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I awake this morning, perfectly coiffed, made-up, smiling, well-rested, sun-yellow gown beautifully reflecting the light from the south window. I’m white-toothed, clear-skinned, gorgeous, dry in my crisp, ironed Pratesi sheets—in front of my roaring fireplace, casually observing the kindly, rustic goings-on beyond the filmy, white, sunlit, canopy curtains.

My happy, lovely, quintuplet housekeepers are playing harps as per usual—all singing to me how much they adore doing my shitwork. The cleaning, ironing, cooking, dog-poop picking-up and farming are done.

My freshly baked blueberry scones, perfectly heavy-eyebrowed lover and sugared Italian coffee are all waiting in my cool, heavily ferned breakfast room to salute me for simply being alive. As I greet my well-wishers, my morning-gown billows and sparkles to the sound of ‘Greensleeves’ en harp. My lover assures me twenty pounds of chocolate candies are waiting in the breakfast dish. And none has any calories at all. And if they did, he adores cellulite anyway…

Wait!

That’s someone else’s life!

Oh!

So I awake this morning on a sweaty-sheet, multicolored pileup, after a blizzard hit last night, bad hair, terrible eyebrows, sweating from nightmares. Wearing non-matching socks, a hideous cartoon night-shirt, ten needy dogs on top of me, a few more in the other room, all crying for breakfast. The hunchback Jack Russell, the retarded Chihuahua, the vomiting shepherd-mix and everyone else—all eye me as if I’m Evil Incarnate because I dare sleep past 4:30 a.m. Fur People are frickin’ hungry here for chow! Who do I think I am—Cinderella?

Yeah. Without the glass shoe. And wearing a yellow Tweety-Bird shirt. And plenty of chocolate around the middle.

I open the door to let the others from the guestroom into the kitchen. A daily ritual. All accompanied by barking. And no chocolates at all.

I must slit my throat at the first opportunity, I think, chopping raw goat into pieces while my kids claw, howl and bay impatiently.

At what point did I turn from a delicate vegan-waif into a Tweety-nightshirt-wearing goat chopper with arm muscles large enough to wield a large meat cleaver?

At what point had I even purchased a meat cleaver?

As I hurl a knife-edge at gristle and bone, my split-ends swinging, I muse over my lost sexual attractiveness. I feel failure with every femur bone that splinters. Utter despondency with every shattered piece of calcium and tongue. I must kill myself at this moment with this cleaver. But how—more importantly, where? If I touch an open vein with this steel edge, I might get a serious infection.

I like goats. A lot. But you can’t be a vegan and a dog at the same time. And you can’t have a dog rescue without feeding the little monsers. It's all a tradeoff.

I cry and cry. I like goats. A lot. As I chop a goat’s purple gizzards with the blunt edge, I cry some more. And then my kids start playing.

I defy anyone to be in a bad mood when a terrier-hunchback, two mutt cancer patients, a mangy dog, a three-legged Chihuahua and an arthritic senior citizen joyfully bat around a toilet plunger for fun. For some, it’s the only fun they’ve ever had in their lives. For others, it’s the third or fourth experience of fun.

“If you think a toilet plunger is fun,” I tell them affectionately. “Let me give you a goat penis.” It’s horrible, yet a turning point. For me, it’s a choice to yell at a dog for playing with toilet implements. Or revel in his happiness. And get real about myself.

Which will it be?

I begin to smile.

I laugh.

I laugh harder.

Maybe not so much for the goat.

It never gets any easier for a vegetarian to buy meat. Or chop it.  But this is not someone else’s life, it's mine.

Good! I hate when people sing to me in the morning.

Updated 6/27/10; originally posted 4/7/09.

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