Relationship Resolution Revisited

The Mr isn't fully aware of this, but my long-term plan for our relationship is to have him become a vegetarian. Stop rolling your eyes and let me explain.

I've never been one to force my beliefs on anyone and I still don't. If you eat meat, that's great. More power to you. I'm not going to hover over you and recite horrific facts just like I don't expect you to ridicule my belief in not wanting to eat animals. One of my co-workers tried to belittle my principles by comparing the notion of it being wrong to eat meat to slaying all tigers and bears because they eat meat. Are you scratching your head? Let me break it down.

I think it's wrong to eat meat, therefore…
I should also think it's wrong for tigers and bears to prey on other animals, therefore…
I should want all tigers and bears put down.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. This is why I don't argue with people about their diets. To each his own. Don't even get me started on religious! Ha!

But back to the point, the longer I've been immersed in this whole vegetarianism - the crazier I've gotten. I cry about all things animal-related. When Flower, the mom Meerkat on Meerkat Manor died protecting her clan? Oh yeah - sobfest. I don't even really watch the feckin' show. And that's not even animal cruelty! That was Mother Nature at work.

I recently DVR'ed Oprah's show on puppy mills but haven't been able to force myself to watch it yet. I know it will wreck me. I need to set aside an entire evening and a box of tissues for that.

And before you get all, "But twink, you have a leather handbag! I saw you wear leather shoes!" - I get it. I get the hypocrisy. But I'm taking a page out of a classmate's book that also became a vegetarian in that I'm not buying any new leather goods. Yeah that might seem like a cop-out but what's the point in throwing my stuff away? I already own it. That's just being wasteful (another thing I'm nutty about).

So blah blah blah animals yay! Blah blah blah, right?

I DVR'ed Morgan Spurlock's show "30 Days" recently that featured an avid hunter from NC who spent 30 days in L.A.with a vegan family, protesting with PETA and working at an animal sanctuary. They warned viewers of graphic images but holy hell - I wasn't anticipating some of the images they showed and I ended up sobbing through half of the show.

After one particularly heartbreaking scene featuring a baby cow, I looked over at the Mr who [gasp] was teary-eyed. Looks like my secret relationship resolution might eventually come to fruition and I didn't even need to force it on him!

I looked at him and declared, "You're going to be a vegetarian!" to which he replied, "Well maybe if you cooked some vegetarian dinners… I'm getting tired of cereal!" Touche. I guess if I want him to get on board with my belief system, I should at least try to make it easy on him by making some good eats.

I've gotten pretty lazy this past year with cooking but I am reaching a point where eating cereal 5 nights a week for dinner is killing me. So - this is my pledge to my husband and to the blogosphere: I will cook more dinner.

Relationship resolution for me: cook more delicious vegetarian dinners
Relationship resolution for The Mr: stop eating meat (this one will probably take awhile if not forever)

Do you and your significant other have similar diets? If not - how do you manage?

And to my vegetarian bloggers - any great recipes you want to share? I'm not a master chef so they need to be easy peasy.

Birds of a Feather or Complete Opposites?

The Mr and I were chatting about the various couples we know and it got me wondering, "Do birds of a feather flock together" or is the old adage of "opposites attract" really true?

When I think about The Mr and me, I'd say (much to my chagrin) that we fall into the birds of a feather category. As much as I think he's a total nerd (seriously - could Spike TV play anymore Star Wars movies?! What the heck is going on here? I can't take any more nerdiness!), our overall interests are pretty similar.

We both like photography. Although I like to take pretty and interesting pictures and The Mr is into the technical aspect of how to take the pretty and interesting pictures.

We both like to be active. Although I moderately work out at the gym and The Mr still goes hard with that lame-o P90x workout and can run about 3 times as fast as I can and for much longer.

We both like dogs. Although I like to just cuddle and play with them and The Mr is the one who gets up every morning to let them out and feed them. No wonder they seem to be much more upset when he leaves the house than when I do. Hmph.

We both like to travel. This one took some time for me to get used to. I liked the idea of traveling but hated the physical act of traveling. I still do but it comes so easily to The Mr that he kind of pushes me through it. But since we both love to see new places and he doesn't mind traveling a long distance to get there (therefore helping me to deal with it), it works out quite nicely.

We both like to eat interesting food. Some might argue that I no longer eat interesting food because I'm a vegetarian but I beg to differ. I am now forced to find even MORE interesting food that doesn't involve meat. So there. Keep your plain cheeseburger - I'm trying fabulous curry dishes. The Mr and I love to try new restaurants and the more exotic the food, the better.

We both have similar taste in décor. I don't have much else to say about this but it makes furniture, paint color and other home décor shopping a breeze.

We both love HGTV!

We like a lot of the same television shows. I wish I could say all but I just can't get on board with Heroes and he'd rather hit his jacked up toe with a hammer than watch any of the wedding shows I still DVR. Don't judge me, it's a sickness.

We both like movies. This is kind of a stupid one to write because really… who doesn't like movies? But I don't think you guys understand… I'm a Netflix junkie. This should probably be amended to say "The Mr supports my bizarre obsession with exercising our Netflix membership to its full capacity".

We both have a similar sense of humor. We think we're the funniest people we know.

And lastly - we both have a ridiculous sweet tooth. It's awesome to have someone who will always split a dessert with me.

So we have a pretty decent list of things we have in common. I'm sure there are more important items I could have listed like prioritization of family, similar budgetary viewpoints, education, etc. but that's boring.

Some things that we definitely do NOT have in common:

- His love of Star Wars. I just don't get it.
- His competitive sportiness. I don't know what to call it. He grew up playing sports and I didn't therefore I lack all coordination and desire to win when it comes to sports.
- His ability to fall asleep anywhere. How does he do this? It takes me forever to fall asleep in our own bed let alone on a plane… that could plummet to the ground and kill me. And don't even get me started on how uncomfortable the seats are…
- His inability to stand up to his family. We have completely opposite views about this and I think it has more to do with how we were raised.
- He doesn't read anything longer than a magazine article. I love to read. I am an avid reader. He hates it. I spent a portion of our honeymoon reading books out loud to him. I'm not even kidding.
- He'd rather spend his money on techy gadgets and I'd rather buy clothes and accessories.

Despite our differences, I think we still fall into the birds of a feather category.

We've seen a lot of couples that fall into the opposites attract category and sometimes I don't understand it. I think if we were complete opposites, he'd drive me insane. It's nice to have someone who shares my interests because if I couldn't get him to want to walk the dogs with me or travel with me… or even split desserts with me, I'd probably be a morbidly obese person with unhealthy dogs that never leaves Baltimore.

So what category do you and your significant other fall in? Why do you think it works for you?