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.