Vampires and Robots

Once upon a time, I had a very real fear of mad cow disease. I honestly thought it would be the thing that set off the real life zombie apocalypse (and yet I chose to use bird flu in Going Green , go figure). As such, I began to remove meat from my diet. Rather, I tried, but for a while, it looked like mad cow was going to win because I had no guidance in the vegetarian world and I was the kind of person who would eat a salad, feel good about it, then walk int a 7-Eleven for cigarettes and walk out with a hot dog and sense of shame. But then I met the guy who would become my husband and he was already a vegetarian, making it easier for me to join up, not only because I now had a vegetarian buddy, but because he had a wealth of knowledge about balanced and delicious meals that made me forget meat existed. Well, at first I still ate fish, but after getting one too many poorly prepared dishes and regretting it for hours after, I went entirely vegetarian sometime about a decade ago. In...

Ten years ago, I stood on a scale and saw a number that I hadn't previously seen in my adult life. It was a one. A one that was followed by two nines, but that didn't matter. It was a one, and not a two, which had been the only number I'd assumed I'd ever see and I was pretty amazed. I was certain that number meant the end to a number of real and perceived issues and that my life was about to become so perfect that I'd never have another bad day as long as I lived. Ten years later, I recognize a pattern of expecting everything to be one hundred percent hunky dory if only (insert pipe dream here) were to happen. Most recently was my pie in the sky aspiration of my house magically remaining clean thanks to the installation of my new kitchen. While it is handy to have convenient drawers for everything, we still cook, we still have a dog that insists on shedding, and space for more dishes in the sink just means more can pile up. But this isn't meant to be a deep...