Moooooo

Gary Larson is hilarious! Of course, I don't need to tell YOU that, ha ha ha! I love his take on life and what animals are REALLY thinking...

I always like his commentary on cows and chickens best, similarly the Chik-Fil-A cows who want us to eat more chicken. Ok, I'm rambling, but I've been thinking about all this meat we eat and have found I've been eating less and less of it.

It started with the EGG.
About 3 years ago, I decided to buy free-range eggs rather than the cheap regular ones. Why? I felt sorry for the chickens who live in tiny cages and often have their beaks cut off because cooped-up chickens with nothing to do but eat and lay eggs tend to get mean, bored, and aggressive with each other and will peck each other, to death in some cases. Free-range chickens tend to fair a little better, and I have to assume they're healthier anyway because it takes a bit of effort to crack open one of those beautiful brown eggs. Plus, brown eggs are prettier than white eggs...why? I don't know, but the white ones ARE easier to dye come Easter time.

Again, off track I go.

So, I eat eggs a little more guilt-free, and I know I'm not helping in the torture of the very creatures who happen make the delicious ingredient that I use in so many meals and desserts. Since they're living their lives to provide me with eggs, shouldn't they have a happy life in return? I think so.

Ever since I got pregnant, I've also become hyper-sensitive to what I'm consuming. Not an actual physical reaction, but for sure a psychological one. I couldn't take an aspirin that might affect the baby, but I could eat beef, chicken, and milk pumped with growth hormones, lactation hormones, and all kinds of other things that I'm sure would have no effect, right? Hmmm.
Fast forward a few years and now Oliver eats everything we eat. And I've become more and more aware, and while I'm less concerned about what I put in MY body at this point, I'm very concerned about Oliver. And our dogs. Weird, I know, but they are also like our kids to me. I've had several conversations about this topic with my mother-in-law (who it also started with my egg, lol!) and she has switched her dog over to something similar to the "raw diet" and she herself has stopped eating meat in favor of healthier and less-cruel-to-the-animal alternatives. While I'm not going to stop eating meat, we HAVE switched our dogs to a healthier kibble that has meat as the first ingredient. A far cry from my aunt who MAKES her own dog food, amazing by the way! Who knew Science Diet was so bad for my dogs anyway? "They" (the people at the pet store) said that company was bought out and the formula was changed, so it is no longer the food of choice for your animals. Good to know.

Again, I'm off topic.

So, with all of this swimming in my head, I've been looking for non-hormone injected beef. It's super expensive so I never buy it. Plus, besides just for health reasons, I don't like the way beef cows and well, all animals-for-consumption, are treated. Cows packed in a feed-lots with no room to really move, given growth hormones to grow bigger, faster, fattened up on a mix of corn and cow parts (yes, they feed cows other cows...that's how we had the huge problem of Mad-Cow-Disease spread all over the place...the cow has to eat part of an infected cow, how sick is that?), then made to eat far too much and injected with yet more stuff to survive their several day trip (in starvation mode) to the slaughterhouse.

I had a neighbor tell me that a rancher he knew personally, actually tried to feed his cows outside of the feed lots one day, and do the "free-range" thing where there was grass...and shockingly the cows went straight to the lots to find food rather than to the grass. It was clear to the farmer that the cows "liked" the lots over the grass. Pavlov much? Cows, like all animals, are creatures of habit - if they know food is in one place, it's always been there since they were born, it was there for the past 50 generations of cows, as horrible a place as it is, they're not going to go searching elsewhere when the feed-lot is a sure thing.

I have issues with the way these animals are treated as well. Aren't they doing us a favor in being so tasty and yet so tame? Yes. Should we at least let them live out the few months they DO have in a nice place? I think YES! Is it totally obvious that I live in a 1st world country where I have the privilege of worrying about the kind of life my food has? Um, yes. But that said, my feelings are the same. (I stopped eating "baby animals" about ten years ago. No lamb or veal for me. Just look into how those babies are treated. I used to enjoy the taste of these meats, but now it makes me sick to even see them served anywhere)

A new grocery store opened up in Lubbock that is kind of a specialty store. Neat fruits and vegetables, weird but tasty looking ethnic stuff, fresh seafood, and FREE-RANGE, GRASS-FED, HORMONE-FREE BEEF! And it's affordable! HELLO! We got chicken sausage, $8 porterhouses that are about 2 inches thick, I kid you not, steaks and all kinds of delicious meat. Hallelujah! I think we just might go out of our way once a week to get our meat there. I sure feel a lot better about what I'm feeding my family, and better about the animals Oliver like to call "Mooooooo!"

Now, don't even get me started on what they do to those poor vegetables! Ok, just kidding, but we DID buy a bunch of organically grown fruits and veggies, and had a very delicious potato soup last night night made with our bounty :) Oliver picked out a "red pummelo"...a huge, lime-green ball the size of a GIANT grapefruit. Not sure what it is besides something in the citrus family, but we'll be breaking into that tonight!

There ARE angels here on Earth!

God works in mysterious ways. I have been put on temporary bedrest due to some strange pains, bruising, and discharge for three days, and if it worsens, I get to go in and have another ultrasound. In 24 hours, it has not worsened, and actually all the symptoms have gone. I am so thankful! But that is not why God works mysteriously. As this pregnancy has been progressing, I have gotten more and more concerned with how this baby is doing because with each passing week, it is closer to being "viable." I have been praying, as have a lot of wonderful people, for this baby, and I have been praying to feel comforted, knowing that no matter how many good ultrasounds I see I always wonder what's REALLY going on in there and if things are REALLY going ok.

Today I came home from the vet, with Daisy who has a yeast infection in her ear poor baby, and saw one of my neighbors across the street, raking up pecans, who I haven't run into since summer. In the year and a half we've lived here we've only spoken for a total of maybe 25 minutes. I don't even know her name. She asked if I could talk for a minute because she had to tell me something, and after short chit-chat about how Nich's doing in med school, I told her we were pregnant again, and she said now she HAD to tell me something, tears suddenly in her eyes, that she felt like she had to tell me for the past several days, but didn't know how to without sounding crazy. She said that she had a dream, out of the blue, of someone in the bathroom taking a pregnancy test, and it came out positive, and that it resulted in a healthy baby. She woke up from the dream, felt it was a message from above, and the first person that came into her mind was me! She kept trying to substitute other people she knew better, but her mind would always go straight back to me. She felt weird telling me she thought I might be pregnant, or be pregnant soon (understandably!) but kept feeling like she needed to come over and tell me.

Now maybe it is all coincidence that she had this dream, and I'm just so hopeful to hear any good news that I'm clinging onto this, but I couldn't help but hug her and feel that she really did have that dream for a reason, and that we ran into each other today for a reason, and that this is indeed a message of comfort! I feel so much calmer now and a little like I AM being watched over instead of having to try to fly "under the radar." My pregnancy prayer is that we have a happy healthy pregnancy, a happy, healthy birth, and that we get to take home and raise a happy, healthy baby. God just might speak to some of us in dreams, and I am greatful for those who have the courage to then tell about it - it might just be the answer to someone's prayers.

On a side note, the picture is a graphite drawing I did called "Jesus and the Lamb" which I actually copied and slightly modified from my favorite picture of Jesus. I don't ever do religious artwork, this being the only one and from 2007, but I thought it was suitable here.