Eating Crow: A Second Helping

One of the things that got me thinking about eating crow was when the other day Grace said when she grows up she wants to move to New York and live where the big skycrapers are. I told her I used to want to do that too until we finally took a family vacation there and I discovered it was not what I wanted at all.

Sometimes things are a lot better in your plans and memories than they turn out to be in reality.

I told her she'd just have to visit a lot of places before she decides where she wants to live someday.

So the third ingredient in my Crow Stew is:

3. One pint of Moving to NY to be a journalist.

I was lucky enough to be able to write a column for the Bolivar Herald Free Press when I was in high school. I wrote about all sorts of things; my green pickle car, a ski trip I went on, my Dad's annoying habit of filling the wood heating stove full of wood and then retreating to the basement while we all sweated our tails off upstairs. You get the idea.I wrote lots of columns mostly at the expense of my family. A precedent was set. I received lots of praise and figured my path was clearly set. 

I was also Editor of our school paper which really didn't mean all that much because my power was very limited. Basically, I got to decide what stories we would include etc. That was pretty much it. That experience however is what led me to think I would should become a journalist and live in New York.

This was a brilliant idea since the University of Missouri in Columbia had one of the top five schools of journalism as well as in-state tuition which was a definite plus for my parents. So off I went to Mizzou to take my general ed requirements. I only had one Intro to Journalism class that year. Somewhere around this time I finally got to see Under Fire which was a movie about journalists who pretty much got shot at all the time and killed doing their jobs in a war zone check it out here

The tag line was "The first casualty of war is truth". Well the first casualty of that movie for me was to consider a different profession. I am no hero. That movie and the fact I finally successfully stalked Bryon into submission led me back to SMSU and in search of a new occupation and degree. Hmmmm, what to do, what to do. The world was at my fingertips. I could become anything. I liked to write. I liked to read. I could be a teacher. Now THAT was a great idea! I could share my love of literature and writing with students and it would be all Dead Poets Society instead of Under Fire.

It totally seemed like a good idea at time.

Once again, however, it turned out to be one of those things that is so much better in theory than in practice.

I lasted three years as a teacher of High School English.

Now I have a degree I hope to never use again and I live in Niangua, MO which is pretty much the antithesis of New York. If that isn't a big heaping helping of crow, I don't know what is.

4. One large cleaned and quartered piece of Having Children.

I don't know how many times I said through the years (pretty much beginning in junior high) that I was NOT having children. Bryon was on board with this plan. Actually he was willing to swing either way on that topic but we did have a running list of reasons NOT to have children. We never wrote any of them down, but I know it was long.

Every time we witnessed a screaming kid in Wal-Mart or a restaurant - it got added to the list. Instead of kids we had dogs. Two of them. The great thing about dogs was you no one called DFS on you if you let them in the kennel all day while you were at work or at night when you were out on the town. They loved you regardless of WHEN you came home, they mostly did their business outside, they gave you unconditional love and didn't talk back.

That plan ticked along just fine for 15 years of married life and I professed and defended my plan to remain childless at every occasion.

They we bought land. And built a house. And I turned 35. And my clock started ticking. Not quietly and subtly but LOUDLY and AGGRESSIVELY and it said NOW.

Let me tell you. You can not deny the clock. If it stats ticking. It will win, despite your protests or how much crow you'll have to eat.

I had a whole heaping helping. And now we have Grace.

5. A sprinkling of Diets.

Professing your decision to go on a diet in theory is a good thing. People will support you and encourage you. Unfortunately, they'll also criticize and judge you when you eat half a  pan of brownies after a particularly stressful day with various renditions of "I thought you were on a diet". Even if the words aren't actually said, you can hear them.

I never really dieted at all until around 1996. That was the first year after we went to Yellowstone and as I was looking at photos of me riding horses I thought... who is that fat sorority girl on a horse. Yeah, it was me. And I was never a sorority girl.

I was, however, fat.

That was when the "low fat" craze first hit and I was eating 15 grams of fat a day or less. Then 10 grams of fat a day. I was walking. I totally changed the way I cooked and Bryon and I ate. We both lost weight. It was great while it lasted.

I think mine lasted a year or two, then slowly but surely I eeked back up into the tail end of the regular sizes. Something had to be done. I joined Weight Watchers. I went on a diet. I lost weight. It was great while it lasted. It lasted about a year and then... well let's just say it continues to this very day ad nauseam. 


I think I should stop declaring when I am on a diet and just secretly do it until I get the results I want. 


If only I could keep a secret. 


Good think I have lots of good recipes now for crow. 


http://www.thecrowroost.com/RECIPES.htm