Cats
We have become a six cat family. We brought Suzie with us (of course), and there were extra cats that came with the new house, having been abandoned by the previous residents. When I first came and looked at this house I noticed two orange marmalade kittens that ran in the door when it was opened, and scrambled all over the outside, keeping an eye on things. There was also an empty tuna fish can on the deck. Future visits would reveal a third orange kitten. After we arrived to move in, the parents showed up. Both parents are grey striped. They were a little shy at first, but got used to us fairly quickly, especially since we feed them. People ask us how Suzie gets along with the pre-existing cats here (which the children have named, but I don't know who is who for sure). The answer is, they don't. Suzie likes to go out and explore, but when she encounters the other cats they hiss at each other and the cats that came with the house run away. They think they should be allowed in also, and will sneak in the door if they get a chance.
Technical Stuff
I got tired of the old template and decided that a change was fitting to go along with the move. I'm still working out glitches. The biggest one I didn't notice until a few days after changing, as it doesn't show up with Internet Explorer. My second browser, Mozilla Firefox (which is a nice browser, and free - you ought to give it a try) was overlapping the tagboard and banners from the bottom of the page over the blog entries. I think I have that fixed now. I don't have Netscape on this computer, so I'd appreciate it if someone who has it, or other browsers as well, would let me know how this looks. Thanks! I actually like the way it looks on Firefox better than on Internet Explorer, as Firefox shows the design on the background paper.
The second glitch, which I have not gotten worked out, is that something is messing up my Enetation comments. They all show as zero. Once you post a new comment, you can see the old ones too. The blogger template seems to have its own comment system built in, and I think that the two are not getting along. Any ideas? Just disabling the blogger comments ought to do the trick, but my attempts at that are messing up the whole page so I gave up for tonight.
Blogger is becoming more and more automated. It has an option to edit your own html, but once you do, Blogger alters it and rewrites it in its own style. The new templates look nice, but are overcomplicated. I don't like these changes. I would rather have more control over my own site, rather than sacrifice my control for simplification and ease of doing things.
I did some rearranging. You will find my Tagboard down at the bottom of the page, as it didn't fit in the sidebar. I could make the sidebar wider or the Tagboard narrower, but I don't feel like it, so please scroll down. Thank-you. I still very much welcome your comments, and/or e-mail (you need to change the AT and the DOT to the appropriate symbols, please). I left my other pages as they were. I know that continuity is important to a website, but I think that the old design works better for those pages. I kept the sunflower border at the top for continuity. So there.
The Amazon links are gone, for the moment. I wasn't making any money with them anyway. At some point I may add a bookstore page.
Essay On Vegetarianism
This essay has been writing itself in my head for a few months now, and it wants out. I may revise it and move it to its own page later on.
Although I have not been a vegetarian all my life, it has always been something that I wanted to do. As a child, I couldn't eat food that looked too lifelike or "cute." Doll cakes bothered me when it came time to cut them. I have never liked animal crackers. There were times that I was unable to eat my mashed potatoes because they looked like Santa Claus. When I realized that meat comes from, I deluded myself with the idea that maybe the animals died on their own and then their meat was used. When I was old enough to understand that animals that die of natural causes are discarded due to suspicion that the cause may possibly be something contagious, I was upset. I never did acquire the ability to eat chocolate easter bunnies and other food that has a face, but my transition to actually being a vegetarian happened gradually over the last couple of years.
There were several years that I was torn between not wanting to eat meat and being afraid of offending somebody by not eating meat. My husband's family (grandparents, cousins, etc.) are cattle ranchers. They eat what they produce. I thought there was no way they would understand my refusal. At first I bought hamburger and made a mixture of that and potatoes, oatmeal, shredded carrots, eggs, and seasonings all cooked together, which probably extended the meat to two meals instead of one. The quantity of meat that I used in recipes became smaller and smaller. I have never been one to eat steaks and other large servings of meat as a stand-alone menu item, and I eliminated meat as a stand-alone entree from my diet, although I would still eat a casserole or soup that contained a bit of meat. If a vegetarian option was available, I took it. Otherwise, I did the polite thing.
