nice to meat you

i have successfully survived 2 meals as a vegan.  now everyone cheer for me!

i suppose i'm fully back to being a californian because i'm doing things like saying 'i'm a vegan' now.  how did this happen?  because i know, i know... it seems very out of character if you've known me for at least a couple years.  but here is what has been happening... I'M GETTING OLD.  about a year ago i basically stopped being able to digest meat.  mostly red meat but sometimes any meat.  so i stopped eating most meat except things like chicken and bacon and some times i would be like SCREW IT I'M JUST GOING TO BE SICK and i would go to in n out and then spend the next three hours crying.

so this weekend i was driving up the 5 to san jose.  and i saw what can only be described as a sea of cows. 

this is what it looks like... for MILES

 i've seen this before but this time it was especially disturbing and i thought 'GROSS GO AWAY I NEVER WANT EAT THAT AGAIN.' and then i remembered how when i lived in virginia i would some times get trapped behind the chicken truck and it was disgusting and chickens are sad and disgusting and i was all 'elaina we aren't eating meat any more it is gross and sad.'

and that lasted basically until my next meal when i kind of forgot that i had decided animals were gross.

anyway sunday i went out to dinner with dan and his girlfriend ling.

dan ate this fish (including it's eyeballs) but that's besides the point

ling has recently decided she was going to be a vegetarian but still eat eggs and dairy and fish and some times chicken but she doesn't really want to do that but i think maybe dan made her (i was on a lot of cold medicine and may not have understood exactly what was going on).  anyway i told them about how cows and chickens are gross and then we all were just kind of like yeeeeah and i felt sad that i had just eaten a duck (ducks are terrible and should die but i don't want to eat them even if they are delicious.  why are ducks terrible?  because they are always trying to kill each other's babies.  these are the terrible things that you learn when you work in a jungle.  yes, yes i know far worse things happen in a real jungle... but the worst thing that happens in my jungle is that some jerk dude duck drowns ducklings in front of children and the only thing we can do is stand there and be horrified.)

anyway, i was driving home from san jose today and i got tuned in to a local npr station and the lady told me all about how terrible factory farms are (which is what the cow sea was that i passed).  the woman drew parallels between rape culture and factory farms and made some really great points that i would never have thought about.  she really approached the subject from lots of different perspectives... like you should hate factory farms if any one of the following applies to you: 1. you like animals 2. you respect women 3. you like the environment 4. you care about small businesses.  anyway, i thought it was really smart of her to not just play on one aspect of it but TO GET US ALL AT ONE TIME. 

and the idea of cows being raped really just makes me sad and i don't want to be apart of that.  and i know i'm treading into the land of extra crazy but seriously the idea of taking advantage of some poor animals reproduction really makes me sad in my heart.  so eggs and milk are kind of creeping me out right now.

the moral of the story is, i'm going to try my hardest to be a vegan and you should all be nice and support me and send encouraging thoughts and yummy recipes and i'll let you know how it goes.

also, consider being part of meatless mondays.  one day a week can really make a big difference.  they said some statistic on the radio today and i don't remember what it was so i'm going to make one up that sounds about the same... if everyone in the US cut out meat and dairy one day a week for a year it would have the same impact as if we drove 90,000,000 less miles that year.

and one final note:

"i know, like 5 chickens had to die for her to look that stupid."