Favorite Things Friday: Groundhog Day Edition

Groundhog day is increasingly one of my favorite holidays. It has zero religious significance (a bonus in my book), and it boasts small mammals, attention to the natural world, morning drinking and top hats. It occurs at a point where we really need a holiday: just after January ends and at the beginning of cruel February, as optimistic New Year resolutions start to wane and the reality hits that we’ve got about two more months of cold weather coming (regardless of what the rodent “sees”).



I also love Groundhog Day because of the ubiquitous and eponymous (does that work in this context?) Bill Murray movie. As a kid with a February birthday, I never wanted to have a movie theater birthday because the movies that typically come out in January & February are, well, shit. Groundhog Day, released to coincide with the holiday, was one glorious exception. Truthfully it’s kind of a grown-up movie for a 12-year-old’s birthday party (I believe I got a Blossom-style purple hat as a gift that year) but believe me, it made my parents very happy and my older self retroactively so as well.



I love the Groundhog Day movie for its bitterness, its recognition of misery and futility and cold and darkness. And I love it for its depiction of the imperfect human spirit doing battle with those inevitabilities and making good. I love it in spite of Andy McDowell, whose allure genuinely eludes me – she is a wooden actress with a weird accent and a strange face, and her outfits in the film are truly, deeply hideous. I love it in spite of the fact that Bill Murray could never be as happy/changed as he’s depicted as in the end of the film, and that he’s a bit rapey for a good chunk of it. I love it in spite of the rodenticide and the fact that it celebrates Pennsylvania, which except for the semi-bright spot of Pittsburgh is basically one long awful turnpike with occasional rest stops where people steal your Hannukah presents.



Next year, I may have the opportunity to celebrate Groundhog Day at the holiday’s ground zero, Gobbler’s Knob (yes, really). In the meantime, this year I settled for a strange pseudo-celebration of Groundhog Day in DC with “Potomac Phil,” Punxatawney Phil’s more . . . deceased brother. There were paper top hats, groundhog cookies, a PETA protest and some patriotic singing. In the evening I took in a viewing of the movie over Klondike bars, beer and mozzarella sticks. Then, in keeping with the film’s theme of mindless, destructive repetition, I watched half of the movie again at home with E.

And now it’s Friday! And the rest of February (including a looming thirtieth birthday) stretches in front of me. It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last [me] for the rest of [my] life. But! Winter, slumbering in the open air, wears on its smiling face a dream of spring.

Ciao.

Ve-dux

January is finally over and with it goes my no-animal-products diet experiment.  This morning I enjoyed a delicious bagel with cream cheese, and last night E and I hit up a Meat Week DC event sponsored by the PORC food truck.  (Perfect timing, Meat Week! High fives.)  I’m happy to be able to supplement my diet with meat and dairy again, but part of me misses the structure that the diet provided.  In some ways it made everyday decisions a lot easier, and now that the entire world of food is available to me again, the options seem kind of overwhelming.  What do I want to cook?  How ethical do I want to be in my food choices, now that an ethos (however experimental and temporary) isn’t prescribed for me?  To what degree do I eat for health, and to what degree for pleasure?  Do I have any Gas-X handy?  So much to consider. 

GET IN MY MOUTH

On Tuesday night I made myself a last vegan dinner of easily the ugliest potato leek soup ever inflicted on a bowl.  It was poop-brown because of vegetable stock and sautéed mushrooms, and thick with potato, fennel and mushroom chunks.  However, it was also really tasty:  I had two bowls.  I had planned to make my cookies & cream ice cream too, so I could eat it today as part of my post-vegan celebration, but then I realized that trying to make ice cream when I can’t eat ice cream (even to lick the spoon, or my fingers, or the floor, whatever) is a recipe for disaster.  Also I forgot to put the ice cream bowl in the freezer. 

Moving forward, I do want to continue to honor the environmental, political and social concerns from which veganism generally emerges.  While I like to eat eggs, cheese, chicken and beef, I don’t like factory farming because it’s cruel, wasteful, environmentally destructive and economically problematic.  So, the plan moving forward is to avoid meat (and to a degree dairy) unless I know, and generally approve of, where it came from.  Free-range, organic, pasture-raised, no hormones, the whole deal.  Fortunately, I live in a city where restaurants increasingly provide that kind of information (and vegetarian options when they don’t), and I live a handful of blocks from a year-round farmers market that sells a variety of local meats AND stays open until 1 pm.



We are also fortunate in that we are not totally ill-prepared to spend a bit more money for quality ingredients whose origin is known and favorable.  E and I have agreed to stop buying obviously factory-farmed meat at the grocery store (it’s tough for him - the man does love a sale on shaved beef, and who wouldn’t?).  We’ve already been buying local bacon, chickens and ribs from the Dupont Farmers Market, so we’ll keep that up and supplement with clearly designated Whole Foods meats.  This may mean that we eat less meat in general, so the expense may not change as much, and we will generally be doing less harm, so it’s kind of a win-win.  Dairy-wise, we typically buy our feta and mozzarella at the market, as well as farm-fresh free-range eggs.  I doubt I’ll start asking about the origin of the cheeses in my pizza at restaurants or anything, but I may stop buying super-processed shredded cheeses in favor of quality cheese that I can shred myself.  I’m on the fence about whether I’ll go back to skim milk or stick to almond milk with my morning cereal, but I’m counting it as a positive that I’m perfectly fine with either one.  My workday lunch, which generally consists of hummus, veggies and greens/tortilla, won’t be affected at all.

For February, I’ve decided to focus on meditation.  I tried last year and really enjoyed the practice, but I crapped out after two weeks because I am bad at time management.  This time, I shall persevere!  Meridian Yoga is just up the street from me and offers meditation classes; plus I have a book & CD to help out with my home practice.  I don’t expect to be meditating every night, but I’m shooting for several nights a week at minimum, with some non-blog journaling thrown in to monitor effects (or lack thereof).

Onward and upward!