muke-ASS

so i've gotten a lot of positive feedback on the whole becoming vegan thing, and the support is much appreciated! i'm about 2 1/2 weeks or so in (i've had small amounts of dairy 2x...why do i feel a need to confess that?) and the detox process has gotten pretty intense. intensely mucusy that is. holy phelm batgirl! it's more than phelm at this point, it's upper respiratory gunk and it sucks. is this what smokers go through? how do they live with it? i don't feel sick, i just have an intense keep-me-up-at-night cough... a cheesers cough if you will. oh i've been a cheeser for years, i'm tough like that. A blue, creamy, sharp, hard, soft, processed, unpasteurized, cow, sheep, goat, raw, domestic, international, any way i can get it, milk lovin' cheeser! (whew...that nearly became climactic!) yeah, i love cheese. a lot. more than you, i guarantee it. yet, now i don't miss it. this essential building block of my own personal nutritional pyramid, and general life philosophy, is gone and i'm totally ok with it (so far). every time i have thought for a second about putting some cheese on something or in something (ie: my mouth) all i see is a mommy cow who is tied up and being forcibly kept pregnant so she will continue to produce milk, a mommy who as soon as she delivers her babies has them stolen from her. baby girls sent to become dairy cows themselves, and the baby boys have their legs bound so they can't walk and are fattened a bit before being slaughtered for veal. every time. i'm a very visual reader, a whore for the word picture, a victim of my own imagination; sometimes it serves me well and sometimes it kicks me in the ass, this time it's doing both. something clicked in my head and i am no longer able to separate my love for cheese from these torturous acts. but i digress... (that should seriously be the name of my blog:)

back to a more pleasant topic, my mucus. being me means i'm hardwired to ask questions, so my question is where has all of this gelatinous goo been hiding in my body? Because it seems to be excreting from every pore, and it's freakin' gross. has it been lining my lungs, clogging my liver, coagulating in my colon, all this time without me knowing it? my skin is broken out, i'm hacking like a smoker of 35 years, and, well... *ahem* other things are happening too. d-i-sgusting .

what i'm told is that all of this should shake out (jarred by my relentless hacking no doubt) and i will feel like a rockstar in no time. or just a little time at least. in the meantime, i am acquainting myself (and my family) with new foods and recipes. this is the fun part. you will all be happy to know that i have mastered the vegan chocolate peanut butter cup, which leads me to wonder...will i be the only fat vegan on the face of the planet? perhaps i will. time will tell i suppose. i've also met some fabulous new grains, my favorite of which is savory mochi. look into it. one of the perks of veganism is the thoughtfulness with every bite i put into my body. it's a nice way to relate to food, and the world around me. my kids and i (who are still just as enthused about being vegetarians) have been doing a bit of reading about food and it's environmental impact, and i have to say that i had no idea the depth and severity of impact that my dinner was having on the earth. maybe i knew abstractly, but i never really knew, for example, that if every American eliminated just ONE serving of meat from their weekly diet it would be the equivalent of taking 5 million cars off the road. JUST ONE! while veganism, or even vegetarianism, may not be for you, one meal a week would be pretty doable! that fascinates me.

as my canine children finish up the last of their high priced dry meaty food this week they will become vegetarian too. it seemed weird to me that we would make this change for animal rights and health reasons, and not do the same for our pets...i'll post in the coming weeks about how they are coping/responding to the changes. one last thing for today, and it's a biggie... leather shoes and purses. *deep breath* the shoes are right up there with cheese for me so this is going to be a tough one. i figure i get to keep all of the ones i already have b/c... well the harm has already been done. as far as what comes next, i'm guessing a lot of scenarios that involve me weeping on the sidewalk in front of shoe stores. one thing at a time...