Bringing the Backyard to Life

One thing about living in Houston is that you better enjoy the nice weather while it's here. Early spring and late fall are usually very nice in this city, but the summertime sucks.

So on Sunday my fiance Bernard and I decided to take advantage of the cool, sunny weather to plant a new tree in our backyard, which is the size of a postage stamp but nonetheless needs some serious landscaping. After two years living this house, it's still an embarrassment how little we have done with the yard. Sunday was the first step.

We went to a local plant store called Buchanan's and after much perusing decided on an Oklahoma redbud. Ours is about 5 feet tall, with purple blossoms. It's got a lot of growing to do.

Amazingly, this tree in its 10-gallon pot, two other smaller plants, a 40-pound bag of mulch and a 30-pound bag of compost, along with me, Bernard and our dog Nema all fit into one four-door Volkswagen Jetta. The Buchanan's employee looked worried as he wheeled the tree up to our car, but we all squeezed in (although the 55-pound canine had to sit on my lap for the ride home).

When we got home, we pulled the crape myrtle out of the ground and planted the redbud in its spot. (The crape myrtle has barely grown in two years and has been plagued by mildew and lack of sufficient sunlight.) Then we stood back and admired our handiwork.

And don't worry about the fate of our unearthed crape myrtle. That afternoon, we took it to my parents' house, where we replanted it in a sunny spot by their front door.

Handmade vs. Store-Bought

I can only speak from a female perspective here, but I would guess it's the same for guys — certain clothes just make you feel good. For men, it might be a tux, a really nice suit, or even just a new pair of jeans. For me, it's a really nice, well-fitting dress (of which there aren't many in my wardrobe, if any). Especially when it's a dress that makes you feel like a princess.

My mom asked if she could take me wedding-dress shopping today, so of course I said yes. She and my dad had spotted a bridal store near their house on a recent car trip, so I met my mom there today and we proceeded to pick out about five dresses I liked. The saleslady later brought several more options. Here are a couple of the top contenders:

There were two other dresses that really piqued my interest as well, but because I couldn't decide on one, we decided to wait. I can't wait too long, however, as the wedding is in less than seven months.

Another option is that my mother can sew my wedding dress herself, which appeals to me not only for the sentimental value but also because I admire anything handmade. If we can't find the right dress in a store, we are going to look for bridal patterns at a fabric store. I imagine it will make my wedding day even more special knowing that I am wearing a dress my mother created.

The Yin and Yang of Television

Television is often an insidious force in my life. Sometimes it brings me pure joy, like when I watched the beautiful Olympics opening ceremony on Feb. 13. But other times, it saps me of my time and mental energy until I feel too weak to even reach for the remote to turn it off. Pathetic!

For example, there are some TV shows that I know if I start watching them, my evening is gone — I simply can’t turn them off. Much to the chagrin of my fiancé, this includes reruns of Roseanne and That ’70s Show. Other shows pull me in with the promise of an intriguing plot and then, in the end, all they offer are predictable clichés — this happens in crime dramas like Criminal Minds, CSI, and Law & Order. Just about any sitcom will turn out to be lame and predictable as well. I'd be better off reading a good book. Or watching paint dry.

A few shining examples out there do redeem the television industry. I’m thinking of shows like The IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh, Dexter, Battlestar Galactica, and Deep Space 9. The first two make me howl with laughter; the third one draws me with its compelling character development; and the last two created worlds so complex, so believable — even though they were set in space — that I became very invested in the personal and political dramas that played out there.

Despite how much I love those shows, however, I am constantly aware of a little voice, in the back of my mind, that says, "Instead of watching TV, you should be [insert any task or hobby or chore here]." I think it's because I know I watch too much TV, and that there are plenty of other, more fulfilling things I could be doing. I've thought about unplugging the TV for a week for a detox, but haven't quite worked up the motivation needed to do it yet. Plus, I think my fiancé might start a riot if I suggested it.

