Hi, all. I'm new to VegWeb and thought I should jump in and introduce myself. I'm Joey. I'm a 37-year-old butch dyke living in Portland, OR, US. I have a beautiful partner and 4 awesome kids, two of whom are vegetarian and one of whom is pescetarian. 

I went vegetarian in August 2008 after being an inveterate, unrestricted meat-eater for 35 years.  It's one of the best decisions I ever made for myself.  I've gone through some struggle with it in the past year, simply because I was a meat-eater for so long that I still miss certain things. (My omnivore partner is on a Popeye's spicy chicken kick right now and that's been difficult for me -- Popeye's chicken was my great fast food weakness before I went veg.)  My grandfather died in August and I regressed to eating meat for a month. I think this was mostly because there was *nothing* for me to eat when I went home for the funeral that didn't contain meat (I'm from Mississippi).  I could have dealt with it better and stuck to my guns, but I'm being gentle with myself about it because I was distraught and doing the best I could to deal with being a big ol' lesbian in Mississippi. :)  In some ways it was good for me -- I got to see the contrast between the way I used to eat and my chosen vegetarianism and, while I enjoyed revisiting some old favorites, I found myself increasingly turned off by the dead animals and kept choosing veggie meals anyway.

As of the beginning of this month, I'm back to my veggie ways and I feel so much better, physically and emotionally.  Meat really is just gross to me now... fish not as much, but I'm still not gonna eat it. :)  That dismembered, breaded bird corpse still smells good, but oh man... it's really just so nasty.

Anyway, hi!  Glad to meet everyone. :)