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Thursday, June 28, 2012

Long way from vegan

Doesn't this look like an edible Pac Man?
On March 19, 2012, I made a decision to stop consuming caffeine. I had been used to drinking one and a half cups of coffee in the morning, but I knew I wouldn't miss it. It was really only a ritual; nothing I savored or noticed as a trigger for a more alert self. I remember when I first started drinking coffee. After graduation, I launched my job search with a mailing sent to 200 publishers in the Chicago area. As luck would have it, I got just one response and flew to Chicago, on my dime, for an interview with Mosby-Year Book to be an editorial assistant. More luck, I was offered the job, my first real job out of school. The best part of the job was the group of people I met while I worked there. What smart young women! I loved grabbing lunch from all the nearby restaurants. But on my way into the building each morning, I stopped for a muffin (cranberry please!) and coffee for $1.50. It was a great deal and an even better muffin. 


The Coke, I knew, would be harder to part with. It was a silly thing to be over forty and still drink such an unhealthy product, and almost on a daily basis.  I had suspected a food allergy when it came to caffeine, and it was getting worse, so I stopped coffee and caffeine drinks cold turkey. But that's not all. That Monday I also stopped buying deli meat. For the last 3 months of school, my children had Nutella and banana on wheat bread almost every day. I stopped buying potato chips and hard rolls to accompany our weekend lunches. And while all this was going on, I was reading whatever books I could get my hands on and watching movies about the truth behind the standard American diet and factory farms. I admitted to myself that I wasn't really very healthy at all. I made changes right away. And as I always remind myself, baby steps are perfectly fine when it comes to change.


I stopped buying red meat, experimented with more vegetarian dishes and talked with my husband and children about our food choices. And even as my grocery bill reflected my experiments, I feared my own failure. In other words, I questioned my discipline and commitment. Making change at 43, after being raised in a meat and potatoes kitchen, felt overwhelming. I would have to learn to prepare and eat new things. I would have to continually educate myself.


Joining a farm share has really helped. Each week when I pick up my bag of freshly harvested, organic produce, it's like a contest to eat it all before the next pick-up date. My kids are o.k. with the change. They may not eat everything I prepare, but they're not rude about it. They haven't tried my new recipe with swiss chard yet. We're all taking baby steps though. I let them know that they can eat anything they want when we go to restaurants. And if we are guests in someone's home, I'll usually eat whatever is being served. I'm more worried about what I bring home. I'm doing pretty well with the caffeine thing too. I broke down only twice since March. Once I ordered a fountain soda Coke and another time I bought an ice coffee (not decaff - mistake!!!). My suspicions about my allergy were correct. Avoid caffeine at all costs!


Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Best Friends

When you're a kid, best friends define themselves easily against a backdrop of other children that just don't seem to get you. Perhaps more perplexing is the way in which friends routinely betray us. "I hate you", "you're an idiot", or "I'm never talking to you again". What the hell? The tempests that provoke these devastating break-ups are usually and grievously unexpected. Sometimes, Humpty can be put back together. Other times, like when I was a senior in high school and one of my best friends cut the cord on our 6-year run without warning (or even a good reason), the scattered bits remain untended. These blows can be tough to weather.

As an adult, friendship is less easily pigeonholed. We tend to have many friends, defined in a variety of ways: coworkers and neighbors, old and new friends, bus stop friends, committee friends, church friends, play date friends, sports friends and mere acquaintances. While busy with work, family, running households, and raising children, the energy required to maintain friendships is often used up elsewhere.



Robin and me hanging out in my room.
I'd like to think that the friendships made during adulthood are built to last, but things can get complicated. There are times when I long for the type of friendship I had in high school with my best friend Robin. Nearly always on the same page, beginning in 7th grade we shared everything along the way, including, God bless her, her mom's DELICIOUS homemade chocolate chip cookies that she brought to lunch every day. From the time we were 12 until we graduated high school, the amount of time we spent talking on the phone and in person would be considered criminal in an adult world, with so many things to do and so little time in which to do them. Funny, it never seemed like time wasted.