I think this is it

I feel pressured.

I feel like it's time I stop lollygagging around and just do it. (Do Nike commercials still have the "Just Do It" motto?)

It's time to become vegan.

What has led to this:

Not too long ago, my husband shocked me with a comment he made and I even blogged about it here. Well, he's done it again. I don't know if he's been noticing the gazillion vegan and raw food cookbooks I have out, if he's been flipping through them, if his 5-10 minutes of watching Forks Over Knives, all of the above or what, but I made a comment the other day to my little 4yo niece when she was being picked up after work, that she can eat pretty much only fruits and vegetables and be super healthy, but if she doesn't eat the fruits and veggies and only the crackers and other stuff she often has, then it's harder to be healthy. (Her dad had given her nothing but fruits and vegetables in her lunch kit that day on purpose because she hasn't been eating  fruits and veggies lately.) Later that evening, I think it was, my husband said, "You know, if we ate only fruits and vegetables for a few weeks, meat would be disgusting after that." I had another one of my, "My husband said WHAT?" moments. The topic came up again another day and then again today. And my daughter has been bugging me on and off for months. (Why does it all rest on me? *sigh*)

Add to that, my "niece" (21yo, like my own, we'll call her niece) has gotten tired of food affecting her so negatively and has decided to do a month of her style of vegan: high fruits, high veggies, green tea and I'm not sure what else. After a week, she's already feeling better. She invited me to join her.

It's time. It's clear, isn't it? I'm stressed over it though. I love this blog post to remind me that I don't have to be perfect, but, well, dang, I've been a perfectionist pretty much my whole life. I'm the kid who at her 1st birthday party, very daintily ate her cake and had to have her mother smoosh some on her face so she could take a "worthy" picture. I still have to have all the pencil crayons back in the pack in order. Letting go of perfectionism is hard.

I know I can't wing this. I am far too much a creature of habit to be able to simply wing it. But I don't know what to plan that I think my family will eat. And we're leaving on a camping trip in a couple of weeks. (Vegan camping? It might actually be easier than trying to figure out how to keep meat from spoiling...) I feel a bit like I did the first day I tried wheat-free: stressed, antsy, how-am-I-going-to-get-through-this? I know I can do it, especially if I aim to be as vegan as possible rather than simply deciding, "Okay, we're vegan now." Over the past year, fewer processed foods have been purchased and prepared, fruits and veggies are far more prominent in our fridge... It's do-able. I intellectually know this. Now if the limbic system in my brain could stop sending out fear signals, I'll be set. ;)



----

On a funny note:

We had Chinese take-out for supper last night. There were some leftovers and my husband decided to claim first dibs on them. My 14yo daughter got a plate and got to the containers and decided to take from the chow mein first, since she knew her dad would go for the fried rice and want lots. She got a couple of bean sprouts onto her plate when he teasingly said, "Dibs!" She backed off, he did his plate, she stepped up to the rice and my 11yo son arrived with his plate. He looked at hers and said, jokingly, "That's all you're eating?"