I am not one of those super determined people. You know the ones I'm talking about, who are always setting goals and reaching them. If they say they're going to do something, you know it's going to get done. Let me just reiterate: I am not one of those people. Really, I'm not even one of those slightly determined people. I can hear my Dad now, "Uhhh, tell us something we don't know." Well, Dad, for your information, this portion of the post is for the two people who follow my blog who do not already know me. Okay? Now, where was I? Oh yes, I'm an all-star loafer, through and through. In the spirit of sharing things about myself, I'm going to let you in on my motto, my life's philosophy, straight from the goodinyou gospel...It also just so happens to be the greatest song ever written, and it goes like this:
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.
Every once in a while though, in this dream, along the stream, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I do something crazy. I come down with a case of determination. Determiwhat? I know. I told you it was crazy. Here I am rowing along merrily, dee, dee, dee, life is but a dream... And then I have to go and set a goal and ruin EVERYTHING...
As you may have read in a previous post, Jason and I challenged ourselves to go vegan for the month of November in honor of it being World Vegan Month and citing environmental reasons, blah, blah, blah. I really was determined to do it. Well, let me tell you, we failed. We failed miserably. The reason?
CHEESE. Meat? Forget about it. Milk in its fresher form? Ehh, I can take it or leave it. Eggs? They're pretty creepy anyway. But Cheese?! I would say going without it was hard, but that would be the biggest understatement of all time. It was excruciating. Life is but a dream? Try a nightmare. I think it had been maybe five days before we broke down. We could have simply nibbled a little cheese cracker to fight off the shakes or munched a meager morsel of mozzarella to stop the cold sweat. But that would have been far too sensible. Instead, we ordered an extra large, extra cheese pizza. Failure never tasted so good. And while it felt soooo right to have the cheese grease running down our faces, we said to ourselves, (after we had finished every last piece mind you) no, we can do better. Determined, we picked ourselves up by our cheese-caked bootstraps, and tried again. Six long, rice and nut-filled, god forsaken days later, on the morning of November 12th, I woke up, and I knew what I had to do. I thought, you know, I may not have it all figured out, and by it, I mean anything, but wait a minute, gosh darnit, I do know this thing, this one beautiful thing. As I sat up, the thought sprinted to my vocal chords, and before I could even get a grip on what was happening, I found myself shouting at the very top of my lungs:
"I LOVE CHEESE!!!!!"
If I knew how to get up there, I swear I would have shouted it from the rooftop. How's that for determination?
Jason didn't need much persuading. It was my stupid idea in the first place. And besides, he goes along with what I say most of the time because I let him get frisky with me in the boat sometimes. So, we proceeded to make and devour an entire pot full of homemade mac n cheese. Failure? Yes. But it was creamy, delicious failure. I'm sorry environment, I really do love you, which is why I recycle, which is why I'm a vegetarian, which is why I will never, not ever drive a Hummer. But, when it comes to cheese, if eating it is wrong, I don't want to be right.
So there you have it. What was I thinking setting an unattainable goal like that? What can I say, I lost sight of who I am and almost overexerted myself in the process. Pheww. It was a close one, but in the end I learned something valuable about myself: I cannot live without cheese. And now I feel more determination than ever, to eat as much of it as I possibly can. I think I feel about cheese the way Pooh must feel about honey. And so, in honor of Pooh, who, by the way is my all-time favorite character (see, you're learning all kinds of things about me) I wrote a silly little haikuish song to express my love for cheese:
Like milk from a tit,
Time changes all things.
Behold the power of cheese.
(Except, I don't think Pooh would say tit, not in front of the kids.)
So there you have it. What was I thinking setting an unattainable goal like that? What can I say, I lost sight of who I am and almost overexerted myself in the process. Pheww. It was a close one, but in the end I learned something valuable about myself: I cannot live without cheese. And now I feel more determination than ever, to eat as much of it as I possibly can. I think I feel about cheese the way Pooh must feel about honey. And so, in honor of Pooh, who, by the way is my all-time favorite character (see, you're learning all kinds of things about me) I wrote a silly little haikuish song to express my love for cheese:
Like milk from a tit,
Time changes all things.
Behold the power of cheese.
(Except, I don't think Pooh would say tit, not in front of the kids.)
God forbid I should ever develop a lactose intolerance. Amen. Now go eat some CHEESE!
Our default:
Or, if you want to be really naughty, try this recipe:
that got all the npr listening health freaks' panties in a wad. Read some of the comments--they're hilarious. My personal favorite? "This recipe is child abuse!" Clearly, this person needs to eat more cheese, get a boat, and chill out on the stream for awhile.
5 comments:
Tracy, this posting reminds me of the time I tried to give up peanut butter. It was awful and traumatic and I shudder when I think of those lonely, dark days. Oh and that NPR recipe looks awesome; but I'm thinking it needs a bacon crust as it's bottom layer.
Yeah, that's the spirit. Just don't feed it to your kids or someone might call CPS on yo ass! It's funny, when I was writing this post I actually had a thought about how my love for cheese is like your love for peanut butter. But then I thought about how much you love chocolate and then I thought about how much you love peanut butter and chocolate together and couldn't decide which one was your absolute favorite and then I got hungry and ate some peanut butter and chocolate, which btw is right up there with cheese in my book.
Amanda I knew you were smart cause there ain't nothin better than chocolate and peanut butter. The next best thing is toasted peanut butter and jelly. Tracy don't be getting tacky about your Dad on your blog. Amanda you need to try peanut butter on a hamburger some time.
No, on a hotdog! It's good, I promise.
blechhhhhh! thinking of that peanut butter and hot dog experience almost makes me want to not eat peanut butter...almost.
now off to make myself a peanut butter covered bite of chocolate brownie.
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