSH that’s the best movie ever. I want to watch it every day. STEP IN TIME! hahahaha… awesome) to Beyonce (briefly: I love her. I don’t care what you say. She’s great).

But this morning, I’m eating the most amazing meal I’ve cooked since going vegan: a soyrizo burrito with sauteed mushrooms, peppers, garlic, scallions, onions, and jalapenos, topped with some fresh avocado and wrapped in a fresh and delicious flour tortilla. YUM! I’m watching Survivorman, one of my favorite shows (Les Stroud is my television crush). At 1pm, Santacon (Lord knows where that website came from… Santacon’s always been kind of an underground event), which I’ve managed to talk David into coming on. After watching Mary Poppins last night, I realize that Dick Van Dyke’s character, Bert, would be an awesome boyfriend. But no one is like that, and the fact is, David and I get along really well. We laugh at the same stuff and we laugh pretty constantly. No, he’s not goofy or larger-than-life like Bert, and I had to do a little convincing to get him to come to Santacon, and he doesn’t really like camping or hiking, but I love being with him, I love talking with him, I love laughing with him… I love HIM. So much so that I don’t really care if he doesn’t want to do all those other things that used to be most important to me in a relationship — things I thought I’d never compromise on. So I’m sticking with David and trying to find the motivation to do all these other things (hiking, camping, karaoke, etc) without him. He’s not a vegan and doesn’t even eat organic/sustainable meats or vegetables/fruit. He’d never even had real peanut butter until he met me… it had always been that sugar and lard concoction that they market as nutritional paste. Bleh. And he loved the real peanut butter! I warned him that he’d probably not like it, since it just tastes like peanuts, but he likes peanuts and loved the peanut butter! And he at least plays along when I make vegan food.

It’s a beautiful day and I’ve got a lot of stuff to do today, so I have to get moving. I’ve set myself up for a vigorous training program to ensure I’m in shape for the Wilderness Travel Course. Even though the “Girlfriends” episode of “Flight of the Conchords” is on, I’ve got to peel myself off this couch.

Seriously.

Off the couch.

OH and props to WordPress on the new look. Um, now you just have to get mobile uploads, hey?

As y’all know, it’s vegan time in my life. In fact, I was thinking about the calendar and I started being a vegan on the 12th, which means that today is the end of my two weeks of being vegan. Wow. What do you know? I celebrated by buying myself a vegan cookbook, Vegan with a Vengeance, which comes highly recommended from many people I know. Not saying that I’m going to be vegan forever or that I won’t sneak an egg noodle now and then, but I’m definitely going to cook vegan meals at home and continue to bring vegan food for lunch.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for life… mine, the turkey’s, everyone’s.

Happy Thanksgiving!

OMG, I’m totally turning into one of Those People.

Did you know that the single best thing YOU can do for the environment has nothing to do with your car, your plastic bottles, your printing at work, whether you turn off the water when you’re brushing your teeth, or any of the things you think of first when thinking about being environmental.

Stop eating meat.

Really. And now you know why I say I’ve turned into one of Those People. Because I’m going to do things like direct you to this ABC News article Meat-Eaters Aiding Global Warming?. I know. I’m totally annoying you right now. I’m even annoying myself.

Thanks to VeganLiz for the 411.

So, aside from the Coffee Cake Incident, I’ve been vegan for several days now. I even went over to David’s last night and he endured my experiments with vegan burritos. I gotta say, they were pretty damn good, even for vegan food. And that’s what I’ve been finding about vegan food in general. The food is delicious, as long as I know how to make it. It’s an interesting challenge and results in me experimenting with a lot of food combinations that I wouldn’t have tried ordinarily, so I’m ultimately eating healthier and eating more vegetables than I ordinarily eat… and since I’m not drinking, I feel pretty fucking fantastic. I woke up all clear-headed and focused. I even started an OCDeeeelightful paint-by-numbers painting of some horses drinking out of a stream. I’ve had this idea about a paint-by-numbers painting for my office, so I went out and bought one and a nice frame for it. And so I started the painting this afternoon and hung around in my pajamas all day. And now I’m watching True Blood.

And I watched several movies this weekend, which deserve reviewing:

Wild Zero
David and I watched my favorite zombie movie ever last night. Wild Zero is a kind of convoluted story about a bunch of people traveling through a small town in Japan. Turns out, the town is overcome with vampires, who of course run after the only living “meat” around: anyone who comes through. The only hope for salvation is the MOST AWESOME BAND EVER, Guitar Wolf. Guitar Wolf, the leader of the band of the same name, is chased by his evil nemesis, a pervert, drug-dealing owner of a club where Guitar Wolf plays.

Wild Zero also contains the most AWESOME awesome awesome woman character in the history of all zombie movies. Dood, she wears a black and white houndstooth unitard with a collar, a belt, and MATCHING SHOES. Yes, matching shoes with a unitard. And she’s a killer shot. She shoots vampires in the FACE! Their heads explode! And she LAUGHS! Man, she’s so fucking cool.

