Happy birthday to me!

My birthday present to myself? Well...

Let's first revisit a very prodigious decision I made in 7th grade at 12 years of age. Back then I was reading Anne of Green Gables, dreaming of living on Prince Edward Island and owning lots of horses and dogs. We were up to 4 cats (I'm pretty sure) and a dog at home, and I may have had a hamster at the time. Obviously I was quite the animal lover. I was also reading PETA. And thus, at the tender age of 12, I decided to go on a solo quest to save the animals. I would stop eating meat.

Somehow, my Mom, the saint, decided to go along with the whole thing. An animal lover herself, she wasn't too far from making the decision to go veggie either. Still, there were 2, at times 3, when Dave came home from college, other people in the house, all of whom were carnivorous males. So thanks, Mom, for entertaining my whims.

Fast forward seventeen years. Somewhere in there I was a vegan, which had the unfortunate result of forever changing the proportion of my body, and later on began eating fish again in the hopes that it would increase my energy level (which has always lagged behind that of normal people). Still I never really questioned my decision, basing it on my belief that I'd like to keep my karmic footprint as small as possible-- I'd like to get through this life taking as few lives of other creatures as possible. But. I wear leather (not blatantly-- no leather coats-- but leather shoes, yes, and bags). I eat fish. I call for the execution of cockroaches. These things have started bugging me a bit (well, not really the cockroach thing, no); I've started worrying about my authenticity to myself. Should I be all or nothing?

And then there is the unfortunate thing called alcohol. Sometimes, after a couple of beers, when I am really hungry, I become lustful for others' meat. And that is meant in the least-dirty, most-literal way possible. It all started last Christmas. Karel and I were out with Ed and Elizabeth, two friends from home, in Providence, at a friend's restaurant. The kitchen sent us out a charcuterie platter. As Ed, Elizabeth, and Karel raved on and on about the wild boar and the sausage, I munched on my gherkin. Finally, it just got to be too much. I threw my hands up in surrender and then dove right in to the wild boar. It was delicious.

The second time was this past Tuesday, in the midst of election madness. The bar where we were was pretty packed, and the outlook for ETA on food was pretty dim, so we went down the street to Crif Dogs, sort of like Spike's, for all you Rhode Islanders, but with a phone booth with a fake wall that leads to a speak easy. Really. I love New York. Anyway, Karel ordered his chili dog and I ordered my veggie dog. I got a plain dog on a plain bun with cubed cucumber. It tasted like... well, nothing. Karel got a plate full of pure deliciousness, apparently. After he took a couple of bites, he grew distracted by the Galaga game next to our table. I took advantage of his distraction and pounced. I ate half of his hot dog. His chili hot dog, mind you. Double meat.

Obviously, something's gotta give. I am a much different person than I was at 12 years of age -- somewhere in the past 17 years I became an angst-filled teenage bitch, started my own online 'zine back when AOL was an infant (ah, the early days of internet. I was truly a pioneer.), worshipped Trent Reznor, lost my religion, found it again in a completely different form, went to college, ran naked across the Tufts campus in the good old days before YouTube, shouldered the responsibility of teaching and mentoring our youth for a while, almost died, got lipo, traveled around the world, and moved to New York City. And those are just the highlights.

This exhausting reflection on my vegetarianism and my teens and twenties does lead to something: my birthday present to myself. Which is meat. And lots of it. For two weeks. After 17 years of unquestioned discipline, I owe it to myself. After those two weeks, I will revisit the decision I made at 12 years of age and determine what to do next: carry on as before or make some changes.

So, the menu so far, apart from the aforementioned wild boar and chili hot dog: pepperoni in the form of a stromboli, chicken breast, speck (smoked prosciutto), a pork dumpling, and curried turkey. Still no beef. I'm in the middle of An Omnivore's Dilemma (thanks Bennett!!!), which makes this whole turn of events all the more amusing, and also means I may not ever in the next 2 weeks bring myself to eat beef. Just read the first 100 pages if you want to see what I mean.

It's been odd so far. It feels somehow very counter-evolutionary to me and grosses me out somewhat. Which probably means that, once the 2 weeks are up, I will run away and retreat into the comfort of my semi-vegetarianism again. Which, apparently, will make some people very happy. It's funny the resistance in the form of, "No! Don't do that! You're so healthy!", I'm getting from (carnivorous) friends. :) Thanks, guys. I love you, but this is a decision I need to make for myself. I'm sure I'll make the right one.

In the meantime, tell me, what have I missed in the past 17 years? What must I be sure to not miss these next 2 weeks? (And please no Big Macs-- I still intend to go as humane and natural as possible!)