Today was the epitome of a Monday. If you looked “Monday” up in the dictionary, there would be a photo of today.
It didn’t help that I was cranky from the start. I didn’t get a great night’s sleep last night, so I was tired today. I was hustling through work, just trying to keep up, and didn’t have time for lunch. I survived on a banana and complimentary meeting cookies. I got home and Justin was still at work, toiling away on a new freelance project. The kitty cats were starving, and all I wanted was for someone to hand-feed me a slice of pizza. While I sat on the couch. Curled up in my grandma’s quilt.
But Justin did come home, and he took me to Vivo for puffy tacos and a frozen margarita. And we talked and laughed and even went grocery shopping afterward (where I bought a bag full of chocolate covered raisins, because they help make life easier). And everything seems manageable now.
At about 5:00 this evening, I had decided that my latest vegetarian stint was OVER. I wanted pepperoni pizza, and chicken tortilla soup, and braised pork belly. I realized that not eating animals is much harder when you’ve been eating animals nonstop for months. Especially when you’re cranky and stressed out and in search of comfort food.
I didn’t eat meat tonight, because Vivo has great vegetarian enchiladas and puffy tacos stuffed with beans and cabbage. But what about tomorrow night? What about next week, when we go to New Orleans with our foodie friends, and everyone is eating cracklins and oysters and heritage turkey? I just don’t know, friends. It seems that I’m destined to always fret over what I eat and don’t eat. Vegetarian? Omnivorous? Local? Organic? Humanely raised? Seasonal? Nutritious?
Of all the things I worry about, food is probably the biggest. Of course I worry about money, and health, and peace on earth and good will toward men. But my daily struggle is with food. Sometimes I regret getting a degree in nutrition, because it has given me the knowledge that makes simple decisions (like “what’s for lunch”) into difficult ones… especially for someone as perfectionistic and worrisome as myself. But I know that I’m healthier than most, that I eat well most of the time, and that in the end, I’ll be okay. I just have to remind myself of that in those moments when I’m freaking out about food.
Internets, do you fret about food, too? Is it just me? I read a book recently about how women are trained to want to be “effortlessly perfect”… to dress well, be thin and fit, eat well, hold a full-time job, have a clean house and a great marriage, and do it all with a smile. It’s annoying to me that women are expected to be this way… but it annoys me even more that I expect it of myself.
I don’t really have a point here, just putting my thoughts out there. Until tomorrow, internets… sweet dreams.
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