So How Are We Doing?

Well, seeing as how it's been over three months, I think a check in is naturally in order. Many of us made resolutions for the new year and have found adhering to them to be rather challenging. I told you all that my ultimate goal was to go vegan. This has been difficult in ways I had not anticipated. Giving up meat and poultry and fish is really not an issue--but the DAIRY! that has been another story. If ever a girl loved her cookies and cakes and chocolates and cheeses, it is your own mrs. s. SO, i fitfully exerted myself for the first few months, and it's really not until this past week or so that I began taking this no dairy aspect of the resolution to heart. Luckily I found some tasty vegan treats to store at home (eat pastry cookie dough is super delectable...)m but it's really amazing how hard it is to go out into the world for food consumption when you're got these dietary restrictions. Anyway, I'm now seriously doing my best, instead of my half-hearted attempt earlier in the year.

And what of you all? Are you keeping true to your resolutions or not? :)

A Question of Culpability

So over the weekend I read this book about a woman who, having spent 2 years in prison for killing a mother and her 12 year old daughter while driving drunk, only to discover some 20 odd years later that she hadn't actually been behind the wheel at the time. During these 20 years she joined AA and maintained her sobriety, doing everything she can to amend for her sin, her entire life now structured around doing the right thing for others.

When she finds out that she wasn't the one to mow the mother and daughter down, her relief is palpable--like a sheet of grief lifting off her life--but her husband does not share her joy. According to him, even though she wasn't the one driving, she set the steps in motion which resulted in their death. She went out, intent on getting drunk, driving on a suspended license due previous drunk driving convictions, and while it was true that she gave her keys to a man she thought was more sober than she, she was prone to drinking so much that her judgment back then was perpetually impaired. And so, based on her husband's ethical code, this potentially liberating discovery that someone else was behind the wheel is no more than a technicality on the scales of justice.

An interesting proposition. What do you think? Just because she wasn't driving at the time, is she absolved of accountability? Two years in prison--basing her whole life thereafter on trying to be better. Or is she still guilty, having defied the law by repeatedly driving with a suspended license, drinking to the point of amnesiac black outs, and on route to possibly hitting someone anyway?