I believe that if everyone had enough room in their house for a separate TV room, it would be best to keep the TV as a special destination to be savored, like a movie theater, rather than as a continuous presence in our lives — always on, always tempting.

Seize the Sunshine

Yesterday my fiancé Bernard had the wonderful idea to take advantage of the first sunshine we'd seen in days by taking a trip to Lake Houston State Park, about a 45-minute drive from our house. We invited my parents and brother, who met us there.

I had fun packing our picnic basket before the trip, with 10 little mandarins (for us and for my family), two sandwiches each for me and Bernard, two thermoses with hot tea, and a box of cheese-onion crackers that I brought back from my grandmother's house in Holland.

We arrived at the park and an enthusiastic if somewhat wry woman at the park headquarters gave us maps and detailed instructions of the best paths to walk. We set off across Peach Creek Bridge and around Peach Creek Loop, an interesting trail with varied elevations, a view of the creek along one stretch — and lots of mud. It's been raining here for weeks, something we forgot when we set out on the hike, and so much of the trail was mush. Luckily I was wearing my hiking boots, because in sneakers my feet would have been infiltrated by mud pretty quickly.

My brother traverses Peach Creek Bridge as my dad,
in the background, takes his photo.

We stopped toward the end of our walk so that my dad and brother could pop into the Nature Center while I played with my dog outside, and Bernard and my mother relaxed in rocking chairs in the sunshine on the Nature Center's porch. My dad and brother said it was an excellent Nature Center, like a little museum, but with live snakes.

My mother enjoys the Nature Center rocking chair.

Nema and I play in the field.

At the end of our hike, which took less than two hours, we returned to the car, grabbed the picnic supplies and set ourselves up at a nearby picnic table, where we proceeded with our feast. The hot tea tasted great after the long walk, especially because it was the end of the afternoon and the sun had been replaced with a chilly wind.

During the picnic, we opened the box of crackers from my grandmother's house and shared them, and we toasted to her memory with our thermos teacups.

When Bernard and I invited my family to join us at the park, we didn't think they'd accept, because they had a lot of things to do around the house that day. But after initially demurring, they called back and said they'd decided that since the sun was shining that day, and might not shine tomorrow, they were going to seize the opportunity. As a result, we got to spend time together in nature, we got some exercise, my dog got to visit a new place, and we had a lovely time, despite the mud.

A random kid glances at Bernard on the bridge.

It was a good decision, actually, because the sun did not shine much today.

Pizza Party

Surround yourself with people who can cook really, really well — and who love giving dinner parties — and you'll never go hungry for either food or good conversation. And by dinner parties I don't mean fancy ones like you see in movies. I just mean a bunch of people who like food getting together at someone's house to eat.

I'm lucky enough to live near a longtime friend of mine who has a knack for picking great cookbooks and turning out delicious recipes. This girl even makes her own yogurt, grows her own sprouts and bakes her own bread — impressive.

My sister is another such person. Unfortunately, I don't live very near her, but when she visits and cooks at my parents' house, you can bet it's going to be yum.

Last month, she spent the weekend in town and decided to make us pizza. Banish any thoughts of DiGiornos or Papa John's from your minds. This was gourmet pizza.

She made and tossed the pizza dough by hand, and placed superfresh ingredients on each one. The first was an eggplant, basil and tomato pizza with various wonderful cheeses.

Here's a closeup to make your mouth water:

The second pizza was covered in butternut squash and fried sage leaves. Incredibly tasty!

We served the pizzas with this very nice California chardonnay:

My sister and my friend have so inspired me with their cooking that I have invested in another cookbook and am doing my best to replace my habit of eating too much in restaurants with homecooked meals, made by moi.

Speaking of cookbooks, for a great listing of vegetarian cookbooks, check out this post on Gwyneth Paltrow's blog, GOOP.

