i don't want to eat a vegetable.

Here's one of my struggles:  I'm a vegetarian who doesn't really love vegetables.  I love food that is easy to eat - things that fit in a toaster, cereal, yogurt, fruit, nuts. Most of my entrees come out of the microwave.  I once made dinner for a friend that consisted of cheetos, grape cool-aid and mac & cheese...and that actually took some effort to pull together.

When I first got married, i tried cooking for Daryl, at least once or twice a week.  But, i soon realized that, while he makes happy sounds when eating his own cooking (apparently his stomach and his mouth are having a little party in there), no such noises come from him when he eats my food.  He says thank you and is nice about it, but there is no dancing going on in that skinny body anywhere...

So, here's my issue with the vegetables:  they are not easy to eat, and they require some cooking ability, which i clearly do not have.  Frozen corn and pre-cut carrots are totally in.  Eggplant?  I love to eat it when the man at the Thai restaurant makes it, but at home, it turns into some black sludgy stuff in my refrigerator.

I also don't really understand them. I once went to the store to buy some type of lettuce thing, and had to ask for help...the produce guy picked up a bunch, shook it, smelled it & then told me it was good.  I asked him what shaking it did, thinking it made the smell come out or that it emitted a special ripe-indicating noise or something.  He gave me the look and said, "To get the water off of it."  (Here's your sign.)  I seriously have no idea what jicama looks like before it has been cut into rectangles. I'd ask the produce guy, but i don't want to get the look again.

This vegetable phobia has made it slightly hard to get good nutrition in.  When I eat in the cafeteria at work, i brave their green stuff, mostly because someone else has cooked it.  But, now, i'm in a fitness show-down with a friend from work who is NOT scared of vegetables.  And, i need to somehow trick myself into eating more of these things so that i can win the coveted title of...well, we haven't really come up with a title.  But, i wouldn't mind if he started calling me Princess Energy or something.

So, here is my plan.  I'm writing it down to force some accountability here, since Daryl will read this and hopefully give me a convicting look when he sees there is a pop-tart in my hand instead of a cucumber.

These are the vegetables i think i can handle eating at home: carrots, salad, corn, edamame (that counts), asparagus out of the can (sodium rinsed off), the easy to microwave frozen veggie combos, cucumbers. And, if i can ever find out what a jicama is, i might actually buy one.  (Or, is it ones? some? a bunch?)

At work/restaurants:  Real asparagus, broccoli, eggplant, + all the above.

Goal: 3.5/day (i couldn't decide btwn 3 & 4). 

Not very adventurous or ambitious, but my goal is to eat more greenish things, not to gag.  Wish me luck = p

wedding story

this was the first (only?) post/blog i ever wrote, so i thought it fitting to make it the first here.   It is the story of the night before our wedding.  I changed three words.  I can do that, because i’m just stealing it from myself….
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so, it’s the night before the wedding…isn’t this is supposed to be the evening of peaceful contemplation and joyous expectation?

i had everything purchased a couple of weeks ago. It felt like i was done Christmas shopping two weeks early – amazing. There was no last-minute scrambling needed…just a quiet day of getting ready for the weekend, with a small break to get my nails done with my niece. I got pale lavender. Again, peaceful.

back home after the manicure, while in the midst of getting stuff together, my college roomie called. As we were talking, i thought it would be a good time to paint my toe nails. If this were a movie, now would be the moment when the music would go “dun-dun-DUNNNNH.”

the middle schoolers had gotten me some metallic blue nail polish for my Something Blue, so my plan was to paint my toes with it (one benefit of having no audience for your wedding is that your toe nails can be any color they want). They were fun, and i was pretty happy…until i noticed metallic blue on one of my pale lavender fingernails. Trying not to freak out, as i was still on the phone, i tried to wipe it off. Lacking nail polish skills, i was unaware that the two colors become one the instant they meet; apparently, there is no wedding ceremony in the nail polish world. The panic slowly started to settle in as we hung up the call.

thinking that i had the dexterity to wipe off only the blue part, i got out the nail polish remover and tried. Instantly, half the color was gone. I then started desperately looking thru my polish drawer for a light lavender, thinking that if i painted it on quickly, it would blend into the existing color like a water color. Not so much. Not only did it not blend, but none of the colors i had even remotely matched the one on my finger. I tried color after color, wiping each off on the palm of my hand when they failed. I ended up with one multi-colored nail, 9 lavender ones, and a palm full of nail polishes…after a minute of trying to wipe them off with remover, i gave up.