In the summer of 2003, I wanted to be a vegetarian, and was no longer cooking meat for myself, although I would for my family if they specifically asked me to. We went camping with my relatives in California, and I told my mother about our special diets. Mark was on the Atkins diet, and bringing his own food since he couldn't eat carbohydrates, and I was nearly the opposite - almost a vegetarian. I avoided foods containing meat, but was not able to avoid them entirely. One day we met a penpal friend of mine, and she was late, and my kids were complaining that they were starving, and my sister and her family who were with us had gone and gotten sandwiches, which my children hovered over like vultures. I took my children and bought sandwiches too, since something had to be done. All the sandwiches had meat on them, and one sandwich was big enough for two people, so we shared. My friend arrived while we were eating, and her children were hungry too, and I was very embarassed that I forgot momentarily that they were vegetarians, and offered to split my sandwich with her children. That was one of the last times that I ate meat. There may have been a couple of times after than when it was in a casserole or soup at someone else's house and no other option was available and/or I didn't notice when I accepted the casserole or soup that it contained meat. Once it is on my plate, if I don't eat it it would only be thrown away, and that doesn't help anything.
The state of things now is that I am not a particularly strict vegetarian, as I do eat fish and seafood (I am Norwegian, and I like fish, and it has nutrients in it that I need, but I don't eat it every day - fish and seafood are also different in nature and also raised differently from mammals and birds, so I also justify it that way. But I am still involved in a change process, and eating something with a face still bothers me - cognitive dissonance may still act on this yet). I also don't worry about things that come from an animal byproduct, such as gelatin. I don't protest if someone cooks with boullion, although I don't cook with it myself. Animals are not killed specifically for these products, and if we were all vegetarians we would use something else. There is vegetarian gelatin, as well as vegetable broth or boullion. Gravy didn't bother me too much for a while, because it is made from drippings that would otherwise be thrown away, but I no longer will eat gravy. Certain things always bothered me and I have never approved of them and still don't. For example, the practice of boiling lobsters live. I have never eaten lobster, even if they are more insect-like than they are like mammals. Animal rennet has also always been troublesome to me because it comes from the stomach lining of an baby ruminant, less than a day old or so (they are at a pre-ruminant stage). That seems like such a waste to me. Those calves, lambs, kids, etc. don't get a chance to experience life at all. Veal is another thing that I have never eaten.
As for my family, one daughter has begun to consider herself a vegetarian also. The other two children eat what they want to, and I do not push my choices on anyone. My husband continues to follow the Atkins diet, although he has begun to move away from red meat.
One thing that bothers me more than the eating of meat is waste. One of my reasons for becoming a vegetarian is that I feel that Americans just eat too much meat! It isn't necessary. And they also throw away way too much. I wouldn't have so much of a problem with eating meat if we all respected the fact that a living creature gives up its life in order to sustain ours. Perhaps that is the measure of their creation, but our society takes it to an extreme. Once upon a time, people raised their own food, and they had a connection with the land and their crops and their animals. It is true that in order to get milk, the cow, or doe, etc. must first freshen, which means to give birth. Slighly more than half of the offspring are male, and there simply is not a demand for that many bulls, bucks, and rams. It makes sense that when winter came along and the garden fizzled out, those extra males sustained the family. But now an entire industry is based on mass producing animals for slaughter, and people are too separated from the process. Too much is produced, too much is discarded, and too many people don't care and don't respect it.
I have a problem with wasting vegetable foods too. We need to respect that all of our sustenance comes from other living things. It is also a fact that, while some plants depend on their fruit being eaten to help spread the seeds around so that new plants will be produced, other plants give their lives for the sake of our meal. Think about carrots and other root vegetables. I don't say this because I want anyone to feel bad for eating a carrot or a potato, but I think that it is important to be aware, and not to waste these resources and the lives of these living things. Even microorganisms contribute. I was never very concerned about yeast, until I started working with sourdough. Now yeast has become a living culture that I raise and keep alive so that it can cause my bread to rise, and then die when the bread is baked. I'm not going to stop baking, or using sourdough, but I have respect for it.
That, I believe, is the key. I'm not out to make anyone feel bad, or to try to push my dietary philosophy on anyone, but it saddens me that our society seems to have lost its awareness and respect for the living things that provide for us so abundantly.