Anyways, really. Really. It’s such a wonderful movie. Delightful. Fun for the whole family. Four stars and a bag of chips.

A Mighty Wind
I had been looking forward to this one since it came out, but somehow never really got around to watching it. And now I know why. It kind of fell short of my expectations. I don’t have much else to say about it, even. It seemed like two hours of a single joke about how bad folk music is.

And at the end, David and I just kind of went, “So?”

Dead Man
I’m a big Johnny Depp fan and a big fan of Westerns, so when I found that both elements had come together in a Jim Jarmusch film, I was quite optimistic. It wasn’t until about a half hour into the movie that I realized I’d seen this movie before and that it left so little an impression on me that I had forgotten that I’d watched it entirely. I didn’t bother to finish it again this time, since I remembered the end… and how anti-climactic it was.

True Blood
Holy. Fucking. Shit. Holy fucking shit! HOLY! FUCKING! SHIT! I can’t believe this week’s episode! Amy is dead? The vampire is dead? Bill’s new vampire is evil? Bill and Sookie break up? Sookie and Sam hook up? Tara is arrested… and then taken in by the naked lady in the street with the pig? Into a huge house? Jason is in jail for murder? AND DREW MARSHALL IS ACTUALLY THAT GUY WHO THE RED HEADED GIRL FROM THE BAR IS GETTING MARRIED TO?!? AND HE’S PROBABLY THE KILLER?!!? And Lafayette is blackmailing the politician and will probably end up dead in the next episode? MY FAVORITE CHARACTER?!?!? Oh Man. OH MAN OH MAN OH MAN. I can’t wait until next episode… and then it’s OVER for a whole season?!?! When will it come back? WHEN? What will I do without any interesting television anymore?… oh, I know… I’ll do what I do the rest of the time I’m not watching True Blood. Or go biking or hiking or whatever. But still… man, this is such an amazing show. I don’t know if I’ve ever been into a show this much before. Srsly.

And that was my weekend. 10 point finish.

My friend Miranda is a vegan and an animal rights activist. She and her fiance, Victor, asked people to give them the gift of going vegan for two weeks. Two weeks is both a huge deal and not a big deal at all… I mean, you can do anything for two weeks, right? But it kind of means reforming all my plans around being vegan. I can’t eat nachos, for example. When my friend invited me to soup on Sunday, I had to ask if they might have vegan soup. I hardly know what to look for in places to eat anymore. It’s a serious adjustment… Vegetarian is just like being a regular food eater, but without the meat. It’s pretty easy to make anything at all vegetarian (except, say, a steak dinner). But it’s not that easy to make things vegan. Every single thing I eat has to be pondered and inspected… could there be a hidden egg in that bread? Did they cook with butter? Is the broth vegetable or chicken? So, it’s turning out to be considerably more complicated than just asking the waiter to hold the _________.

But otherwise, I feel really good. I’m hungry today, but that’s because I couldn’t eat the lunch they provided for us on our tree planting thing, so I just ate a handful of pretzels for lunch. When I got back to the office, I was starving, so I wolfed down the quinoa that I brought for lunch (just in case there were no vegan options… thank goodness). When I got home, I was still hungry, so I had another bowl of quinoa, then I had a couple pieces of toast… and I’m still kinda hungry. Is hunger just kind of part of getting used to this?

I have been shopping vegan for the last couple weeks, eating through all my perishable animal products so I don’t violate the intent of the gift. I’ve been drinking soy milk for about two weeks and stopped eating cheese about four days ago. And yeah, I’ve absentmindedly poured milk in my coffee at breakfast when I went out with my dad last weekend. But I’ve been moving towards it for a couple weeks.

Tonight, after a lengthy back-and-forth with my friend Stuart, who wanted to get together for dumplings on Sunday, I kind of know what vegans go through when they try to make plans with friends. The text messages went a little something like this:

S: Hey, I’m getting some people together for soup and dumplings for Sunday, you in?
D: Yeah! Totally! sounds awesomes!
S: Great! I’ll send you an email
D: Ok, think there’s any vegan food?
S: oh. gee. no, probably not. Sorry.
D: Ok, I’ll eat ahead of time
S: Wait, r u a vegan?
D: Yes, gift for a friend. Long story.
S: Oh. Sorry. I’d really love for you to come. Is there a time limit on this vegan thing?
D: Kind of. But I still want to come Sunday
S: Maybe there’s garlic and vegetables, but I don’t think it’s vegan.
D: really, it’s ok.
S: ok. sorry.

And I realize that this is the conversation that I’ve had over and over with my vegan friends. Equally apologetic, the whole thing.

So, this is an interesting experience already, even though I’m not technically even a full day into it.

Hmm. I wonder if I should have an apple before I go to bed.