If I tell you that you win, will you stop?

I get the feeling that there's some competition I never got the flier for, to determine who's the biggest hippie in the world, or something. I personally don't feel like competing for this title, but I find that a few people insist on competing with me even though I try to make it pretty clear that I'm not interested.

I mean, really, anyone who would say to another person, "Oh, grass fed beef isn't that good. You should go to the farmers' market and pick up some organic bison.", has pretty much asserted themselves as biggest, most hyper-competitive asshole on the planet. First of all, I live in a very poor city with incredibly low standards when it comes to food. What they call farmers' markets here would be called really bad fruit stands anywhere else. It's horrible, depressing even. The only store in town that sells food I can feel even a little bit good about eating, is 27 miles from my house through the worst traffic ever and a dangerous mountain pass (yes, bullets fly through there sometimes from the Mexico side. You'll notice the bulletproof glass on all the university buildings in the pass now.) I have to get there super early just to get anything I want because it sells out so fast, and I only go every two weeks because of the long trip there, and you know what? They don't sell locally produced organic bison that was mooing yesterday. What they do sell is a few semi-affordable cuts that come from animals that ate real grass and weren't confined to pens, and I don't give a crap that this happened 4 hours away in Lubbock. I really don't. (How would it happen here? We don't have grass!) Would it be better if I bought the stuff that came from the feedlots in that same part of the state? Didn't think so.

The bottom line is I'm doing my best with what I have in the place where Uncle Sam plunked me down this time, and I'm so freaking tired of being told that everything I think is good (and that I went to a real effort to make happen), is really kind of... eh... to the my friends whom I no longer live anywhere near, and have never set foot within 1000 miles of this place. I don't tell you that your gluten-free foods sound nasty (although they do), so stop telling me that my grass fed beef is so last season. I get it. You eat weirder stuff than I do right now. Congratulations.

Here's something else. I like soda. I'm not sorry for it either. I don't drink buckets and buckets of it (my name isn't Thak) but I like it every now and again, and I refuse to think that's going to kill me. Seriously. No, I don't care how much you like the overpriced juice and seltzer mix they sell in the health food store. I like that stuff sometimes, but when I want a coke, I want a goddamned coke, and I don't really need a clip from the documentary Food Inc about how bad it is to drink that. I'm going to bet that even for all your claims of dietary perfection, and your claims of not eating processed food in 20 years, and crap like that, somewhere in there, you've straight-up chowed down on whatever it is that is your vice. Come on, fess up. French fries? Cheetos? McDonald's milk shake? Pepperoni pizza? Everybody's got one. Nobody can live on the purest stuff blessed by magical fairies for their entire life. This is America. Somewhere in there, you've taken a bite or a sip of every junky thing I have. The only difference is that I admit it because I have absolutely nothing to prove to anybody.

I wonder if it's because these people all come from decidedly mainstream roots that they think they have to be "more alternative than thou" to prove their worthiness or something. I don't have that. My family has been organic farming since long before most people even knew what that meant, and I've been eating whatever showed up at the farmers' market for long enough that I still have a hard time making heads or tails of the supermarket produce section. I can do this, AND drink a coke every now and again. I can do it even in a place where I CAN'T hop on down to the farmers' market and pick up some organic bison. This is me. If it's you, you don't need to prove it, so stop, because it's really freaking annoying.

And one more thing. Yes, I'm pregnant. No, I don't feel the need to take ten billion supplements. My midwife and I share the belief that it's better to get nutrients from food, and not rely on synthetic supplements for that. I take prenatal vitamins most days, but not all... it's only really necessary if you didn't eat well. I take calcium because I hate dairy products. I, however, will NOT take the stupid omega 3 supplement you are trying to jam down my throat. You are aware that too much omega 3 increases bleeding risk during birth, right? Why would any pregnant woman, especially one who's going to be birthing at home, take that? I get enough omega 3's through fish and flax meal. Keep your synthetic pills. You are aware that most of the vitamins we take in pill form go right down the toilet, literally, right? Just because you take ten billion milligrams of whatever the magic bullet of today is according to Dr. Mercola or whatever other pop physician you're swooning over this time, does not mean that you absorbed that much. It means you absorbed a fraction of that much, while peeing out the majority of it. If you ate that much of it in food form, you'd absorb more. See? I can form opinions, too.

You win. You're the queen of all things alternative. Now...
Hop. Off. My. Nuts.
[Insert cute graphic of a little squirrel with a nut.]