Nema in the Sun

One of the simple pleasures in my life is watching my dog sunbathe in the mornings. In warm weather, she'll ask to be let out onto the patio, where she'll sprawl on the outdoor furniture and soak up the sun. In colder weather, she'll just catch rays through our living room window. It's a peaceful sight.

Real Men Wrap Pipes

We've been having uncharacteristically cold weather here in Houston for weeks now, starting on Dec. 4 when it actually snowed. Since then we've had several freezing episodes, which newscasters referred to as "Arctic blasts", and people looked for excuses to stay home from work due to "possible icy roads". One day, it was so cold that I went on an unsuccessful search for a pair of reasonably priced gloves. After visiting about half a dozen stores, which had either sold out of gloves or had only one or two expensive pairs remaining, I found what was literally the second-to-last pair of gloves at a Target for $9.99 — but they were men's gloves and way too big for me. I bought them anyway, out of desperation, but the next morning when I wore them while walking the dog I felt like a puppy myself, waving my too-big paws at passersby.

However, one thing I discovered during the first freeze a few weeks back is that my fiancé is quite adept at wrapping pipes. In fact, I would say that of our five neighbors (some of whom didn't bother to wrap their pipes at all) he did the best job. I also discovered that it's possible for me to be impressed by things like pipe-wrapping, which is not something I'd ever given much thought to before everyone began warning us that the subzero temperatures could burst the water lines.

I was so impressed by the job he did, in fact, that I took photos of it.

Now, maybe this is a perfectly horrible pipe-wrapping job — if it is, I wouldn't really know. But it sure seems like those pipes are well-insulated to me.

A few days later, my sister was glancing through the photos on my digital camera and saw these pipe pictures. She asked me what they were, and when I told her, she gave me the weirdest look. I think becoming a homeowner has cost me my "cool older sister" status — not that I was ever that cool.

Holland: Day 8, and Today

I'm skipping over Day 7 in Holland for now, although I will try to write about it later. I'm going to move ahead to Day 8, Saturday Sept. 12, the day I celebrated my 30th birthday in Holland.

My real birthday is actually a few days later, but since I was leaving Holland on Sept. 13, I celebrated it early. It was very important to me to spend my birthday with my grandmother, who was there when I was born and after whom I am named (my middle name), because I knew it would probably be the last time I'd see her. In August 2006, she was diagnosed with cancer and was given three to six months to live. More than three years later, in September 2009, she was still with us, and I was acutely aware of what a treasure that was.

She passed away this morning, January 16, 2010.

On Friday Sept. 11, my aunt Ellen called the bakery to make sure they would have enough of the pastries ("gebakjes" in Dutch) we like, so we could pick them up fresh the next day. We ordered tompoesen (like a Napoleon) and moorkoppen (round, cream-filled, chocolate-covered éclairs). On Saturday, we picked up my birthday pastries and took them over to my grandmother's. Ellen and Oma ("Grandmother" in Dutch) presented me with a nice birthday gift: three tall, colorful, pillar candles and 20 euros. I am looking at the candles as I write this; they are sitting on a shelf in my living room, as yet unlit, reminding me of that Saturday.

My cousin Michael stopped by with his three cute kids, and scored one of the extra pastries I had bought. My aunt Nancy and her boyfriend Geert also came by, enjoyed some birthday "gebakjes" and gave me a lovely gift of some Hugo Boss women's perfume and lotion. My aunt Astrid and uncle Frits also stopped by, and we took a nice photo together on Oma's sunny balcony. Her balcony overlooks a canal with a bridge arching over it, and as kids my brother and sister and I would take the old bread crusts that my grandparents saved and feed them to the ducks at the canal. It was one of the delights of my childhood.

That evening, Ellen made salmon and Dutch-style potatoes and green beans ("snijbonen") for dinner, and the four of us — Ellen, Oma, my mother and me — enjoyed our last meal together.

