Vegan Kick Start: Day 4: Somewhere over the Rainbow

Quick Note:  I wanted to let everyone reading this blog that they should read it in the spirit it was intended. My husband, friends, colleagues and others are written about in this document.  I hope that my little comedic insights are not offensive--they are not intended to be so.  However, if you find that something bothers you let me know and we can work it out.

Being a vegan isn't as hard as you might think.  All it takes is near daily trips to the grocery store, a high tolerance for being starving, 30 hours of free time a week to research being vegan on the internet, two hours a day to plan and prepare food and an acceptance that you are no longer able to consume your favorite foods.  No big deal.

In her her book "The Kind Diet" Alicia Silverstone (big vegan, she actually eats Kale for breakfast that she grows in her backyard.  Honestly, no one thinks that "Kale" is a breakfast food.  I don't care what diet you are on), she talks about the "wonderful" food that she gets to eat now.  She says, ""The kindness is about being truly kind to yourself first and letting yourself have the best health and look your best and feel your most vital."  Really?  That got be thinking...is being on a vegan kick start really helping me to "feel my most vital"?  Here's what I thought about...

Tonight I went to a work "Happy Hour" party at my boss' house.  Almost everyone I work with came and there was an absolutely fantastic spread of Mediterranean Food--hummus, Baba Ganoush, pitas, fallafel, fresh vegetables, grapes etc.  It was actually a Vegan Bonanza (since I believe the world revolves around me, I am going to move forward thinking that my supervisor ordered vegan friendly food for me and not because it is delicious food that just happened to be vegan).  In a huge twist of irony, I am on a vegan diet and had three plates of food, but my husband (god love him) ate lettuce, carrots and some plain chicken (and I think he only ate the Chicken Swarma because he didn't know it was called chicken swarma and believed it to be plain chicken).  Bottom line--my first effort at social eating as a vegan should have been a huge success.  I should have left the building feeling "my most vital." 

Instead...it was my own personal version of hell.  I'm not talking about this kind of hell...

Actually, if we are talking about my personal hell it would look more like me having no option but to work sixty hours a week as an executive assistant for a few people who will remain unnamed...

(If you need explanation for my choices: Chris Brown-obviously, Mike Tyson (not exactly a man whose name syncs with women's rights) and Tom Brady--who you may think of as an interesting choice, but he did dump Bridget M. when she was pregnant to date Giselle!).

No, in this particular instance my own personal hell manifested itself with a little (actually a giant eight layer confection) thing called the "Rainbow Cake."  So after enjoying the delicious food--scratch that, from the morning that I heard that there was going to be a "cake" at this event (mind you that occurred at approximately 9:47am), I was fixated on this for a remainder of the day (or my life...well see).  So, I get to the party and it is literally the second thing I see (after her adorable little boy and her cute dog Zorro! (isn't that a fantastic name for a dog?).  I am walking into her house, she is greeting me, people from my office are tying to say hello, I should be introducing Steven to everyone, but instead I see it out of the corner of my eye...(insert a dun, dun, dun).  Do I ask if there is anything I can do to help?  Do I try to get in the door quickly so that I can provide a minimal assistance to my hostess who is desperately trying to balance keeping a quick 2-year old and a happy dog from darting out the door--No.  All I can do is think about the Rainbow cake.

Unfortunately, in some sort of horrible set of circumstances I can't actually eat any cake because it turns out that at least two people in my office are reading my blog (or it could be that I talk about it 8,000 times a day until their eyes glaze over and they surrender).  At that point, I can assure you that the fact that baby pigs, cows, honeybees etc are being "enslaved" by Corporate America couldn't have been further from my mind.  But, I pull myself over to the side and give myself a little pep talk--"Snap out of it", "Do better" ect... Unfortunately it doesn't work.  I tell myself to "Be Cool."  Apparently, I need to take a class in motivational speaking because it didn't work.

Most people who were trying to avoid the cake would have avoided the area where the cake was located and steered clear of people who were eating the rainbow flavor explosion.  But not me.  First, I walked by the cake, then I basically walked by the cake again, then I pretended like I left my Diet Coke on the table--this required me to--you guessed it walk by the cake again. 

On top of just walking back and forth in front of the cake, I found myself seeking out people to talk to who were eating the cake.  I can't remember who or what we talked about, because I was giving all my energy to the cake.  Just being near people who were happily eating the cake worked for a little while, but then I found that I wanted to be closer to the cake.  So then I walked over to the cake and stood there staring at it.  The "big boss" (who ironically is petite!) actually caught be in a trance like state near the cake and tried to direct me to other parts of the house.  It worked temporarily.

I was able to walk away from the cake, but ended up walking back and forth near another table that had a little morsel of leftover cake.  It was just sitting there taunting me--eat me, taste me...I almost tripped over a chair because I was watching that cake so carefully.  At some point I was hoping that overhead fire sprinklers would turn on and cause a fire-drill like escape so that I could stuff a bite of cake in my mouth during the ensuing chaos.  Since it was a private residence this didn't happen.

To top it all off, I ended up taking a piece of Rainbow Cake home "to freeze."  Any guesses on how that went? 

You got it, I didn't make it past the driveway before I bite of cake ended up in my mouth.  Note to self--avoid cake.  Great...back to day 1.