Full Day, Full Log: Song Day (Tom Petty, Nick Cave, Lord Huron)

5.24.2020

Sunday is supposed to be a “rest” day, but I still found myself up at 4:45 with an itch to get downstairs and write; instead of leaping right into this, I channeled that energy into sending out messages to friends (some from childhood, some newly met) and breathing in the heart-lifting light that all this howling is successfully waking up some souls.

If you find yourself getting angry and defensive at any of my words: I was exactly the same. I’ve mentioned several times, that when Ian first proposed dietary changes (he was the one that got us off refined sugars and processed foods) my internal response was flaming hot incredulity; but when you get into the research about plant-based whole-foods, and see that it is an evidence-based fact that they are the ideal diet for humans (and the only one clinically proven to prevent/reverse our many diseases) AND the only diet that is going to save this earth from runaway climate change (due to the environmental impact of animal agriculture), you start moving forward.

Or you stay in standstill and own the consequences of all that entails.

I had to move beyond my anger and incredulity and find a way to enjoy life through different foods, and that hasn’t been hard at all. There are soooo many delicious foods in the plant-based whole-food realm, and we still plow through each day loving everything that we eat. (With one rare exception: that artichoke, broccoli, and spirulina soup from a few weeks ago, was a total dud. Q and I had one bowl and would have no more, and Ian ate through it but with exquisite flare stated, “I want you to know that I take eating the last of this soup as a favor akin to burying a body”, and I’m still laughing! I love the heck out of that droll billy goat. <3 )

So we learn, move forward, and keep cooking. :-)

Continue on for: plant-based family feasting through a day, and Sunday Song Day write-ups featuring Tom Petty, Nick Cave, and Lord Huron.

Q’s Morning Chalkboard: letting him know it was going to be a day of cooking.

Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: apples, cashew cream, and peanut butter. Q -”Mama, can we not comb my hair today? I’d like to look like a mad scientist.” :-D — Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: apples, cashew cream, and peanut butter.
Q -”Mama, can we not comb my hair today? I’d like to look like a mad scientist.” :-D

Plant-Based Leftovers Lunch Q-” Can we do that thing where I have peas, cabbage, hummus, and quinoa? With hot sauce tentacles all over it?” Done and done. j- last of the potato soup, peas, cabbage, brussel sprouts. What’s he doing here? He’s c… — Plant-Based Leftovers Lunch

Q-” Can we do that thing where I have peas, cabbage, hummus, and quinoa? With hot sauce tentacles all over it?” Done and done.

j- last of the potato soup, peas, cabbage, brussel sprouts.

What’s he doing here? He’s counting how many colors are in our meal. Do you make sure to eat a rainbow of flavonoids each day? Q states that are meals always look like art, and that is intentional. I want him to see the color of foods, appreciate their importance, and be drawn in.

Made a new batch of brownies and tried sprinkling some pumpkins seeds on top. Delicious!

Zero-waste storage and heart-healthy/planet-healthy/gut-healthy/animal-friendly brownies.

Cooking with my cub. :-) That’s a fresh batch of plant-based/whole-food cornbread and cornbread batter he’s eating.

Recipe for this delicious cornbread will be coming up soon.

Recipe for our plant-based chili will also be up soon. My favorite spice combo? Cumin, paprika, and berbere.

Helps with cooking and helps with dishes. <3

He put a bunch of bubbles on his hand and kept singing “Red Right Hand” but altered it to my “my decorated hand”

Ok, music time. This is a house of music lovers and the genres vary.

Q’s original favorite musician was Tom Petty. “Wildflowers” was his first favorite song, he was requesting it by a year and a half, and would say salty toddler things like “This is NOT Tom Petty” when I’d have something else on.

He moved on to a deep passion for Radiohead and Lord Huron (we’ll get back to them in a moment), but his MOST requested song of all time is Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand”. This isn’t a song I knew until I met Ian, and now it may be up there with one of the songs I’ve heard most in my life, because Q can’t listen to it once. He requests it just about every day, and he’d listen to it for a full hour if you let him.* He loves its spooky sounds, Cave’s gravely voice, and now I find him singing it to himself in a parroted kiddo gravel. <3

*I let Q listen to songs for as long as he wants, because I know how good it feels when you find a song whose frequency is lighting you right up, and I remember how important my Walkman was to me in this regard. He doesn’t have access to any sort of kiddo tech, so if he’s vibing on a song and requesting it ad nauseum, I roll with it and let him ride the wave.

Radiohead and Lord Huron are also played just about daily. Radiohead deserves its own separate post some day in the future (that band has been with Ian and I since our childhoods right on through today, and is a pillar of our musical life), but I find not enough people know Lord Huron and it is one of my most-listened-to bands.

When I’m writing, Vide Noir is often on in the background because it has a motivating arc in its rhythms and breaks of beautiful, smokey songs. I’ve listened to this album countless times and will continue on happily. :-)

“Love Like Ghosts” is the opening track to Strange Trails, and is another Q favorite and one of mine too. The line “I don’t feel it til it hurts sometimes” is tangentially tied to this harpy wail of environmentalism/nutrition. How many of us don’t move forward until we are actually shaken? For me it took health issues with Q to finally wake up to the fact that what I was feeding him was disease (and it should have been as soon as I knew that animal agriculture was perpetuating environmental collapse that would ruin Q’s future, but I was myopic and was stung more by the pain in his present). For Ian, it took one hell of a marital ultimatum (that came with tears and bellows) before he woke up and started moving forward; yet it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to this family, because the end result was us being more in-tune/in-love than we’ve ever been. (And we met as young-in-love college students, 15 years ago).

We often don’t feel it until it is too late, and “Love Like Ghosts” is a driving force to keep howling. If I hadn’t pushed Ian, we’d never be in this never-than-better space; and there are too many sickened souls I love that could feel so much better if they woke up [And the earth needs us to cease this environmentally catastrophic animal product diet!]

On the heartbreaking flip is “Frozen Pines”. If I can tune out the lyrics, this is one of the songs I’ll dance to while cooking or writing, but that took a long while of swallowing down lyrics that used to make me outright weep (<—tears are still a common response, though). “Frozen Pines” centers around a soul thinking of all the souls gone that are missed. There’s a lyric of “Oh, I don't wanna be the only one living if all of my friends are gone!”

Previously the count was 11, but after this week there are now 17 souls I know who have woken up from all this environmental/nutritional howling; yet not a single family member or bestfriend is among those numbers. In fact, one of my closest/dearest friends dropped me like a hot potato as soon as I started down this nutritional path, and it was an icicle to the heart and gut.

The people I love most in this world are also the stubbornest, and as they fill themselves with disease, I’ve had to come to the realization that we will be moving on without them, and someday they’ll just be memories and lumps in my throat.