My oldest son (O) has spent the past 10 days with his grandmother excavating on the Western Slope. She is a member of the Colorado Archeological Society, and volunteers in the summers at active sites. Last year they retrieved a partially flinted Folsom point - a spearhead of the Folsom peoples who lived in the region about 10,000 years ago. It was quite an exciting find for them, and also fun for my son to do fieldwork for actual scientists and hang out with college students.

So, for over the past week, I have been absent my partner in carnivorousness (yeah, it is a word - I looked it up). I didn’t think much about it until it came to making meals for the A’s, both my husband and youngest son are blood type A.

Now, my husband is such an A... we knew from reading the blood type descriptions that there was no other blood type he could be, and of course when he was typed, our perceptions were deemed accurate. He has thrived on a vegetarian diet since he was about 13, been practicing yoga since the age of 12 which turned into a daily practice around the age of 16. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times he has NOT done his morning yoga in the past 17 years that I have known him. He is the type that if we had to leave the house at 5 AM to catch an early flight, he’d be up at 3 just to make sure he gets in his hour of yoga to start the day. It seems essential to his well-being. I’ve learned to live with it.

I noticed, much to my chagrin, with just the veg heads in the house that I tended to make meals with them in mind, catering to their needs and forgetting my own. Like making a big pot of black bean soup for dinner. Or choosing to prepare salmon for my son when what I was really needing was some heavier protein that day. Since my O son will be leaving the nest in a short couple of years, this was quite the enlightening experience. It felt almost too indulgent to prepare food/meat for myself only. Don’t know where that’s coming from but certainly something worth excavating.