Oh hey guys.

I'm over here now. Kind of. See you there, maybe!

I don't know what this is

Marriage should be a conversation that never ends.

I'm on a plane. Metaphorically speaking. I'm in the air, and I know I'm going somewhere, but I can't feel it. I can't feel the progress or the changes, I just know they're happening. I wonder if that's better or worse than being able to feel it. Would it cause more anxiety? More calm?

I keep alternating between being ok with my life and being unhappy with it. Well, maybe not unhappy, exactly, just...less satisfied than I'd like to be, maybe. It usually stems from a conversation with a friend about where their life is headed, and I just realize that mine is so completely different. And that's not really a bad thing, it's just a thing that makes me examine my life. But what's that saying? An unexamined life isn't worth living? I guess that's true. But I don't like this huge weight that sits on my chest while I'm examining it, so if someone would like to take care of that for me, that'd be great.

Sent from my iPhone

Banana Bread Baking!

So after seeing Super 8 with my friend Jason (great movie, btw) I was in the mood for some good home cookin'. Because in the (whatever decade Super 8 takes place in), they had home cookin'. Of course. SO! I made a plan to bring something in for my coworkers. (I'm such a nice person. HA!) When I got home I noticed I had some bananas that were ripe for some baking! Well, over-ripe. Almost brown. So...perfect! I got my ingredients together, put my pjs on, turned on some tunes, and got to baking. And dancing, of course. Essential for baking.

In the middle of mixing everything up, I got a phone call from my boss. CLOSING THE OFFICE TOMORROW! YAY NO WORK! Great way of starting this holiday weekend, considering my plans for tonight and tomorrow kind of got a little messed up due to lack of traffic and employment opportunities. Damn those good things!

This banana bread is perfect for making you feel comfortable. (Also, being in your pajamas while making it helps.) I've been having some problems lately - work being stressful, boys being dumb, and on top of all that, my phone was acting up! So I decided that this was the perfect thing to make my night better (besides eating ice cream and going to a movie.)

I got the recipe from my friend Ross awhile ago. He had made it and brought it to an improv rehearsal that I so often frequented back in the day, and once I tasted it I knew I needed the recipe. This delicious treat reminds me of Chico friends and good times, which is always something good to remember.

And now, I'm off to watch Mr. And Mrs. Smith and enjoy my delicious peanut butter chocolate chip banana bread! On top of that, I don't even have to share! I guess maybe I shouldn't have passed first grade...

Love is in the Air: The Meaning of Baking a Valentine's Day Cake to Share with the World

Happy Valentine's Day! Let's bake a cake....wait, scratch that. Let's bake some cookies! Oreo cheesecake cookies.

I had decided to bake some cookies last night, I just needed to pick up a few ingredients on my way home. Butter and chocolate chips. Kind of a big deal. SO! I stopped at Target on my way home from work, tried on some clothes (slight detour...whatever!) then made my way over to the grocery section. TARGET IS A GROCERY STORE NOW! WHOA. Found what I was looking for, then headed home.

No one was home, so I blasted the pop music and got down to booty shakin. And choppin up some oreos. Stuck them in my super awesome stand mixer (thanks grandparents!) and waited for them to be all crumb-y. Didn't take long.

Mixed up the cream cheese and butter and sugar and everything else delicious, then got to shaping the cookies. Dipped them in the crumb-like oreos, then put them on the pan! Since I had no helpers, I got to eat the rest of the batter by myself. Not that there was much left, but what was left was quite delicious. It's a good thing I stuck those babies in the oven before I started on the leftovers, otherwise there would quite possibly be none left...

The light was out in my oven, so I couldn't keep watch on them...I accidentally hit it with a baking pan last time I was baking something. WHOOPS! But it was ok, the oven still worked. After I stuck them in the oven I realized I had forgotten to put the red food coloring in! But then I realized I didn't have red food coloring, so these cookies would just have to remain black and white. Peace and love, yo.

Took the cookies out of the oven, but they weren't done! So back in they went for a few minutes. And then...VOILA! They were done. I'll be bringing them somewhere tomorrow, so people will get to eat them then. And they will be delicious. I may or may not have already had one just to make sure they weren't poisoned. I want to eat them all. ALL OF THEM.

Put them on a plate with purple flowers (because that's how I roll) and they're good to go!

