River dog had to go back to the animal ER on Friday night, as her snake-bitten ear from last week developed an infection. It was gross and scary looking. They were very glad we brought her in when we did. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep that night… again. Saturday, I was essentially useless. Sunday, I started feeling a bit better. The wound is looking much better this Monday morning.

I’ve been through such a wide variety of “Life Being a Jerk” circumstances in the last 1,038 days and even before that! It happens to everyone. I am glad that I decided to start this lifestyle even though it was on a very inconvenient day (Life was being a huge jerk) as it was the same day I was being taught to self-inject my body with useless and damaging Multiple Sclerosis medication for the first time. I was stressed out, still struggling with not being able to use my entire body, and feeling so defeated in life overall. It was not a happy or convenient day. Lots of tears.

“I’ll start my healing diet when it’s easier.”
“I’ll be happier once…”
“I need to comfort myself with food today to make it through, but I’ll get my act together once Life stops being such a jerk.”

All the little lies and deceptions I whispered to myself to try to talk myself out of going through with it. At every turn, it seemed there was yet another stressful reason to fall back to my longtime comforting “relatively healthy” vegan lifestyle which wasn’t allowing me to heal before. I would only be hurting myself, and for much longer, in the name of possible temporary comfort.

I had to remind myself repeatedly that there’s never going to be a perfectly convenient time to transition. We have to make it work with the circumstances we are given. Going back to what felt good, but didn’t heal me, doesn’t make any sense. Doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result is insanity. I had/have to continue down this path if I want things to truly change. Nothing changes unless I start making different choices now (and in every “now”).

Today’s choices have to do with current stressful circumstances which also happen to be financially draining. I’m going grocery shopping tonight. The 4 main items on my list are:

1 case bananas
1 case celery
1 case cucumbers
1 case lemons or limes

Hopefully I can get a 10% case discount for buying in bulk for each of these. I desire tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, melons, and grapes, but only if the prices allow for some. My target is $50-$70/week, give or take, until my credit card balance is zero again. I’m thinking I may not get through an entire case each week, but I will see what happens and be prepared either way.

My daily meals will consist of banana smoothies, celery cucumber lemon juice, and salad made from the juice pulp (possibly topped with bananas and hot peppers, if any). I won’t be sacrificing calories or nutrition to accomplish this. I also won’t be sacrificing my gym/lifting schedule. All I will be doing is making different choices within the same system of what has healed me thus far: low-fat (no overts) raw vegan fruitarian (mainly fruits and some greens).