i am lisa simpson.

You know, I don't think it's that insane to not eat meat.  I can't understand why I have to constantly justify it.  And it's not my friends I'm having trouble with, oh no.  It's my flipping parents that are driving me crazy.

My dad was a vegetarian for years when I was younger.  I remember it clearly.  And to be fair, he hasn't really had a problem with my recent meatless life.  I think he assumes that it's a drastic thing for me, since he doesn't realize that for the past year, I've been growing more and more tired of meat, and so this was the end of a one-way street for me.  But he's not arguing it, and he's certainly eating more of the food I buy for myself than what my mother buys for him.

My mother, on the other hand, is being absolutely ridiculous.  Going grocery shopping with her is bloody painful.  She has no problem with buying three different varieties of pepperoni-type snacks for Ari, yet my putting a box of Gardenburgers into the shopping cart immediately puts her on edge.  She thinks it's all out of prissiness, which, actually, is her assumption about 90% of my actions.  And yes, I am a bit of a prissy person.  But this isn't extreme.  I mean, come on.

It's all the little things.  I want to buy real cheese instead of the plastic wrapped yellow stuff, because I refuse to eat cheese that doesn't even mold when you leave it out.  It's freaky.  So, that's being too picky.  I want wheat bread instead of white.  That's too picky.  It's insanity!

I mean, I'm nowhere near militant about this.  I'll eat things with a meat flavoring or broth.  I'll eat fish when I'm on my period and in need of the protein.  I'll even eat meat if it's the only thing around.  I just have a big problem with the amount of meat and processed cheese crammed into everything in this house's refridgerator.  When you cut meat from your diet, you cut out so much of the shit that has meat in it.  Does that make sense?  I don't know.  I just know that because of this, my fast food intake has gone down to practically nil, I rarely eat anything that comes pre-packaged or frozen, and I feel a whole hell of a lot better.

Ari is thoroughly confused about the whole thing.  It's just occurred to him that he doesn't really even know what has meat in it, and he keeps asking me if what I'm currently eating is okay to eat.  It's kind of funny.

Expect tons of LJ posts this week, since I'm spending a lot of time at the computer, and things just occur to me to complain about while I'm sitting here.  That's how it usually goes.  I am LOVING this not being busy thing.

monkeys.

I came across an organization tip site yesterday that suggested re-doing your sock drawers by putting each individual pair into its own plastic baggie.  People think I'm crazy as it is.  Can you imagine what they'd do if they saw my socks in Ziploc bags?  Jesus.

I have far bigger issues with how my room works than whether I can find socks in the morning.  Besides, I hate socks.  Socks are stupid.  I pulled out the sandals yesterday, even though it was freezing.  

I went to that interview today.  It's a long story, but basically, I walked out of it because I overheard the guy interviewing me and his partner or whatever laughing about how I had smaller breasts than the girl who'd been there earlier.  Isn't that ridiculously cliched?  Ugh.  I know that men make comments like that to each other all the time, and I'm pretty sure that it wasn't anything to do with whether they were going to hire me or not, but I felt like if I ended up working there, I'd never be able to shake that off.  It just rubbed me the wrong way.

Whatever.  I like my breasts.  I've got fabulous nipples, and they won't be down to my knees in ten years.  That's enough for me.

I finally had time last night to sit down and knit, and to my surprise, I learned how to purl in an hour.  All it took was a couple of videos I found online, and suddenly the movement clicked.  Usually, a drawing in a book is enough for me to figure out how to do something like that, but the whole slipping, wrapping craziness of knitting made it a little more difficult to show in just photos.  The video was all I needed.  Plus, one clip that I found was a really solid look at Continental knitting, which makes so much more sense to me than English style.  From what I've heard, though, most crocheters end up learning Continental because of the whole holding the yarn in the left hand thing.  

Now keep in mind, even though I can manage to do stockinette now, it still looks like ass when I knit.  But it's so cathartic after a straight week of crocheting that I don't really mind it.  It lets me use my hands in a slightly different way so my carpal tunnel doesn't bother me as much.

Also, with knitting, I have to be much, much looser with my stitches.  I'm not used to that, since my crochet is always twice as tight as it needs to be.  I like my stitches even.  Not so easy with knitting to keep them really tight, I've found.  Maybe it'll come with practice.

I spent the day cleaning, and tomorrow will be much of the same thing.  I've only been home for a couple straight days and I'm sick of TV already.  The AZN Network went to digital cable, which sucks ass, and they're showing absolutely nothing on Bravo that interests me.  What a bummer.  I'm going to spend the evening with my Harry Potter audiobooks and knitting needles, and maybe, if the knitting frustrates me enough, I'll get back to work on my crochet star blanket, which is pretty but driving me a little crazy.  I'm not cut out for long-term projects.