Irony

Yet another pregnancy hormone story for you. This one happened (and most of it was written) back in November.

This time it started with a craving. One that isn't very easily fulfilled.
Have you ever been to Whole Foods? It's great! It's pretty much a dream come true for anyone with "special" dietary needs. A few years ago I was introduced to their delectable Mock Chicken Salad. It was love at first bite and lately I've really been wanting some. A while back we bought a Living Social deal for $20 worth of groceries at Whole Foods for $10. I snatched it up and have been waiting for a good time to use it.

Yesterday morning I really started craving that salad so I mentioned to Kris that I'd like to make the drive to the Whole Foods in Arlington and he approved. All day at work I looked forward to getting my yummy salad so when Kris got out of class at 7 he picked me up and we left.

It started going downhill when the gas light came on. We stopped and got gas and realized that we were both too hungry to wait until we got to Whole Foods to eat so we went across the street and ordered food from Taco Bell. Half a mile down the road we realized they put meat in our bean tacos. Turn around, fix the order, back on the road. The drive was taking longer than we expected and finally we realized....we selected the Whole Foods in Dallas instead of Arlington on the GPS. Strike Two.

Finally, we arrived, I grabbed my little buggy and headed for the deli. I stopped at the right case, looked in and saw lots of vegan yumminess but none of my beloved salad. I walked around the entire round deli case twice then over to the prepackaged things on the wall. No salad. I asked the nice guy working the deli. He went and looked for me and.....came back with no salad. I was distraught. Did we seriously drive all this way for nothing?? We walked around the store and nothing else looked even remotely tempting. I looked into buying the ingredients and making my own mock chicken salad but I knew I wouldn't get it quite right which would only disappoint me more. K was being very sweet and trying to make me feel better which helped a little. He finally picked out some things for us to buy so we checked out and made our way out the door.

This was one of those nights where it felt like nothing could go right. The pregnancy hormones were raging and I just couldn't get over something as silly as a stupid salad being sold out. As we were walking to the car I was trying to adjust my attitude when I saw it. The irony begins. A bird was perfectly in tact and positioned belly out, wings spread wide across the Ford logo on the front of our car. Dead as a doornail and freaking me the heck out.

Cue the screaming, crying, pregnant vegetarian fleeing the scene.

I ran back to the front of the store next to the potted plants by the door and tried to regain my composure. "This is normal. This is not my fault. It's gonna be ok..." I pace the plant corner and start feeling a bit calmer. This was before Thanksgiving and Christmas so there were lots of little potted Christmas trees and nice things to look at. I touched and smelled the plants and felt the calm creeping in. One particular plant caught my eye and I finally fixated on it as (after a couple minutes had past) Kris came walking toward me. It was in a pretty clay pot and had several different herbs growing together. It was pretty quaint and had a plant ornament sticking out from the dirt with a clay turkey sitting on the top. Kris stood next to me, I pointed out the plant and told him that I liked it. We talked for a second about it and then I read the tag on the pot.
"Parsley, Sage, Thyme. Turkey Seasoning."
Then it hit me. This plant was for growing your own turkey seasoning.

Cue the crying, pregnant, vegetarian, sick of the bird irony and clinging to her husband for dear life.

Poor, poor, husband. He said lots of soothing things and started walking me toward the car but I wouldn't budge until he assured me that he had "taken care of" the bird and it was nowhere near the car. To this day, he won't tell me where it went. One of the many reasons I love that man. I got back into the car and he drove me home to Cowtown.

So the summary is: drive all the way to the big city for out of stock mock chicken salad. Get morbidly shocked by one encounter with a very dead bird and one innocently packaged dead-bird seasoning.

I know that this entire situation sounds ridiculous to so many people, mainly un-pregnant omnivores. But believe me, this pregnant vegetarian knows it was ridiculous and somehow I'm able to look back on this (and my entire first trimester, really) and laugh at myself. On any other day I would have been merely frustrated about the salad and mildly grossed out about the dead birds. On this day, however, that just wasn't the case.

So now, cue the laughing, happy, 2nd trimester vegetarian, who feels like letting the whole world read about her goofiness. You're welcome.

The day that I cried over fake cheese

It all started with a sneezy nose. The sneezy nose gave way to the coughing throat. The coughing throat brought on the lack of sleep. All of these things together = a day off from work, my friends. I needed to nip this cold in the bud before it took a bit out of me and my grape.

So I called in, drank a massive amount of fluid and went back to bed.

Fast forward a few hours and it was time for lunch. My husband came home and wanted to know what I wanted to eat. This is a difficult question for me these days but I decided that bean burritos sounded tasty. I threw together some refried beans and rolled them up in a tortilla with salsa and Daiya cheddar shreds (that's fancy vegan talk for fake cheese). Normally, this is the ultimate comfort food for me. It's warm, simple to make, and just what I need when I'm feeling a little under the weather. As the beans started warming on the stove and the smells of said beans started wafting through the air I started to feel a little funny. Suddenly, beans didn't sound as good as they did before. I shrugged it off, made a burrito for each of us and sat down at the table to eat. K started eating his but I just sat there and looked at my burrito. It looked fine. It seemed fine.

It made. me. wanna. barf.

I decided to pick up the burrito and give it a chance. I set it back down. This went on for a minute or so before Kris noticed my burrito indecision. He encouraged me to eat it and said that it tasted fine but I couldn't do it. No way, Jose.

After psyching myself up for a while longer I decided to try a bite. Get over my beany fears. Eat the dang burrito that I cooked even though I felt awful. So, I picked it up. Gagged a little. Took one bite. Chewed. Swallowed. Chased it with an entire glass of water.

I wanted to like the burrito. Really and truly I did! But for some gosh awful reason I just couldn't do it. I went and laid down on the couch leaving a very confused husband at the table.

You see, the day before he had brought me a sandwich to work. I requested ham (the vegan lunchmeat version that I've been craving lately) and cheese with honey mustard on toast. The cheese was a vegan kind we had not tried before and I was anxious to see how it tasted. It comes in a block that you slice yourself and my poor, sweet husband had a hard time slicing it. It was very thick on one side and paper thin on the other. My first bite of the sandwich was (unknowingly) on the thick side and it was terrible. Very velveeta-y and just plain wrong. I gagged, threw the cheese out and ate the rest of the sandwich but couldn't remove that terrible taste and smell from my memory.

So it's Wednesday and I'm lying on the couch thinking about that terrible cheese and how my burrito wasn't any good. Sweet guy that he is, my husband came over and put his arm around me to see what was wrong. Our exchange went something like this:

K- "You okay"
Me- "Noooooo!"
"Why can't you eat your lunch?"
"Because it's gross and I don't know why else."
"But you said that what you really wanted was a bean burrito."
"I know but it's nasty. I can't eat it."
"Well then what do you want to eat?"
"I want REAL cheese!!" (beginning to sniffle here)
"Okay then eat some real cheese"
"I can't! I'm a vegan."
"That's okay. It'll be fine."
(Boohooing now) "I want real cheese! I don't want to be a vegan! Why am I a vegan? I can't do it! I'm hungry for pizza."

I cried into my couch like the hormonal, semi-vegan, baby that I am. It was horrific and I hate to admit it, but this went on for quite a while. K drove me to a local burger placed and picked me up a vegan burger...with REAL pepper jack cheese. It was one of the best things I've ever eaten. Seriously.

I am so embarrassed about the entire cheese meltdown debacle, but putting it all over the internet sure seems like a great solution! I'll laugh at myself and let other people laugh with me!

....Right?

.............Right?