Saturday, October 30, 2010

Coming Soon: Vegan MoFo 2010

Wherein every vegan blogger goes batty over food. Starting November 1.

What can you expect here for Vegan MoFo?

  • A recipe for Dexter Salad (the mystery of the title will be revealed)
  • Reviews of many new Philly vegan eateries, including Blackbird Pizzeria (which we are eating tonight!) and Grindcore House and old haunts like the venerable Horizons
  • Coverage of vegan author events in Philly
  • A roundup on my not-so-crazy, small vegan wedding, including helpful hints on devising a creative vegan menu, working with a nonvegan caterer, finding cruelty-free shoes and celebrating your love without blowing your budget
  • Delicious vegan eats and cozy places to stay in Woodstock, NY
  • Vegan-friendly chain restaurants
  • Much more!
Until then, Happy Halloween. For now, it's back to studying blood and the lymphatic system.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Still Here

It may go without saying but it's been over a year since my last post. Anyone reading this knows me and knows what I've done in that year. In the off-chance that you don't know me or what has occurred during this past year, here's the condensed version:

  • I moved to Philly to be with my then-fiance. I had just quit a job that I was very unhappy with and that battered my body (hello, repetitive strain injury. Goodbye being an editor). I felt very lost. This time last year was a time when I felt lost nearly everyday and not infrequently depressed.
  • I decided to become a nurse-midwife. It wasn't an overnight thing. I've entertained the idea for years but I didn't know enough about the profession to say for sure it was something I could commit. What I wanted from my profession was to not be behind a desk. I wanted to actually make a decent living. I wanted to see my children on more than just weekends and weeknights and have a flexible schedule. Most importantly, for years I felt lost about my career so I read about personality types and jobs. I am an INFJ. According to this type, I need to do work that's meaningful, would allow me to be warm and empathic and move people. I am really great at seeing potential and possibility in other people's lives, in being able to read people and help map out a life for them. Some of this is because I'm admittedly bossy and a sometimes a control freak. But I actually have a knack for seeing what other people don't see about themselves and sharing that information to help them (if they, in fact, want that information). So, I investigated counseling (again. I was a psych major, after all) and nursing. Then I decided being only a therapist wasn't enough. I wanted to counsel but also use my body and have a set of knowledge I could share. Nurses counsel and teach about and oversee health issues. Furthermore, I wanted to be my favorite kind of nurse, a midwife, so I can immerse myself in many of the topics I love--sex, pregnancy, ladies, babies, birth, breastfeeding. So, that's what I'm doing and now I can probably kiss that flexible schedule goodbye.
  • I became a doula. I attended my first birth as a doula in August.
  • I enrolled in community college to take all the science courses I avoided as a psych major--anatomy and physiology, chemistry, microbiology. I was scared I was fooling myself. I thought I didn't have a mind for science.
  • But I am kicking ass in science. All A's. It's work but I get it and most of the time, I'm really interested in what I'm learning too. All good signs.
  • I planned a wedding.
  • On Sunday, October 10, 2010, Brian and I got married.
  • I applied to nursing schools. I'll find out in a few weeks about the fate of one of the applications and the other one in February.
  • In the meantime, I'm taking the second portion of anatomy and physiology and nutrition. Actually, I should be reading for class instead of writing this but it has been a year and I'm feeling inspired.
I want to blog again. I still want to write, even if I am going to be a nurse. I think about it and miss it but was having problems accessing this blog due to having a--unbeknownst to me--compromised account, . But I also did nothing about not having access to that blog because I thought I should give up my dream of writing now that I am going to be a nurse. I was sad about that. I've been writing since I was a kid and it has always been the one thing I've felt sure about but I couldn't do it because my hands hurt when I type and my ego hurts as I worry about not being good enough. Instead, I tucked it away and studied science and got married and took care of our dog and read some good books and read a few wedding blogs. I want to blog and podcast. It's something I have to do because I'm always thinking about it. I want to do something about midwifery, becoming a midwife, and sex and babies and veganism. But I am still formulating how to weave that all together in a cohesive enough way to make it a good blog.

In the meantime, I'm back to Mutual Menu. And I'm working on a vegan guide to Philly that will eventually be posted on a most excellent blog that I've recently discovered and has definitely reinspired me, Bonzai Aphrodite. There are so many new delicious vegan places popping up in Philly that I need to eat at and need to leave a record of them here. At the very least, I owe this blog a "How To Have a Vegan Wedding," post.

So, I'm back. If there's anything this year of non-blogging has taught me, it's that the things that are scary are the things I need to do most. And they are actually not as scary as I imagine them to be.