My first war wounds

I adopted a 5 year-old male cat from the SPCA a week ago. Here he is:



Today, I got my first "war wounds." I was trying to trim his claws and he clearly has very bad associations with that:







I think my first mistake was attempting to do this in my underwear. At one point he got his claws in my shoulder and I couldn't remove them -- it was like getting a fish hook stuck in me. At the end of our epic battle I had two claws clipped.

The Weather Network says it's 15 C here today, but it feels much hotter than that in the sun. I just walked down to Locke Street to get some lunch from the natural foods store there, and I ended up buying a plant and a set of three cast iron tables on the way. Here are the tables:





I love them! And here's the plant I bought:



I rearranged our clothes-strewn bedroom to make room for them:

BEFORE



AFTER



I'll make a food/health post later if I have time...I have to write an essay for tomorrow, plus hopefully do some studying for an exam I have Friday. Plus, as evidenced in the above BEFORE picture, we really need to do laundry. But now, it's time for vanilla soy yogurt and fresh strawberries, mmm.

Drastic Times

For a long time, I've been meaning to start eating healthier and becoming more active, and I just keep putting it off. However, I think finally I might have sufficient motivation to start changing my habits. The temperature has sharply risen here, bringing summer to mind, and I tried on all nine pairs of my shorts and two skirts last night and found that none of them fit. Sometime between last summer and this spring I gained enough weight so that I can barely get my shorts up my thighs, and buttoning them is utterly hopeless. So, besides all my other valid reasons for becoming healthier and losing some weight, I have two more to throw on top:

a) I do not want to spend money on a whole new summer wardrobe when I haven't worn half of the stuff I own.
b) I have an extremely low tolerance to heat and being overweight is going to make it worse, especially if I have no shorts/skirts to wear.

So! Today I'm off to a good start. This was my super-healthy, vegan lunch:



A whole wheat pita with hummus, lettuce, carrot, red onion, mushroom, and broccoli. The soup is split pea and barley. I got the recipe from Nava Atlas's The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet, and I made it about a month ago and froze the extras in batches. I cut some parsley to put on the soup, then forgot it; I was going to go back and put it on top and take another picture, but then I decided to get over myself and just eat it, so I did. The verdict is mmmm.

Dessert:



Chocolate almond milk and a vegan chocolate chip cookie from the batch I made last night. Delicious.

Even though I was once completely vegan for over a year, I've never warmed up to vegetables. I don't even like fruit that much. If it's gooey, cheesy, salty, or sugary, I love it, but if not...so when I eat vegetables, I really need them to be tasty and almost as convenient as Kraft Dinner and a tub of Ben and Jerry's. The pita sandwich was easy to make and the hummus, the red onion, and the pita itself made it taste really good. I didn't feel deprived, either; I was so full that eating just that one cookie wasn't a trial at all.