Walking the Wall

I can’t begin to tell you how much Diana Ross singing "It’s in his kiss" made me grin today. Why? No idea, but walking to class today I could hardly keep from doing a little slide and a little skip (I think I may not have been entirely successful) and forget about keeping my grin on the inside, it wasn’t happening.

I’ve been a vegetarian now for over six months now (an Ovo-lacto Vegetarian–I eat cage free, veg feed eggs and organic milk–see, I’m learning the lingo!), and I realized today that it seems to be settled into myself. For quite some time every day was organized around what I was going to eat, how I was going to make this meal to feed my family (only I am a vegetarian) and myself with the most efficiency. But I realized that for the most part, I don’t think through each meal, it has become normal feeling–a good feeling. Funny story though, I was at my Health class on Saturday and the topic of the day was nutrition so vegetarianism was brought up–on finding out I was a vegetarian, a woman in front of me turned around, "Oh yes, my sister-in-law was a vegetarian for 10 years, she ate vegetables and eggs and fish and chicken on occasion, but I don’t know if she still is a vegetarian now…"        ?         Well, I have to admit I kindof laughed and just suggested that if she ate fish and chicken that sortof made her not a vegetarian. Of course, a vegan would say the same about my eggs and milk, so, it’s all relative! I do get the fish one a lot, "Oh, that means you just eat fish?" or, "Sure we have vegetarian dishes, here is a list of seafood plates"…. If it was alive (walking, swimming, flying) at one point, I don’t eat it.

It reminded me of a woman in my Cannibalism and cultures of cruelty lit class (that kick started me into being a vegetarian…I’d only talked about)–she said that we had to drink cows milk because if we didn’t milk the cows, they would be in agony and that would be cruel…     ?     The milk is for the baby cows, I pointed out to a woman taking an upper level literature class, when the baby cow doesn’t need it anymore, it dries up, not too hard a concept as otherwise there would be a lot of women walking around in perpetually agony from engorged breasts!

I saw V is Vendetta the other night, fantastic movie, certainly worth going and seeing again as I know there were lots of little things (a particular painting is one of my favorites, but as the movie is freshly released I’ll keep quiet so as not to spoil anything).

I’m reading a fantastic book for class right now, Woman Warrior by Maxine Kingston, on top of the obvious immigrant/1st generation American issues, it explores the issues of manufactured reality and the idea of there being factual truth and Truth, ideal truth–and which one is really more important. I’ll definitely be looking into her other works.

My brother is going to be here on Monday, we haven’t seen him in 4.5 years as he’s been living in Mongolia. He’s coming home with his wife (who is Mongolian so we’ve not met her yet) and my nephew who I’ve only known through pictures and listening to him laugh or babble or cry in the background on the phone. To say we are excited is putting it mildly. It’s going to be interesting having people live in our home for a month, but I’m sure after a period of getting comfortable, it will be a great experience.

The insanity of the last two weeks is finally slowing down, I finished a website I was working on, got my reading caught up, had my symposium today at school where I presented a paper (On Tim O’Brien’s "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" from The Things They Carried in comparison to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness), and got all my homework caught up for health class. I have one more all day class tomorrow and then I’m done with that one! Then just three weeks of class and one week of exams.

I started doing Tai Chi this week, I have a beginners video and T’ai Chi for Dummies for when I can’t figure out a move. I remember in high-school my sister-in-law’s father did a presentation of some sort on Tai Chi and I thought it was amazingly beautiful–another of those things I’ve always said I’d like to do but never done because any class that has cropped up hasn’t worked with my schedule. I’d still like to take a class, but for now at least I’m doing and not waiting. I’ve found it to be extremely relaxing and peaceful in the mornings, not that I can do much yet, but I’ve certainly fallen in low with it and plan on continuing.

I think that is enough babble for one post!