Skip to main content

Carrots on the Side

Looks like I'm a vegetarian once again. Or at least mostly vegetarian. Or more vegetarian than I was before.

The first time I swore off meat products was during a college ethics class. In the middle of a lecture on Immanuel Kant, I suddenly realized that eating a steak was eating a muscle. From then on, when I thought of meat, all I could picture was someone with a fork and knife sawing away at my arms and legs.

My poor husband met me not long after that experience, and that meat-and-potatoes man was such a good sport about tofu and soy cheese. It still makes me smile. I slowly started eating meat again a year after we were married when we both wanted to try the Atkins diet.

It really was no big deal. Like most everything else I do, there's some logical reason inside my head that has little to do with what anyone else on the planet thinks.

Today's sudden dietary change is the result of two experiences I had today that are completely unrelated to getting my teeth x-rayed. On the way to the dentist this morning, I had to suddenly stop (as did 2 other lanes of traffic) for a mother duck and her 9 babies to cross.

Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal, but two of the babies were a bit lost, wandering around in the lanes, and I sat there hunched over with visions of baby duck guts spread all over the road. (They all made it, thanks to the man next to me who rescued the 3 on the other side of the median.)

Later in the day, I was in RadioShack. (By the way, I love going into Radio Shack to look around at all the gadgets. It's like going into Staples and drooling in the pen aisle.) I needed an adaptor for my portable t.v. so I can watch "King of Queens" while on the elliptical.

They had the news on. The leading news story of the day is rather disturbing to me. I've done a fabulous job avoiding hearing it by humming "The Star Spangled Banner" each time the announcer mentions that recalled meat from California.

But right there in the middle of Radio Shack, I was just 2 seconds too late with my "Oh say can you see..." (Yes, I sang out loud.) I heard just enough of the story to make my stomach churn and cry. (You see, I don't like chicken or pork, but I do love some steak.)

No more. Right now, the only animal product I can even consider eating is fish. Wild caught. In the United States. How did I get this picky?

Comments

Christy said…
I can totally see where you're coming from!

Popular posts from this blog

Busy Days Ahead

It's been a busy week for me. I left my house at 4:30 Monday morning for my drive down south and pulled back in my driveway at 1:20 this morning. The days have been long, too, between working at the new school from 7:30 until 3:00 or 4:00 and then working at the new place until 9:00 or 10:00 each night. I now have callouses on my fingers and not one intact finger nail. I think I've also developed a new twitch somewhere on my face. One afternoon this week, I stood in the middle of our new living room and took in the sight of missing drywall, a growing hole in the floor and soaked up my husband's predictions that we still won't be ready to paint by the weekend. All I wanted to do was cry. All I felt was nothingness. Numbness. Anyone who has ever reached the point of numbness knows that it's scarier than feeling like you're falling apart. It's one step beyond feeling like you're falling apart. I couldn't help but wonder just what we had gotten ourselves

The Carnival

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon here in southwest Florida, although still a bit too warm for my November tastes. I'm learning to enjoy my weekends with as much unstructured and unscheduled time as possible. Last Saturday was a delightful unstructured day. A new friend of mine (the one from the Everglades excursion) and I went to a local carnival. Now, here's the thing...I LOVE carnivals. The food. The people. The rides. The lights. I can easily spend an entire day wandering through the crowds. He's no carnival slouch. The first thing we did was walk through the entire place, scoping out the rides. Then the fun began. We rode almost every ride there (except for the kiddie attractions and the broken Tornado). The Wild Claw. The Scrambler. The Orbiter. The Space Oddysey. The Swings. The Pharaoh's Fury. The Ferris Wheel. The Giant Slide. The Haunted House. The Avalanche. It was all good. How can you top a ride that uses centrifugal force to plaster your body against

Stranger Obligations

I had to make a few difficult decisions this week. At least, they were difficult for me. I wish I could be the kind of person who completely makes decisions based on his/her own needs and wants and boldly moves through life with unabashed freedom from how our choices affect others. But I'm not built like that. I had placed an ad for my former stray. I felt like it was time to find her a more permanent home because so much in my life right now is uncertain. One person answered the ad, but she did not seem like a good fit, and I gave up further thought. This week I received another response. As long as this person is telling the truth, it's an ideal situation for the dog. Yet, I had a strange feeling and could not sort out whether or not it was my intuition kicking in or that fact that I actually like the dog and don't want to see her go. In the end, I decided that it was in my own (and my Winnipeg's) best interest for her to stay with us through the summer. (I seri