Happy Valentine's Day from the porn capital of the world! No diseases this VDay, guys!

xoxo

Half as happy...

What has changed since the 1940's to now that makes divorce rates so high? My grandparents have been married since 1947 and are still just as in love today as they were when they got married. When I think of marriage among the older generation, all I can picture is happy married life. Almost every older couple I know is still married, or unfortunately widowed. When I look at my parent's generation, however, that is not the case.

I was always one of the luckier ones, with my parents still being married, but more than half of my friends when I was growing up came from divorced families. I never really speculated on why that was - why should I? My family was happy, so I didn't feel the need to. But now I've kind of begun to think about it.

What happened to love that made it so easy for couples to separate or even get divorced? Did the rise of technology instigate the fall of marriage? Technology was supposed to help communication, but it seems like it ruined it in some cases - especially when it comes to television. Families spend so much time in front of a TV set, so it seems like no one feels the need to talk anymore. Instead of just having it on as background noise, it's front and center and what everyone pays attention to. Family dinners where conversations used to take place about one's day have turned into watching something just because it's on at the same time. I'm not innocent in this either, I watch way too much TV than is probably healthy. But I still make sure that I'm communicating and not just solely focused on watching television.

I wonder if I asked my grandparents how they've stayed happy all these years they'd know the answer. And I'm not naive, I know there have also been dark times, but these are greatly outweighed by the good. I hope when I'm their age, I'll look back and know I was at least half as happy as they were.

"Write drunk, edit sober." - Ernest Hemingway

I was never really into writing when I was younger. Sure, I wrote the occasional story or script down, but I never thought anything of it. When I was 11 or 12, I used to have conversations with friends in the car and write down all the topics we had covered. But I never really thought about writing that much.

I remember one instance, when I was in 9th grade, were we were talking about Dante's Inferno. We were given the assignment of writing a story about hell of some sort. I remember slaving over that story for the entire class period, and when the bell rang, I wasn't even halfway through. My main character hadn't even made it all the way down, but I had to end it because I had run out of time. After that, I tried not to use as much detail in the stories I wrote, because I was always afraid I would run out of time. Actually, if we're being realistic, I didn't write much after that. I didn't think what I was writing was interesting enough.

I always had a journal or a diary, but I never put much information in it because I was always afraid someone would be reading it. Which, inevitably happened on multiple occasions - both my mom and my younger brother went through my room and read it during different stages in my life. I was, of course, always on livejournal. Always aware of my ever changing privacy, I had 5 (maybe 6?) different journals, each one more private than the next.

But writing never really came that easy to me. I would write if I was bored, or if I was exceptionally upset (which happened ridiculously often during high school). I would write if I had something to say but had no one to tell it to. I didn't really write if I was happy. I felt like livejournal wasn't a place that you could really be happy, which was weird. And whenever I go back to the journals that I wrote or read during high school, I would always have the high school feeling wash over me and I would end up feeling more upset than when I started, even if I was just trying to reminisce.

Writing still isn't one of my easiest skills, but I try to do it more. I'm always worried I'll end up offending someone, even though I'm allowed to have my own thoughts. Maybe I should take Ernest Hemingway's advice and drink when I think I want to write.

Love Letters

I have never had a love letter written to me. I don't blame that on anyone that I've dated, though. The fact is, most of the guys I've dated haven't exactly been writer-ly inclined. (Yeah, I know that's not a word. Oh well.)

I think the closest I ever came was a note from a guy named Dustin who I had met through MySpace. We were sitting at a park on the playground right after we met when he tore a piece of paper out of my journal and wrote something along the lines of "girl, why you so fly?" Really classy, right? I definitely swooned. Ah, the days of high school and MySpace love. And safety.

None of my boyfriends in high school really wrote much, and none of my boyfriends in college really did/do either. Which is fine, they were all into other things...music, acting, directing, science, being suicidal...Yeah, good times.

Anyway, the reason I was thinking about this was because I watched Sex and the City with Luke tonight. I haven't really seen much of the series (save for my summer in New York when I would stay up late watching episodes online because I had little else to do), but I enjoyed the movie. In it, Carrie is reading a book of love letters to do research for her newest book, and she asks her boyfriend if he has ever written her a love letter. He says no, because they've always been together, and people who write love letters were separated by wars or hundreds of miles.

I just found it interesting to think about. How many people actually get love letters these days?