Vegan?

So I haven't written lately.. not a lot going on. I've been working and sleeping. That's about it. I've gotten onto a terrible schedule really.. I'm working much less and so getting home by around midnight.. maybe a bit later if I go to Walmart or the grocery store after (this occurs frequently), but I'm not going to bed until around 3. Then I'm falling asleep around 6 am.. and sleeping until nearly 2pm. A couple times I've woken up, rolled out of bed and barely made it to work at 3pm. It's pretty fucked up.
This is somewhat caffeine related I'm sure, but I'm down to 2-3 diet pills a day.. plus an energy drink, one cup of coffee, and a coke zero. Yes, this is a lot, but it's less. So what am I doing between 1 and 6am? Blame the internet.

And the latest obsession.. So I mentioned at least once a while back that I stopped eating meat. This has continued except a couple binge days where I ate chicken and hated myself terribly.. but bulimia is bitch.. Otherwise, I have continued to not eat meat. I tried at one point to give up dairy and failed after a couple days.. and largely because I wanted to binge and purge and binging is less fun when I can't have all the foods I want.

Well I never stopped feeling bad about this.. both because the eating disorder loves an excuse to make me feel guilty, and I've gained some weight lately from binging and not purging effectively every time.. and I blame cheese since that's a lot of calories. I also have a lot of ethical objections to dairy. Well, I mainly have a huge number of ethical objections to factory farming.. and the treatment of the animals.. and that doesn't just include those that are killed for meat right away.

It's only been a couple days again without dairy and eggs.. I've also been trying to switch a lot of my purchases to cruelty free products (soap/shampoo/face lotions/laundry stuff).. I honestly have yet to call myself vegan really. I say I am not eating meat or not eating dairy. I might go so far as to mention a vegan diet. The problem is that I am not sure I can 100% commit to a vegan lifestyle because I take prescription medications. I do not know if they contain animal products like gelatin.. I am honestly choosing not to try to find out. I also know that they were/are tested on animals.. and I do object to the testing of cosmetics on animals because at least the majority of it is not necessary.. at least not these days when there are alternatives. Medical testing is a bit less black and white to me.. I'm a scientist at heart, and I don't know.. but I do know that right now giving up my prescriptions would be a terrible choice. I take thyroid medication that I need.. and I take psych meds that I have proven time and again that I cannot function without.

But some of the sleepless nights are related to all this.. looking up articles and recipes. Watching videos or I stayed up watching a whole documentary the other night.. and then spent a while hugging my cats because it was really fucking depressing (Earthlings).

My coworkers and at least one friend know and are pretty supportive. My coworkers I think find my food choices funny.. mainly the variety of candy I eat.. did you know Sour Patch Kids are vegetarian/vegan? And Trolly Sour Watermelon Sharks? But not the sour octopus.. or the worms.. and Haribo sour spaghetti is but not the gummy bears :( :( which makes me very sad. They have gelatin. But yeah.. I eat a lot of candy still.

My parents seem less thrilled. My mom talks about when they were vegetarian.. and how they still ate pepperoni on pizza because "that's a vegetable" (joking) or they still ate fish or chicken. And I want to scream that THEN YOU WEREN'T VEGETARIAN.. but whatever. I mean I am not judging how they eat/ate, but I am slightly offended by what she says to me. Then today she asked if I was still eating cheese and milk, and I said I'm trying not to. She said something along the lines of but generally people think that milking doesn't hurt the cow. And all I could think to say was "It depends on how you think about it." Because I was not going to go into any of the truths of it or try to convert her or make it worse.. but I was also not going to just let her act like I was wrong. Who knows who is wrong? But yeah.. thankfully for Thanksgiving we're going to a restaurant. Honestly, part of why we're going is because they don't want to cook for me.. My mom pretty much said that if you took away the turkey and the stuffing that has sausage in it, all that's left is the rolls and mashed potatoes.. and again in that discussion I had wanted to just suggest that it was an option to make some additional dishes that their daughter could eat. I wasn't going to ask them not to eat turkey, but they could try to make some food I could have.. but yeah.. we're going out.. We're still maybe baking pies, but I went ahead and bought vegan crusts to bring to their house and told her I did that so it's an option. Because then she doesn't have to look or make any sacrifice.. and I've found a recipe

