Dinner Date with My Husband

Dinner Date with My Husband - A Poem
Published in P.S. I Love You on Medium.

Us, gazing at our amazing kiddo, at my parents' house. Photo Credit: my mom.

“love 24 hrs” Photo by Wyron A on Unsplash

Vegan Most of My Life

It's not a birthday. Not an anniversary. But Saturday was a special day for me. It marked the point when I had been vegan more than half my life. I've now been "vegan most of my life." So I want to reflect on the journey.

Cake I made, 2008

Yesterday, I celebrated with a savory crepe and a roasted banana macadamia ice cream cone at the PT Farmers' Market. When I was a teenage vegan in Florida, I never could've imagined I could get vegan food like that (without making it myself).

Me in 2004 - homemade cheeseless pizza and pudding parfaits

It's why I got so into cooking and baking--there were no restaurant/grocery options for me at the time. I wanted to be vegan, but I never wanted to feel like I was depriving myself.

Me in 2007 at Maggie Mudd's in San Francisco

 I went vegan when I was 17 years + 143 days old (or 2,703 days old). I had been transitioning for years already, since my nausea over a 9th grade fetal pig dissection made me consider for the first time what I was really doing when I ate meat.

It was a slow transition, because I had never met a vegan or even a vegetarian. The one 9th grade friend who called herself vegetarian had actually just quit eating cows/pigs, and so I started that way too.

Eventually, I stopped eating all animals, but I still hadn't met a vegan in real life (though by high school we had the internet, and I had a big internet crush on a vegan who lived far, far away) when, with my dial-up internet, I saw PETA's "Meet Your Meat." I only had to watch it once, and I realized I needed to go vegan.

My Famous Cowboy Cookies

I set NYE 2000 as my moment and went to work learning to bake (my first chocolate chip cookie experiment--just using water instead of eggs--was a big failure) and learning what I could get at various fast food restaurants (because that was still my family's norm). I learned how to read grocery packages, memorizing which long words were vegan and which weren't (I was still eating so much junk with such long ingredient lists). This was before packages put allergen warnings in bold, before stores specifically catered to vegans.

Charles at The Cookie Counter

Me and Baby Tzivia at our old pizzeria

Because I have this experience, of having to do it all myself, and of initially putting off veganism (and even vegetarianism) because I really just didn't know anything about it, didn't know anyone to guide me or model it for me, I want everyone to know that my family is always here to guide you, to talk about it, to explain or to listen, if you're thinking about veganism, or even just eating more plants and less animal products.

Harvest Feast (Thanksgiving) in Florida, 2016

I've read that every 7-10 years, the cells of our body have been completely replaced, even our bones, that we become brand new.

For 2,703 days, I ate animal products, probably every single day (even on Yom Kippur, as the fasting goes from sundown to sundown). I built my body out of other bodies, out of cows' breastmilk, out of chickens' periods. Out of carcasses.

For 2,704 days, I've been vegan.

reading my article in the new issue of Raise Vegan

My body is made out of plants, and it's a strong, healthy body.

It's never too late to go vegan!

Year and a Half Anniversary

Yesterday was our year-and-a-half anniversary. Half-anniversaries are strange, because the weather -- everything, really -- is like the exact opposite of how it was when you met. We met a couple days before the winter solstice, so our half-anniversary is just before the summer solstice.

Comic Luna drew for me of our first kiss. He gave it to me on our second date (in which he cooked Pad Prik King for me and we danced around the carpet to Edith Piaf). The comic hangs above our bed now.

We met when night was at its longest, but falling in love at the very start of winter meant basically getting the cheat code to skip winter. That first night, when we met, after the symphony, after dinner, we found ourselves on the swings at Cal Anderson Park, and I was wearing a dress as low-cut as the one I wore yesterday.


"Do you ever get out of the city?" he asked me, and he stumbled over the words a little bit, like he was nervous.

"Not really. I don't drive so I haven't really seen much of the state yet."

"Would you like to? We could get a cabin on the coast."

Our first date. And we both had this realization that this was not a first date conversation, but we also realized that the normal rules didn't apply.

I got off my swing and went over to him, somehow shared the swing with him (haha, I think I straddled him?) and we kissed, and I said, "I would love that."

And two weeks later we were sharing a little A-frame in La Push, hiking through the rainforest and making vegan s'mores.

He wrote our names, with his finger, on an Artist's Conk (Mushroom)

It was the first week of January. We held hands and ran into the ocean together, then immediately ran back out, freezing and giggling.

Ancient tree!! We set the camera timer for this picture, because we were alone (people-wise) in the forest.

Now it's supposedly the start of summer, though I felt as cold yesterday (sitting on a boulder together at Magnuson Park, by the lake, laughing at our awesome dog, then trying to soak up the failing sunlight while having a dessert picnic in the parking lot of PCC) as I did a year and a half ago when we met.

Conclusions:
This particular spring and summer are pathetic excuses for sunny seasons.
Luna will keep me warm, come spring or summer or winter or fall.
Desserts are delicious.
I need to take more pictures, especially if I'm going to keep up a blog.
We're in love.



P.S. I've been very busy this week, overwhelmingly so. I was imagining I'd be blogging every day, but now I see that that's something only my funemployed self could do. Since I haven't been posting, I haven't pushed myself to take pictures, but we have had some delicious food this week, and here's one example:

Chilaquiles Luna made us for breakfast -- Corn tortillas scrambled with tofu (and veggies, in this case), topped with salsa and "sour cream" (garlic aioli on this one). I was feeling under the weather, slept for about a million hours straight, then woke up to this. Yummm.