Those days I had with my Oma in September were priceless, and I can only be grateful I was able to see her just a few months ago. Other than the house I grew up in, no place in the world is as vivid in my memory as my grandmother's apartment by the canal, with its heavy wood furniture, bright kitchen, cozy living room and tiny spare bedroom, where I spent many nights.

Tonight, after sunset, I may light my birthday candles for the first time. My grandmother once told my sister, "Every day is a holiday for me." It reminds me of a quote by Thomas Dreier that I read on New Year's Day this year: "If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time — not tomorrow, nor next year, nor in some future life after we have died. The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year. Today should always be our most wonderful day."

So, I'm going to light those candles, and I'm going to enjoy them.

Weekend Breakfast

There's nothing like waking up to glorious weather on a weekend morning and making a hot breakfast of eggs and coffee.

Keeps one feeling human.

Holland: Day 6

Until Thursday, Sept. 10, I never knew that the nation of Holland was born in a little city called Dordrecht, bordered by five rivers. Dordrecht is, I discovered, not only the oldest city in Holland, but also a charming place with sailboats in the canals, lovely shopping streets, and plenty of historical landmarks.

My uncle C and aunt L took me and my mom to Dordrecht as a day trip. First, we visited the local Tourist Bureau, known as the VVV in Holland. It was a very nice building with lots of information on the historical significance of the area. Then, we ate lunch at La Place, a department store eatery that usually has good lunches. After that, my uncle led us on a tour of the city, pointing out landmarks and incredibly old houses dating back to the 1600s.

We then took a wonderful "whisperboat" (fluisterboot) — so named because the boat is very quiet — tour down the canals of Dordrecht.

We saw picturesque scenes of boats decorated with Dutch flags.

A fireboat is docked along a Dordrecht canal.

Wouldn't it be nice to live along a pretty canal like this one?

The tour we took included replications of Dutch artworks along the canal walls.

A Dordrecht resident displays a Michelle Obama sign in his or her window. (It's always interesting to see items from where I live (the U.S.) in other countries—like the time I saw a man in Brisbane, Australia, wearing a Barack Obama shirt.)

Dordrecht's City Hall ("Stadhuis") is a beautiful building visible from below as one sails underneath it on a canal boat.

After the boat tour we walked around the city some more and stopped in a little chocolate shop called Oh La La, in which one of the two men working there placed fresh, handmade bonbons into boxes while a machine along the back wall mixed a truly yummy-looking batch of liquid chocolate. The shop was small and smelled wonderfully like cocoa. We bought some chocolate-covered nougat and a couple of bars of berry-and-nut-filled chocolate, which tasted as if it had been made by hand only hours before. It was probably the best chocolate I have ever eaten in my life.

We also stopped in to see a couple of art exhibits and an exhibit about Calvinism, a religion that greatly influenced Dutch culture centuries ago.

The weather cooperated with us that day, lending us sunshine and enough breeze to keep us cool. Dordrecht was a pleasant place to spend a Thursday, and I hope I'm able to go back one day and see the rest of the sights and museums that we didn't have time for on this trip. As the city where Holland first declared itself an independent nation in the 1500s, it has a lot of history to share. Imagine a city where people are still living in houses that are 400 or 500 years old. Amazing.

Holland: Day 5

After our nice trip to Rotterdam on Tuesday, my mom and I went back for some more the next day. We took the tram to the train station and then took the train to Rotterdam to meet my aunt Nancy for lunch. We were early, so we passed the time by shopping in a very nice store called de Bijenkorf across the street from City Hall, or Stadhuis. As we passed the Stadhuis, we saw a dark-haired couple, the woman in a white wedding dress and the man in a dark suit, standing next to a white horse-drawn carriage in front of the Stadhuis steps. In Holland, I think people get married on weekdays more often than in the U.S.