The other moral dilemma.. and people may argue with me on this.. is that I own cats. Not that I own the cats. I believe that living in my apartment is better for them than the alternative which for one was the shelter and the other the SPCA.. so at least for these cats, this was a better option. However, I am not willing to make them vegans.. that just seems really fucked up to me.. cats are carnivores. I don't buy into the argument about people having canine teeth because they're evolved to eat meat.. I mean.. yes they're capable of eating meat.. but it is not evolutionary proof they should. We have options. Cats are evolved to eat meat.. they're evolved to live on a diet that is mainly protein.. they don't digest sugar well. It's why feeding them sweets is bad for them.. So yeah.. I thought about this and went on this quest to find a food that contains only fish and plant protein sources.. not other animals. I don't know why this seems better.. I mean honestly I don't see fish as able to have the same level of higher order thought as mammals can.. or the same intelligence. So I managed to find one of the few foods that doesn't have poultry or pork by-products. Then when I got the kitten I've had to go on a quest to find another one suitable for her (the other was only designed for adult cats) and then also canned food. I seriously almost started crying at the pet store today trying to by canned food. I finally managed to find that Canidae makes canned food as well as the dry that I used to feed Odd.. and then they eat Natural Balance Salmon and Green Pea dry food for all life stages.. both are weird limited ingredient, grain free diet foods.. and expensive.. but whatever. That also means they're more nutritious than a lot of foods (as far as protein percentage and fat and such..) I swear I spent more time lately reading the nutrition labels on their foods than on mine.

So yeah... insanity.. but the vegan insanity has not stopped the bulimic insanity. Last night's binge was 2 mini loaves of french bread (the only kind without dairy or l-cysteine) with marinara sauce or vegan butter spread, almost a whole box of gluten free vegan cookies, cereal with almond milk, and a pint of coconut milk ice cream.. and fritos. Tonight is a mini frozen pizza with soy cheese, french fries, pita chips and hummus, some mini lemon tart, and a pint of cashew milk ice cream.. and I bought more food but I'm tired and may not get to the rest.
On a more cheerful note though.. kitten pictures..

 Her first visit to my parent's house a couple weeks ago

She's been sleeping using her brother as a pillow.. he seems ok with it

Work drama and kitten photos

So I haven't written much lately to complain about work.. there have been changes made that have drastically reduced my workload (specifically mine..). I am actually getting to leave by midnight most nights. This had nothing to do with my supervisor and his concern (supposedly he was concerned) about my hours. This was a change made by the big bosses to some of our policies.

There have been a lot of changes going on in the company. I think because we are growing and negotiating deals with new doctors and hospitals and expecting more samples soon. Because of that and who knows what else, they are wanting to track performance in every department. This is both speed/amount of work but also errors.

It's mildly frightening. Partly because I sit by the boss's desk and hear all sorts of conversations I probably shouldn't.. and a couple weeks ago another analyst got fired. I don't really know the circumstances of that, and I have not tried to find out.

Part of why it's frightening is because my supervisor has been in charge of designing the method of tracking our work, which is some very involved excel file. He talks about it ALL THE TIME. He did before he made it. He did while making it. He has since it is mostly done. This ranges from just talking about the technical aspects to discussing how he wants to design it to be fair or to make everyone look good.. because he doesn't want anyone to get fired. When he talks about those things, it is nice to know he doesn't want anyone to get fired. It is not nice that he likes to imply frequently that there's a risk of that. He's gone so far as to talk out loud about who he's concerned about and how to make people look better.. and how we need to give certain people more work to improve their numbers. Again ALL THE TIME... either about people or explaining it to people.

I told him to stop at least once because I don't want to constantly be thinking about how we're being graded. I said this because I know it wasn't just bothering me. Someone has told him to stop talking about other people out loud when they're in the same damn room as him.. like they don't need to hear about how poorly they're doing while they work. Even if it's jokingly or sarcastic, you know he isn't entirely joking.

Thankfully he was out of town yesterday and today, so I heard less of it.. but then he stressed out the person who was in charge in his absence so much that she was worrying about who needed to improve their numbers. It's sick.

And I really don't think there's a threat to anyone's job right now. Samples are getting closed in a reasonable amount of time. Sometimes there just isn't enough work.. but people are working. Nobody is really being threatened right now I think, so he is just making this all seem so much worse than it is.

But in happier news.. my family is getting along pretty well now. The kitten and Odd sleep on the bed. They've chased each other around a bit, and I've broken it up a couple times because while I can tell they're playing, I don't think he realizes he's five times her size.. or maybe I'm just paranoid. Chasing is fine, but if he pins her down then I make them stop.

This is just her being cute.. 

 I have no idea what is up with my phone's camer and the terrible color of all the photos.. Sorry. But anyway.. bedtime.

And then after a chase. You can see the size difference.. he's a pretty big cat. Sometimes I carry her around just so that I won't step on her accidentally or kick her.. it's just easier that way. Plus, she will sometimes decide to climb my pants if I don't pick her up when she wants me to. She has sharp little claws. .