deciding that i was going to go insane and waste hours trying to find a match, i figured it would just be faster to jump in the car and go to Walgreens. Forgetting i had wet metallic blue still on my toes, i slipped on sandals, ending up with blue streaks across the tops of both my feet. i was now pretty much covered in nail polish.

this was the first time in my entire shopping life that someone at Walgreens has truly asked to help me. i’m thinking the pajama top/raincoat combo, along with my makeup-less face, might have tipped her off that i was in trouble. Trying to maintain some social decorum, i blurted out, “i’m getting married tomorrow and i got blue on my finger when i was painting my toes and i tried to fix it and now i need to find purple because my finger looks like THIS,” kind of flipping her off with my mis-colored index finger. Of course, they did not carry the type of polish the salon had. In fact, pale lavender, which is available in lip gloss, eye shadow, shampoo bottles, jelly beans and Easter eggs, is apparently only a nail color at the salon. The closest we could come up with was a pale pink and a light blue. Based on my earlier experience, i figured they would just mate and i’d end up with something close enough.

i grabbed a few more things (by this time, i was in serious need of some ice cream) and got to the register, where i noticed that it was pretty blurry. Thinking that was odd, i started looking around and soon realized that the store itself wasn’t actually blurry, but my contact had somehow folded itself in half. After winking at the cashier thru the entire transaction, i then stepped aside to fix my contact.

this might be a good time to refer to an earlier part of the story, where i had poured nail polish and remover into my palm. Remember that part? Yah. Well, unfortunately, i didn’t….thus, when the contact went back into my eye, it was covered with an amazing assortment of little pain-inducing substances.

after a tiny bit of screaming (i did wait until i got back into my truck), i called daryl and told him the story in one continuous sentence that lasted the entire 5 minutes home. He was encouraging, both in telling me that he wasn’t worried at all about what my finger looked like and in assuring me that i had actually gone kind of crazy. Once finally getting home, i anxiously tried my new blue/pink combo. It worked great. Perfect really…except, the blue i’d bought had this surprisingly shiny glitter thing going on. So, for the most memorable day of my life, i will have nine nice pale lavender fingernails and one purple disco one, which required 20 minutes to dry…thus the time to write this note with the non-trouble-making fingers. On the plus side, maybe disco-finger will be able draw attention away from my now bloodshot eye. It should be lovely.

boys reading this might wonder why i didn’t just take all of the polish off and avoid this whole maniacal thing…rational people might wonder why i didn’t just try to go to the salon in the morning. i’m just chalking the whole thing up to wedding brain. And, now that i’ve had some time to sit down and think for a few minutes straight, i have realized something a little disconcerting about myself: i will use ANY excuse to justify eating ice cream.

conclusion to story: once this note was written, i re-looked at the nails, removed all polish, and started again with white. i ended going to bed at about 2:30 a.m. with my hands straight in the air. Whatever…it all worked out = )

blah blah blahg.

They say blog stands for weB LOG.  That sounds important, like the writer has something significant to say.

You know what i think it stands for?  Blah blah BLAHG.  It's about words, which would otherwise be stuck in our brains or forced out of our mouths and into other people's ears.  Here's my BLAHG.  I feel like i just coughed on someone.

But, you know what i love about blahgs? they just stay in one place and don't go around spewing their words on unsuspecting bystanders.  If you're here, you have asked me to blahg on you.  If you don't want to get blahged on, you can just leave it here and never come back to visit.

And, honestly, i started this whole thing because there was so much blahg in my brain, that i wanted somewhere to put it...i'm trying to AVOID spewing it on people.  My poor husband is frequently the recipient of the inane collection of words that make up my blah blah:

"Do you think the turtle gets his feelings hurt when i walk by and don't wave to him?"  BLAHG.

"What is the equivalent of chocolate-flavored food in the meat world?  like, would there ever be beef-flavored meat product?" BLAHG.

"Sometimes i want to live in the country with a man servant and a cow, but i'm not sure if he would be willing to milk the cow, and i don't want to get up that early."  BLAHG.

So, with that in mind, if you are reading this, expect to run into similar thought-provoking life-changers.  It's really just here to help me remember some fun memories, to ponder, and to blah blah blahg.