Shakespeare says: "To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean"

The mega millions lotto is high( 640M to be exact ) and frankly, I love when these days happen.  You hear the buzz! All the talk about what people would do with 640M... I think winning that kind of money, 1/2 that money, 1/4 of that money, while very awesome, would be freakin' frightening.

Sure, you can quit your job. You can shop your ass off. You can do whatever the hell you want to do. You can travel all over the world.  Bentley? check. Mansion? check. Hair did every 4 weeks? check. Trip to Tahiti, Portugal, Maui? check. 500 cats cuddling in your big ass cat sanctuary? check. (allergies. check.)

But then what? Imagine coming to the ultimate conclusion that you have it all.  The next step is then to ask "what do you have to give."  You'd have to be the person who finds out what they truly love to do--and then do it-- really do it. 640M means get up off your ass and make a difference, doesn't it? Do any of us know what would really rock our boat? What would really make us feel like we were leaving a legacy? What do you love, really love, to do?

I think I'd start a humongous animal shelter, I think I'd give 10,000 needy people 10,000 dollars each (look how cheap i am). I think I'd go back to school, major in nutrition and then become a vegan nutritionist.  I think I'd do a lot of shit, but how does one go about identifying the one thing that they really love to do?    And would that be enough. Would it simultaneously self-satisfy and serve a greater purpose....

This is why we need the lottery. We need to exercise creative scenarios like this to discover who we are, ask questions, deep dive, rationalize and re-create.  It's emotional, intense, and potentially character defining:  for about 2 minutes, we can be infinitely generous.  It's exciting, it's unthinkable.  For 2 minutes, we can be infinitely greedy. It's self-serving, it's excessive, it's maybe a bit wicked.  We aren't sharing those thoughts though, huh. Hence the blog title.

Hmm, could one argue that maybe not winning the lottery is, in fact, the lucky part of it all for some of us?

scurvy-licious

Stomach. issues. are. not. fun.

Everything's been fine and dandy over here in vegan world, then BAM, out of the blue, pretty (well not so pretty) insane digestive issues popped up.  I thought I had a bug. No bug. I thought maybe I was pregnant? Nope, no baby. Sorry, mom and dad.

Instead, what I had were some digestive disturbances that were making me way cranky. What to do? Well, I waited it out and it did me no good. I figured that I must have a food allergy that's popping up.   Did I have a gluten allergy? Did I have a carageenan allergy? Did I have a soy allergy?  Worse, ahh, is this some crazy manifestation of cancer?

So I consulted with family first. Of course, I'm told that I need to start eating eggs.  Really? What the fuck is an egg going to do?  Then I was told to re-think my veganism.  Not an option right now. It's a little early in the game to be calling it quits.

Then, I consulted with someone who knows some shit.  She started dishing it out to me homeopathic style. She told me to think about the way I eat. Track my intake with a food diary and record how I feel. She also gave me a great tip about separating the fruit I eat from the rest of the food I eat.  Give it a good 20 minutes in between. Eat the fruit first, otherwise it just ferments on top of all that other shit in your body.

I took it a step further.  I started questioning what non-vegans do to regulate their systems. Act-iv-ia...(sing it like in the commerical) came to mind. Activia has probiotics. None of what I eat does.  Hmm, now I'm on to something.

(Enter stage left): Raw sauerkraut, wearing a leather jacket and bangle bracelets. Bad ass motherf'er raw sauerkraut. Raw sauerkraut, not cooked like yall do on new year's day, but cabbage and salt that ferments, is a real superfood. If you were a sailor and didn't want to be scurvy-licious, the good probiotics--the good bacteria--protected you on long voyages. It's pleasant on the stomach too. Fermentation makes vegetables easier to digest.

So far so good. Raw sauerkraut is helping. Separating my fruit intake is helping. Any other tips out there folks?

P.s. I've been eating Bubbie's raw sauerkraut. It's delicious. I literally guzzle the brine and make those probiotics my bitch!

Boy scout this, bitches!

Be prepared! Right? That's what those little tykes say in their back packs and uniforms as they hike around looking for birds, earning patches, eating grass, or whatever they do.   Be prepared!

At the flower show last thursday, I was a bad boy scout. I was not prepared.  I was hangry...you know...so hungry that you're angry? That was me. I brought a tiny cute cross body bag to hold my stuff.  I was in the city, I didn't want shit to get swiped on the train (maybe that's a bit of suburban preparedness).  In my cute cross body bag, however, was NOT my typical snacks...larabar, nuts, etc.  1:30, I thought, hmm, I probably should have brought a snack, I'm a bit hungry. 1:45...popped a piece of gum in my mouth. Around 2:00, all hell broke lose inside my head. Hanger had struck. I was like a wild animal ferociously looking for food. And let me tell you, there was food :ice cream, doritos, really really creepy old fruit salad, there was chocolate bars.  None of it, except for the disgusting mold fruit salad, was vegan.  FUCK. I walked from stand to stand, looked at every cookie, every pastry, not a damn thing I could consume.  2:30, I was ready to renounce veganism.

Then around 2:45, Like the parting of the red sea, the crowd opened and a light shone down. I walked towards the light, the pretzel stand. The dude couldn't confirm if the pretzels contained butter (folks-news flash, a lot of pretzels do), but he was able to radio the god of the pretzel stands who confirmed that they were vegan.) Hallelujah. I ate a pretzel. Calmness returned.

Moral of the story: I learned ABC: Always Be Carrying (a larabar).