De Bijenkorf sells everything from fresh, non-boxed bonbons (strategically located by the front doors so you see and smell the decadence when you walk in) to clothes, home accessories, and lots more. In the store, my mom found a nice grey wallet to replace the black one she's had for at least 10 years, which was falling apart. She also bought a designer cheese grater — no, that's not a joke. It's made by Alessi and looks really cool:

I found two blue-and-white Dutch potholders and matching oven mitts, and I was very happy with my purchase.

We then had a nice lunch at a restaurant's outdoor patio with Nancy. Rotterdam is a bustling city during the week, and I'm sure in the evenings and weekends as well. The area by the Stadhuis has wide plazas of gray stone, with lots of shops and restaurants, and a tram line running through it. When I was there I imagined what it would be like to live and work there, taking the train to work and walking in my heels or boots to an office, then walking around the city to grab lunch and run errands during my break, perhaps meeting friends for a drink at an outdoor patio after work sometime.

Of course, it's easy to idealize a place when you're a visitor and don't have to deal with any of the inevitable daily annoyances that plague all places. But still, there's something just a tiny bit magical about a place where you see a beautiful couple getting married on a Wednesday, across from a store with chocolates and sweets piled high in enticing displays, as multitudes of pedestrians make their way from one place to another.

Holland: Day 4

My mom had planned an outing on my fourth day in Holland: she, my aunt Ellen and I were to take a ride on the Spido, a ship that tours the Maas River on Rotterdam Harbor, the third-largest harbor in the world.

So, on Tuesday Sept. 8, we took a taxi to the Spido, bought tickets, poked around a tourist shop, and then waited to board the Spido. As the previous tour group was disembarking, I noticed some of them were disabled in some way, apparently mentally; some of them were teenagers or young adults and a few were older adults. It must have been a special school or group or care facility taking a day trip.

Once we boarded the Spido, of course coffee and cake were the first priority!

Some of the most memorable sights we saw from the boat were:

The Holland America pier from which my grandparents and their five children set off for Australia in 1956. The journey took six weeks. While in Australia, my aunt Ellen was born, and once the family returned to Holland several years later, the seventh child was born.

The architecturally stunning Erasmus Bridge.

The river-side edge of my hometown in Holland, complete with a picturesque windmill.

After our boat ride, we ate lunch at a lovely little outdoor lounge at the river's edge, enjoying the sunshine and relaxing atmosphere. Here's a view of the boardwalk, with the restaurant on the left:

Our quiet Tuesday in Rotterdam on the Spido along the Maas River was a pleasant one.

Holland: Day 3

My third day in Holland, Monday Sept. 7, was warm and sunny. My mom, my aunt Ellen and I visited my other aunt Nancy and her family at their newly built, supermodern house in Rotterdam.

Nancy and her boyfriend recently spent a couple of years designing this house with an architect and then having it built along a canal in a lovely neighborhood. The house is all white, black and steel; with hard slate and wood floors; and the garden is a work in progress with native plants and a pond filled with little frogs.

Getting to Nancy's house was an interesting trip. First, the three of us walked to the tram stop near my grandmother's house and took the tram to the metro station, where we boarded the underground metro train, or subway. I scanned my ticket the wrong way at the door and accidentally invalidated it. Because I knew I had paid, I slipped through the door behind my mom, whose ticket was still valid, but the doors shut on my elbows and set off an alarm. I was too surprised to be embarrassed at that point. I walked over to the office and told a metro staff member what happened. He seemed amused that I even bothered to go over to them to explain what happened, and waved me on.

It was warm enough in the metro train to be slightly uncomfortable, made worse by how crowded it was. My aunt got a call on her cell phone and talked too loudly on it, the way older people often do, causing the young Dutch man sitting behind her to smile a small smile to himself. The walls inside of the metro train had been spray-painted with graffiti, and while the paint was still wet it had run down the walls in rivulets. Most of the paint was black, so against the beige walls of the train, it looked like running mascara, as if the train were depressed.

