good friends and blessings

so this lawyer that used to work at my firm has been sending me cases. i feel like this is huge and I am eternally grateful for this bit of independence and trust from her. She is incredible. I am shopping for her on Dean and Deluca and discovering the joy (again) of giving back.

I am so blessed. Now if I don't mess these cases up!!!

Healthy Banana bread (muffins)

I was craving it. Had some ripe bananas. Found this great recipe here, but modified it a bit.


Ingredients
•3 ripe bananas
•1/4 cup of honey
•1 TBPS olive oil
•1 Egg
•1 tsp vanilla extract
•1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup bread flour
1/4 cup bran flour
•1 1/2 tsp baking soda
•1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
•3/4 cup chopped toasted pecans.

*Instructions


1.Heat your oven to 350 F.
2.Grease your pan. (after i started, i realized i can't find my bread pan. muffin pans suffice, just lower the cooking time by about 15-20 minutes).
3.Mash up your ripe bananas and mix with the honey, its okay if it's a little lumpy.
4. Add the vanilla, egg, and oil to the banana mixture.
5.In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, powder, cinnamon, salt, and nuts.
6.Combine the two mixtures together. Don't over-mix!
7.Pour the mixture into your pan.
8.Bake for about 40 minutes. Use a toothpick to check for doneness.

girls night...

leads to bringing up stories of the past. past relationships. things done wrong that you hope and know you will never repeat again. it is like a constant rotation around the table about stories of love, almost love, and the ultimate loss. the difference between the chase, being agressive, and learning to be loved.

There was some "diggin on bones" happening...talking about things that had happened to each of us in high school and college. Friends betraying us and such. I think back to Bonnie and Brad and the utter, gut shattering heartbreak I experienced. and thank the good Lord that is pretty much the worst of it. there was A, but other than that i sort of skitted along and broke as many hearts as "broke" mine; essentially broke even. but things that friends do to you at a young age dig deep and stay for a long time.

so i get home with my love and he immediately texts the friend that i had just been with and asks her to play golf tomorrow. something i have suggested we do 100 times and he never takes me up on the offer. she just happens to be essentially out of work thus no plans tomorrow, and, maybe, a better golfer than I. in any case...in my mind all i saw was them for three hours out on a sunny green. me in my office for seven or more fucking hours trying not to piss somebody off and being grateful that i have such a great spot. meanwhilte the two of them are cavorting. i voice my concern to him that, you know, doing a fun activity with a girl friend on a day that i feel trapped in the office and would love more than anything to do with you....it makes me feel bad about being jealous about it but at the same time i would never, ever, go do something like that with my guy friends. like, i don't have "just" guy friends any more. all my guy friends are also his guy friends. and i wouldn't hang out with them alone. certainly not for a sunny friday afernoon round of golf. i would rather do it with him. even if he had to work. i'd wait.

I know that it is 99.9999 percent my unreasonableness. but it is the age old feeling of keep your friends close and your enemies closer. she's a friend, but something about her just strikes me as an enemy. like she is the person who brings evereyone together because of her energy but pushes me away because she can be too all inclusive. like, we don't all have to do everything together all the time.

i know this is aterrible, terrible thing to say or think, but if he ever ever cheated with anyone, which i know he wouldn't, it would be her. but it would be all her. at least 90%. there is literally no one else on the planet that i worry about. ugh who knows. i contradict myself with every word. if i'm so sure, why is my stomach in knots?

the point is, at least in part, that i understand i'm being unreasonable, but that is just the way it is: unreasonable. I never told him not to go with her, but i made it clear i am not happy about the situation. thus, if he does go, he will feel bad about it. but i just don't think that it is proper for a person to go do some sort of special "acitivty" with someone else's boy/girlfriend (or fiance for that matter)... and it was as much the way he got all excited about it as anything. like it suddenly struck him that someone else had the day off tomorrow and the only person that mattered was her.

ugh. i make myself sick; at the same time, what am i supposed to do? Be like, go ahead baby, go spend the day with another girl. sure.

jealousy is there for a reason i guess. maybe to destroy. but maybe partially to protect.

was this me?

wow

and then, just like that, a couple of months later, i met him. my bear. my lovey. my right hand. my heating pad. my force.

and then there were kids.

i think i need to address this issue with myself. children. the whole thing really freaks me out. from the bodily changes to the birthing process to actually having to deal with a screaming pooping little being 24 hours a day reallllly freaks me out. i have utmost respect for the mothers of the world. i really do. procreation is the most selfless act that one can perform. it is exponentially so because i just don't get it. maybe the maternal instinct hasn't kicked in for me yet. but it just seems there are so many other things to do. its also one of those things, like, if i were to find out i couldn't have children it would be a devastating, life altering event and i probably couldn't recover from it. who knows. but i guess i'm just not one of those twenty-somethings who is pining for a baby. i have myself. i have my fiance. i am so happy just with him, i don't even want to rock the boat. i suppose in time that might change.

but then...i look at his sister. her kids seem to be tearing her marriage apart. or something is at work. the fact that the kids have them tied down and they can't chnage things to try to make the marriage work. that is scary. the permanence of it. that you have to, like, stay in one place and have long term goals for the sake of your children. it is a beautiful thing. just extremely scary.

so i get scared. like what if i never want to have kids. heck, what if i do? that is even scarier. Like, it almost seems kind of the easy way not to have kids. why deal with the challenge? probably most parents iwll tell you it is the most rewarding thing of life.

and then there is that whole "carrying-on the genes" or "carrying-on the name" thing. and like, at one point, what do you do if you don't have kids??? who takes care of you? but what if you raise them and they hate you and don't take care of you?

can i just say...

how sad it makes me that so much of my life has gone unrecoreded over the past two years. it has been such an amazing, fulfilling, life changing period of time. perhaps it just wasn't an appropriate subject for excessive analysis. anyway, i should make a better effort. i feel like i say that every few months that i check in.

i used to be sooooo into reading the blogosphere....there were so many that i was literally HOOKED on...just stuck on people's lives and experiences and reading and seeing what different kids were all about. these days, i just can't find any that pique my interest. or that are work appropriate ;)

oh, the holidays

So... Christmas dinner erupted into an argument about my priorities after my mother insisted that I go to church tomorrow in lieu of going tubing on the mountain with my best childhood friend. Apparently, I am not in my late twenties but rather my late teens.

Like, I get it. I get her religiosity and her committment and her passion. But my priorities are not her priorities and I am well passed the ripe old age at which she should have stopped imposing same on me. Most particularly when I went to church last night! ...and really, are we going to argue about this at the Christmas table? garrrr...these are the things that push me away. I had a striking realization sitting in my childhood church last night....that it had taken a frighteningly long time to get to where i am...a place that i am not devoured by guilt for not holding the same religion as my mother, but still understand and accept its precepts and in a general sense try to live my life in a certain moraled fashion. On the other hand, it took a lot of years of guilt and struggle and tears and fear to get out from under a strict religious upbringing.

it is interesting and perplexing how they (she) have accepted my relationship with my now-fiance...there is not a hint of religion in his life accept acceptance and understanding of my own confusion. this is the first relationship of my life in which my mother has not tirelessly judged and questioned the male's commitment to her (or similar) beliefs. Maybe it is because he is just so simply and genuinely good in a way that no amount of religious commitment can create. I mean, heck, my heart is darker and more conniving times 10 than he could ever hope to be and he was not raised on a 2x per Sunday and once on Wednesday church routine.

In any case, it sure felt good to vent to him and to you and to write again. sigh.