"Official" Day 1

It's my "official" first day as a vegetarian. I'm actually on day 3 of no meat meals. Tonight, I became a REAL vegetarian; I had tofu for dinner. BBQ'ed tofu with onions, rice and corn on the side. Surprisingly, it was good! It was smooth and rich tasting. After about three bites, I realized something that will change my life forever. Tofu has no fat.

Now, when I say no fat, I don't mean the daily allowance crap that no one can achieve even when they're trying. I mean the springy, chewy, glistening parts that are on every piece of meat, whether chicken or beef, pork or lamb. Ever since I was a child, I painstakingly examined every piece of meat for the stuff. My parents, God bless them, took my seriously and thoroughly cut off every visible sign of fat until I was old enough to wield my own knife. I know someone is staring agog at the screen wondering what the big deal is. For me, it's the difference between finishing a meal or not. Many, many meals have been ruined by my teeth bouncing back from whatever meat I'm trying to chew, and no matter how many times I tell myself it was just one piece, the damage is done. Dinner is over.

How intensely freeing to eat without fear! How wonderful to enjoy dinner without inspecting every forkful! This is an unexpected and welcome benefit of forsaking meat, and welcome it I do!

What am I thinking?

Lately, I've been at a standstill. My weight loss program has lost it's oomph, and I'm back to eating whatever sounds good whenever the mood strikes. I haven't had a hit on my business in months, and I'm getting restless. My house is a mess, and I have no intention on cleaning it! It's times like this I find myself searching for something more in my life, but I'm afraid to put myself out there and take the risk. (*Insert pithy saying about motivation/risk taking/seizing the day here*)

The fact of the matter is, I like easy. That Staples Easy Button? I'd almost sell my soul to really have one! Almost. What's the matter with liking easy? Nothing. Nothing at all is wrong with liking easy. Easy brings close parking spaces, no lines at the bank, online billpay, and machine washable silk. What else does easy bring? Laziness, apathy, and lack of motivation. At least it does for me. It's easy to sit online all day, checking my Facebook every 5 minutes for updates. It's easy to find excuses not to further my photography business, from a lack of customers to a lack of confidence. It's easy for me to go to bed at night and wonder, "how did I waste another day?" Then, I get up and do it all over again.

So what's a girl to do? Go off the deep end of course and become a vegetarian! That's right, my solution to my lack in my current state is to cut meat from my diet, because that's new and exciting for me! Also with my new diet, the desire to try a juice fast, to rid my body of all things putrid and vile, and to slim down. I'm hoping this lifestyle jump will invigorate me and give me some guidance for the other areas in my life. These new endeavors will test my will, dedication, and planning abilities. The rest of my family will continue to eat meat, which means I must find alternatives to their meals. And I'm still not totally sure about eating at other people's houses either. I certainly don't want to be one of those snobby "I can't eat that. I'm a vegetarian." It's a new challenge that I hope will reward me with better health and a slimmer figure.

Now, I just have to break that to my inner 10-year-old that we don't eat cookies anymore.

Nighttime Musings of an Unidle Brain

It's 1:12 a.m. on a Friday morning. My brain is simmering with thoughts, regrets, hopes, fears. It's a thought stone soup where every part of my brain, both conscious and unconscious is contributing to the stewing. But it's nothing new. I've always been a night thinker, solving the world's problems (and often finding new ones I didn't know existed) while I should be sleeping. As a child, I would wander back into the living room hours after bedtime to ask my parents a deep and profound question, such as what would happen if all the butterflies in the world died.

What would happen indeed! I never got an answer to these questions, only a dry "Kara, go back to bed, and go to sleep." But it worried me, and worry is hard to supress at any age. I haven't been 10 years old for quite a few years now, but it never fails that some unanswerable question lodges itself in my head at 11:30 at night, just as my husband drifts to sleep, and I have no one to ask it to! Will I EVER get my nighttime musings resolved, or am I condemned to send my questions out to the owls and the skunks and all other things nocturnal?

Tonight, I am conflicted on two issues. They have pretty much consumed my life for the last 6 months, and have plagued both my waking and sleeping hours. One, is the looming demise of my parents' 27 year marriage. Yep, 27 years. You know all that stuff they say about kids of divorce, and how they blame themselves, and have failed marriages themselves. Yeah, none of that applies here! There is shockingly little on how to cope with your parents' divorce as an adult, unless you are a grown child from a failed marriage, and then there's thousands of resources for you! My logical "adult" brain, understands that everyone had low times in their life, and my parents need to sort this out. The "child" brain, that little part in the back of your head that sings nanner-nanner-nanner when the jerk that cut you off gets pulled over, that part of me screams at them to just fix it and make it better.

Hence, my inner 10-year-old needs a cookie, because cookies always seemed to make things better. Scraped knee? Have a band-aid and a cookie. Teased at school? Tell mom about it and have a cookie. Find out you have to wear a retainer 24-7 and get glasses? There's not enough cookies in the world for that one pal!

Funny, these cookies lead to my second problem, my weight. I'm finding as this year goes on that cookies not only do not make my parents' marital problems any less, they are adding to my midsection at an alarming rate. A good friend has given me a mantra to help with this; "if hunger's not the problem, food isn't the answer." It's so very true, and lately hunger has definitely not been the problem!

So, what's a girl to do? I accept that I can't do anything about my parents, and I'm doing my best to be healthier and lose the extra pounds, but that just doesn't stop my brain from whipping these issues into mind numbing obsessions. I want so badly for both to just happen, without so much effort, without so much, anguish, and without so many daunting obstacles.

*Sigh*

My inner 10-year-old needs a cookie.