We arrived at our subway stop and exited, and because my ticket had been previously invalidated I again had to squeeze out the doors directly behind my mother, and again the alarm went off. But this time my aunt was standing right outside the doors, ready to whisk us away in her getaway car to her new house.

Funny how you can go from sitting in a hot subway train with crying walls to relaxing in a luxurious house with wine and snacks and sunshine on the patio in just a matter of minutes.

Going Dutch for Dinner

For my birthday, my good friends Amy and Charlie presented me with a heavy, red Dutch oven. The very next evening, I decided to put it to good use. Although I've been a pescetarian for three years (meaning I eat no other meat but fish) I had a hankering for chicken and decided to splurge on some organic, free-range chicken from Whole Foods.

I've never cooked a meal in a Dutch oven before so luckily Amy and Charlie gave me a cookbook as well. I picked a recipe and modified it a little.

I used skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cumin seeds, cherry tomatoes, red onion, whole wheat pasta, olive oil, vegetable broth, salt, and pepper, with the convenience of a bag of frozen vegetables on the side.

I also added whole cloves of garlic to the mix.

I pre-baked the cherry tomatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper for 15 minutes.

Then I combined the rest of the ingredients with the tomatoes.

I baked the dish for 50 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

My end result falls short in the presentation department, but it sure tasted good. The Dutch oven seems to allow the flavors to combine well, and the food turns out nice and hot.

Holland 2009: Days 1 and 2

Last week, I visited the country in which I was born: Holland. Although I would have ideally liked to write about each day there as it happened, I didn't have a computer with me, and my aunt's was too slow to rely on. So, instead I will spend the next few nights blogging about my visit in retrospect.

The day I arrived, Saturday Sept. 5, I was jetlagged and had to take an afternoon nap at my grandmother's house — a place of great comfort and fun since I was a small girl. I then used my brand-new video camera (an early birthday gift from my fiancé) to record images of my grandmother, one of my aunts, and my mother, who had travelled to Holland several weeks before for a visit as well. I also videotaped the view from my grandmother's balcony, overlooking the canal and bridge where ducks congregate. When I was little it was the highlight of my day to take my grandparents' old bread crusts, which they saved for the ducks, down to the canal's edge and throw the bits of food to the quacking animals.

The next day, Sunday Sept. 6, my mom and and took a lovely walk in the Delfland, a farmland area near my grandmother's apartment. Below is one photo I took during our Sunday walk:



Here is a photo of one of the little farms in the Delfland:



One of the many nice things about Holland is the everyday beauty it has — you can find it in the little things, like the window displays of chocolate shops, sailboats nestled near each other in canals and rivers, old-fashioned windmills made of brown brick, flower pots on window sills, cafés, architecture. This Delfland is another example. It's a beautiful area in between the cities of Schiedam and Delft, and while Schiedam is not known for its beauty, it still offers this pleasant, relaxing farmland in which to walk on a Sunday afternoon.

Tomorrow, I Turn Thirty

Tonight is my last evening in my twenties.

For the last few months, I've been dreading turning thirty. Mostly, because I feel like I missed a lot of opportunities in the last decade. Opportunities in education, friendships, in my personal development, in saving money, and other areas. Today, though, I realized that instead of dwelling on what I didn't get done in my twenties, it would be less depressing to catalog what I have accomplished.

I won't bore you by listing all those things here, because one's accomplishments are really most interesting to oneself, but I suspect that once I really start thinking about it, I will have a long list of achievements or activities that will make me proud of how I spent the last 10 years of my life. And, I hope that when you read this blog post, you too will give your own self-esteem a boost by taking stock of everything you can be proud of in your life so far, no matter your age.

Land of Orange

I am in Holland this week, visiting family and making plenty of mental notes for future blog topics. I arrived Saturday, Sept. 5, and the weather was mildly sunny, and it felt nice to be back in my grandmother's little apartment, but also strange because it's been three years since I last visited. I had a bad case of jetlag, for some reason, perhaps because of the cold I picked up just before I left, and I am still fighting feelings of fatigue several days later.

