studio · home · community · self

I’m in love with memes, even though I’m pretty terrible with passing them along. This is no exception to that rule. Which means I’ve modified the rules to suit me:

• Thank the person who gave them this award/roped them into this meme. (Thanks Bad Mummy!)
• Share 7 things about myself.
• Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who I’ve recently discovered and that I think are fantastic! I’m not very good at tagging people, so if you read this…you are tagged!

I also think it’s worth noting that seven things is really too easy. The last list I did about myself (in 2005! When I started blogging!) was 100 things. Without any further adoooo, here we go!

1. I’ve got the best boyfriend on earth. He’s the brother of a friend from Ottawa and we met at her birthday party. We started talking on the phone and the Internet and quite quickly realized that seeing each other in person quite regularly was something we wanted to do. We spent almost a year traveling between Ottawa and Toronto and then I decided that I was ready to pick up and start fresh in Toronto. And we’ve been living together ever since. I love him dearly and he doesn’t even annoy me one little bit ever.

2. I love working. I’m not a workaholic as I’m way too lazy for that. But when I have work to do that’s appreciated/that makes my brain work/that makes me feel needed I am in love! The money is of course nice, but much better is being able to communicate and collaborate and cheer each other on. And for your information, I’m on a contract right now that I LOVE TO BITS. This is big because I used to be very unhappy at work. I worked for the public service and had some very emotional and psychologically moments that affected me deeply.

3. I play World of Warcraft. In fact, I’m playing as I type this. I’ve been playing Horde since October 2006 (I think…) and I just recently started playing Alliance. I love both for different reason, but am right now really digging Alliance as it’s a whole new game. I have a level 80 druid, a level almost 80 paladin and two lowbies: a priest and a shaman. As you can tell, I love playing classes capable of healing. My favourite races to play are tauren, draenei, and night elf.  I’ve been playing Warcraft since the beginning and I love everything about it: the lore, the graphics, the everything!

4. I have gained and now lost a significant amount of weight in my 28 years on this planet. My main gain happened in university and the leadup to entering the public service. Being unceremoniously dumped added the final 20 pounds. I went to the doctor and she of course wanted me to lose weight and provided a much needed push. My little sister was also getting married and I didn’t want to be the fat sister bridesmaid. I was still a chubby sister bridesmaid, but as of the wedding I’d lost almost 50 pounds. That’s been a year now and I’ve not really made much of an effort, but thanks to changes in eating patterns my weight now starts with a two for the first time in a long time.

5. I call myself a writer these days and I’m quite happy about that. In my last list I mentioned that I wanted to call myself a writer so I’m happy to say that after five years I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that I am one! I had a bit of a rough go while I was working for the public service because I had a manager who pretty much destroyed any confidence I had about any of my skills, but since then I’ve had lots of opportunities to prove to myself and others that I can make writing happen with my fingers.

6. I love food and food related activities. I used to be an emotional eater and now I’m just an eater. And a maker. I love to make and eat things, or go out and eat things, or have someone make things for me so that I can eat them. I’m not a picky eater at all, but I’ve finally learned that I can say that I don’t prefer something and be okay with that. I’m not the biggest fan of some tofu related products (and soy can be pretty evil, more on that someday) but you deep fry it and chances are it goes in my belly. My favourite food are the wings of chickens: spicy or sweet or hot or saucy or not, I love ‘em all. And P.S. coffee rules.

7. I love my family more than anything. Perfect bookends: I started with Joe and for the finale I’ll talk about how awesome my Mom, my Dad, my little sister, and my little brother are. I have grown much closer to my family in the time that I’ve been away from Manitoba, and even more closer in the time since I was dumped. I realized then the importance of my support system and keeping it healthy. The phone and the Internet are lifelines to home and my visits are less far and few between.

It’s funny how my blog and blogging habits really centre around what’s going on in my life. If I’m unhappy or depressed I don’t want to blog because I don’t want to make you unhappy or depressed. If I’m running between cities cultivating a relationship and don’t have time to sleep let alone blog…you get the idea. But I’m moving towards happiness and finally feel stable in my home life for the first time in say 10 years, so a blogging we will go.

I’m planning a series of posts that will bring people up to speed on how my eating habits have evolved and weight loss that’s occured, but first I need to set the foundation again. So here is a republish of the first time I delved into the idea of being a flexitarian.

Originally posted April 15, 2009

I’ve always eaten meat. I was raised on a cattle farm, I grew up eating ‘organic’ (we didn’t call it that, but it was home grown, free range, hormone free and all that good stuff) beef, poultry and lamb. The only thing I’m pretty sure we ate that was from a store was pork. I also ate various game meats, venison most often and sometimes duck or goose.

Animals were a part of our life.  In addition to having crop land, we raised cattle, sheep and chickens. I helped do chores, shoveled poop and picked eggs. We were a small farm who cared more about farming than making money and in the early 90s we were told that we were not profitable enough. We still ate local meat, but we more often got it from other farmers rather than raising it ourselves.

And then I moved away to go to university. And being a poor student I ate what I could afford, which generally was rubbery boneless chicken thighs that I’d bought as a family pack on sale and then frozen and then thawed and made into a stir fry or something. These were times where I dreamed of the meat I grew up with, meat that tasted and felt like meat in my mouth. I dreamed of going to a grocery store and being able to buy ‘the good stuff’.

Eventually I became done with university. But it’s only been recently that I’ve been able to say that I’m ‘done’ with eating like a student. I still enjoy shawarma and the odd hot dog. And even make myself a MSG free version of ramen noodles.

What I have been doing is eating organic meat. As well as I can afford (as I’m not a bajillionaire by any stretch of the imagination), I’ve slowly replaced all of the ‘other’ meat in my diet with food that is well to me just more real. This means that the amount of meat that I’m eating has decreased, but the quality has increased substantially.

This makes me a flexitarian. There have been many reasons to do this, some of them political, some of them moral, some of them for my health. I’m sure I’ll tell you all about it in the series of posts that I have planned.

It’s been somewhat easy so far. Most of the time I’m able to choose a veggie option (the vegetarian platter at my favourite shawarma place is actually really fantastic) and when I’m not I’ve been choosing a sustainable type of fish. Or if I’m lucky enough to go to a place that serves organic meat, I will eat that.

But barbecue season is coming and bacon (and his big brother prosciutto) is always around. Which means that temptation lurks in the likeliest of places.

But I’m going to keep trying this eating less meat thing.  And I’m going to drag you all along kicking and screaming.