Lately:

I have not written in here in sometime. I was on a streak of overloading this poor blog with with weepy, womanly feelings but lately I feel very protective of my emotions. Like I want to keep them inside of a little nest, bound together with old bits of twine, held tightly together deep under my sternum. Not because I don't feel feelings anymore, but because for some reason I want to keep what is mine, mine. Just for now. Probably in a few months I will resume pithy dribble. Back to regularly scheduled programming.

Ok there is one thing that is mine but that is so nice it should also be shared with the world, maybe. That thing is love. And it's warm and gooey, like diving into a bowl of your grandma's best macaroni and cheese and eating your way back out again. It makes you feel content and satisfied and happy and small. Like you would do anything for your love. Like you would struggle a little in the beginning because in the end it will be worth it. It's definitely worth it.

Just watchin' some 3D flick about dinosaurs...Jurassic Park!

I Love Him:

Love:

Keeping a record of your life that you can look back on later means that you punctuate each entry with good and bad. Life is good and life is bad and sometimes it's neither, sometimes it just is. It's easy to write about the sad, the melancholy because that's what rolls off the tongue best. What's not as easy is to write about the good stuff, the happy stuff, that stuff that makes your heart burst because the whole time you are writing you are worried that when you finish your sentence the happy will be gone, it will have disappeared just as quickly as it came.

But this time I'm not so worried, this time I'm not so concerned about the happy going away because this time I don't think it's going to go away. The thing that's making me most happy in this very moment is this person that I met, this person that I fell in love with. This person is witty and kind and says things like "I love you" and means it. This person makes me laugh every day.

On Being Young:

The beauty of being young doesn't stem from irresponsibility or from looking the other way, turning the other cheek. The beauty doesn't come from carelessness but mindfulness. It comes from the appreciation of the random. It comes in dark, smokey rooms with your best friend. It comes on foggy, downtown streets at night. It comes through the sound of hipsters in drag wearing Lolita sunglasses playing sad surf music. It comes when the ceiling is lit up like a high school prom. The beauty is the 'being lose on the world' part, the 'liking everything' part, the whole 'world is my oyster' part.

Dear You:

Dear You,

Yesterday was your birthday, if you are reading this and yesterday was your birthday then you know who you are. I don't even know if you read this. I won't use your name because I know you don't like big, showy, public gestures. Do you remember your birthday, years ago in Albuquerque, sitting on that snowy stoop outside your mom's house--drunk as a skunk. Or my 21st birthday, you had to pick me up from Danielle's house and I forced you to buy me jewelry because I thought that's what adults gave each other for presents. Do you remember when you picked me up from the train station in Rome and we hadn't seen each other in months and you felt like a stranger but I loved you anyway. Those silly little poems I wrote for you--I meant them. Those years filled with fighting or cooking or laying in bed or walking to class or sitting on trains, I loved them too. Even though it didn't work out for us, in 6 years not a day has gone by that I don't think of you in some way. And rather than write about a new year or resolutions I thought it was better to let you know that you are a constant. Whatever strange ups and downs our friendship seems to take, I will always care for you.

Christmas Cookies with Meme 26 Years In the Making:

“These need to be thinner,” my Meme would scold as she hovered over us little girls while we rolled out batch after batch of sugar cookie dough. This dough, this special concoction that had been passed down from generation to generation needed to be paper thin as we gently pushed the old, metal cookie cutters into the yellowy batter. “My little grandma liked them thin” our very own little Meme would tell us. Tradition meant homemade frosting and thin cookies. Almost the best part about making cookies with Meme was not making cookies but the ritual of sneaking into her hall bathroom closet to pick out which apron we wanted to wear all day, aprons covered in flour and powdered sugar and sprinkles. After hours of baking we’d become tired and carless and our paper thin cookies would become thicker and thicker in an effort to do less work. Meme would catch on every time, “girls, look at this,” she’d exclaim. “These are too thick!” I was always amazed that my miniature grandma could stand for hours at her sink mixing frosting and kneading dough without complaining, without sitting down.

Life is altered so much from year to year, feelings are fleeting, relationships are fleeting. Sometimes it seems like almost nothing sticks. But one thing that never changes is baking cookies with Meme every December. For the past 26 years we have baked our way through doubled and quadrupled batches of dough, and that is comforting. Now when we bake cookies she has to do a little less standing and a little more sitting but that’s ok because we are a little less messy and we roll the dough a little thinner.

Turkey Meatballs With Asparagus and Parmesan:

Tonight I made this delicious dish--the recipe can be found over at Ambitious Kitchen.