Holland has changed. At least, the part of Holland where I am now. Or, perhaps I have changed. In the last three years, it seems that I have become more attached to my home in the U.S. and have begun disconnecting from what always felt like home here in Holland. Maybe that's because I bought my first house in the U.S. Maybe it's because I am turning thirty in a week and, in turning over the page to a new decade in my life, I am also leaving behind some of my childhood attachments to this place.

However, I have enjoyed some very nice, familiar things on this trip so far. The beautiful September sun. The cute, bricked roads. The flowers everywhere -- on restaurant tables, in shops, on tour boats, even. My grandmother and aunts and cousins. The incredibly bucolic Delfland just around the corner from my grandmother's apartment, with pastures, farms, horses, sheeps, cows and neat rows of trees lining walking paths.

But, for the first time, I do not feel completely safe walking or riding a bike from my grandmother's to my aunt's apartment -- a journey that literally takes about a minute and a half on the bike. There are suddenly "hang jeugd" -- or "hanging out youth" -- loitering around my grandmother's building where before I do not remember ever feeling unsafe. On the news there are stories of armed robberies, teenagers caught in crossfire, and women being pushed off their bikes and attacked.

As a virtual foreigner in my own land, it's entirely possible that I am letting a tiny feeling of nervousness turn unnecessarily into paranoia . . . but for the first time since I moved away from Holland I find myself yearning for the boring small town I used to live in near the coast. Today I spoke to an old friend of mine who still lives in that town, and I asked him if things had changed there. He said, no, not one bit. I felt a great sense of relief where before I may have felt a tinge of disdain.

On Friday I will go and visit my friend in that town, and I will see for myself if it has changed. But as I am idealizing it, it would behoove me to remember that when we lived there, aggressive pubescents also took pleasure in terrorizing other kids. Perhaps then the fear was of bullies. Now it's of bullies with guns.

Regardless of how Holland has or has not changed, I stil love it, just as I love my home in the U.S. It is interesting to be from two places at once. It's a feeling I can't quite describe -- its not like a having a split personality but rather having double personalities. Two in one.

Mercy and Money

I read an article yesterday about how the egg hatchery industry kills 200 million baby chickens each year — some by throwing them alive into a grinder — simply because they are male and can't produce eggs.

For anyone who cares enough to do even a tiny bit of research, it's excruciatingly clear how much suffering and misery exists in any industry where large numbers of animals are raised for food, whether it's for meat, eggs or milk.

Here are a few excerpts from the article I mentioned:

These chicks, which a narrator says are males, are then shown being dropped alive into a grinding machine.

In other parts of the video, a chick is shown dying on the factory floor amid a heap of egg shells after falling through a sorting machine. Another chick, also still alive, is seen lying on the floor after getting scalded by a wash cycle, according to the video narrator.

For some people, the answer is to not consume any animal products. That is definitely a choice I find no fault with. However, my ideal solution would not be to force everyone to become vegetarian, but instead for it to be possible to people to enjoy meat, eggs and milk without contributing to the agony of millions and millions of living, breathing beings. That means the horrors of factory farming would need to end. Sadly, the only way those horrors will end is if it becomes more profitable for the factories to care well for the animals than to mistreat them.

As a friend of mine wrote to me today, "It is so much work trying to shop and buy from a company with good practices and standards." And that is what's so frustrating as a consumer. Grocery stores and shops are like minefields, filled with factory-farmed chicken that claims to be "natural", toxic baby formula, poisoned pet food, lead-tainted toys, and who knows what else.

Why have the world's markets — and the world's consumers — allowed profit and convenience to come before basic human decency? Who is protecting the baby chickens being manhandled along a conveyor belt that is heading toward a grinder, and who is protecting us from our complicity in their deaths?

Party Time

I wanted to give an update to my Aug. 23 post. So far, making myself earn my meals has been working well. I get up in the morning, try to drink water before I have my coffee, and have a healthy breakfast (whole grain cereal or fruit and eggs, for example). At work I wait until I am feeling pretty hungry and then get as healthy a lunch as I can in the cafeteria. Then, I either walk the dog or do another active task before dinner, and I make myself clean up the whole kitchen before I settle down to have dessert (yogurt or a light fudgesicle).

Now, it hasn't been working every day — one afternoon last week, the fresh blackberries I had brought for a snack turned out to have mold on one or two of them, so in a moment of insanity I got a bag of peanut M&Ms and a cereal bar from the vending machine and scarfed them down. But, for the most part, I am feeling more energetic and productive, because I am keeping myself busier with earning my next meal.

It's also helping me be more mindful of what I eat. I noticed a dramatic difference on Saturday when I had to attend two birthday parties in the same day, one in the afternoon and one that evening. Normally, parties are a recipe for nutritional disaster for me. But this time, I had a healthy breakfast that morning, then a salad for lunch and a soy-milk latte for a snack before the first party. Then, all I had was less than one bottle of Miller Lite and small piece of the birthday cake with no icing. At the second party, there was barbecue, so I had the grilled fish and veggies, a few small fried vegetarian items, a couple of beers and literally just a few sips of a vodka and Sprite.

By the end of the night I still felt energetic and not at all how I usually feel after a birthday party — bloated, stuffed and vaguely ill. When I woke up the next morning, I did have a tiny hangover, probably more from lack of sleep than anything else, but after some juice, boiled egg and fruit for breakfast, it was gone. I was so impressed with this accidental discovery that I kept talking about it to my fiancé the next day. I hope I remember this the next time a party rolls around.

Redeeming my day

This afternoon, I decided to visit a more expensive grocery store than we usually go to, because we had a $10 coupon that expires today. During the car ride to the store, I was feeling proud of myself for finally remembering to take with me the earth-friendly grocery bags that have been sitting in my pantry for months. Then, right as I exited my car, I realized I had forgotten the coupon.

I weighed my options (go back home and get the coupon, shop without the coupon, or forget the grocery shopping altogether) and decided to go ahead and get a few things without the coupon. I was feeling pretty irritated with myself, because I chronically forget things like this and I don't know why.

As I walked toward the store, I saw two kids throwing bark from the store's landscaping at a passing car, a woman with Down Syndrome stopping to tie her tennis shoe, and several bags of roasted green chile peppers sitting outside on a display table covered in that crushed grocery-store ice.

Then I entered the store and saw all the lovely stacks of fresh produce and fruit. I bought some red organic tomatoes on the vine that were on sale. I took a number at the seafood counter and, when the guy punched the machine twice instead of once, causing it to skip right over my number, I waved my little #17 paper in the air and said, "You skipped number 17." With a straight face, he joked that he was just checking to see if we (the customers) were paying attention. Then he gave me the more expensive salmon at the price of the one on sale.

I wandered over to the bulk section and filled a clear plastic bin with roasted almonds so fresh they practically pop when you chew them. I filled a brown paper bag with whole coffee beans that I am looking forward to grinding and steeping in hot water in my French press tomorrow morning. I stopped suddenly mid-aisle to turn my cart around, not noticing the man behind me, who pulled back his cart to make room for me and said, "I brake for pretty girls!" (It's always nice to receive a completely unexpected compliment.)

By this time I didn't care anymore that I had forgotten the coupon. It's a privilege to be able to shop at such a nice grocery store, to be able to buy good, fresh food and bring it home. I left the store in a great mood.

As it turns out, I was able to have my cake and eat it too, because my fiancé and I stopped by the same grocery store again later this evening, on our way home from the dog park, and this time I remembered to bring the coupon.