Epic Accomplishment: Cooking for Diverse Tastes

Wow, so last night I felt like I accomplished some kind of "Initiation"... or "Coming of Age"... or "Right of Passage"—are they all the same thing? .... yeah, I guess they are. And let me preface this by saying that is was a positive experience. Crazy, but positive! So basically last night my wife and I teamed up in the kitchen to make, not one, not two, not three, but FOUR meals last night for a full house. Why? Well, because we had a group of people with some diverse tastes, that's why.

First off was the homemade pizza, using a recipe that I've been using for several months now that is perhaps one of the best homemade recipes I have ever tried. It is simple, requires no waiting for the dough to rise, and only takes about 25 minutes in the oven. The recipe: 

- 3 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1 .25 oz packet (or 2½ tsps.) of active yeast
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 2 Tablespoon vegetable oil (though I usually use canola)
- 1 cup of warm water (110° - if you don't have a thermometer I usually adjust the faucet water while my hand is under it and wait until it is clearly getting warmer than my hand's temperature)  

Mix the dry ingredients, then the oil and water until dough forms. Roll out, add sauce and cheese (I recommend Sargento 4-Cheese Pizzeria cheese... it's MAGIC) and place in the center of oven at 375° for 20-25 minutes. Voila!  

For the sauce I used my family's recipe that we've been using for a very, very long time, involving tomato sauce, browned ground beef, oregano, parsley, garlic powder, and sugar/maple syrup to taste.

So that went into the oven. Check!

Next up... My famous moist and tender pan-made chicken!

Throw 1 tablespoon of butter and some olive oil into a skillet and let the butter melt. Meanwhile take a thawed chicken breast and dredge it in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and garlic powder. Toss into the skillet and let the bottom cook for 1-2 minutes on Medium heat. Flip over, and cover skillet and let cook for 15 minutes (don't peek!). After 15 minutes, turn off the burner but leave the chicken where it is, still covered, for another 15 minutes. Afterward, lift lid, cut into chicken and make sure it is cooked through. If all goes well, you should have yourself a perfect slab of moist, tender chicken!

Along with this we boiled up some frozen corn and peas.

Next meal: Simple chicken noodle soup! Basically we just tossed some Chicken bouillon cubes into boiling water with noodles and let boil until the noodles got soft.

Finally: my Aunt Bonnie's brownies for dessert. The bestest homemade brownies in the world. Quite literally, I should think. Annnnnnd I am very sorry to say that I don't have the recipe on hand, but I will get it and post it on here soon, because you really must try it.

So yes... FOUR meals! The kitchen was a glorious mess with a deep aroma of mixed smells of herbs and spices and Italian and chicken and chocolate. Oh yes, and I almost forgot, at the end, along with the brownies, we decided to go for chocolate overkill and make my wife's homemade hot chocolate recipe—yes, you guessed it... "one of the best recipes in the world."

And then, of course, at the end was one of my favorite tasks: taking an impossible mess (which, the kitchen literally looked like one) and cleaning it allllll up!

So yes, it was Epic. And now I feel like I have an idea of what it's like to run a littlest tiniest mini-restaurant.

The Fight to Kill Myself

So, yeah... so it's been quite a long while since I have posted on this blog... It may have something to do with something really insignificant and silly that happened. Something that's called, ohhh, I dunno...

GETTING MARRIED!

This is not actually me and Julia. We're standing
behind those doors glaring out at you from the
shadows.

What?? Yeah, that's right. This past June, on the 20th, I was, at what felt like very long last, married to my bestest friend of all of forever, Julia. And you can read an earlier blog post on how we met. Unless I didn't write such a post. In which case... You don't even know anything. But I'll try and fix that at my earliest inconvenience.

So, yeah. Marriage. We are approaching our fifth monthiversary, (pretty crazy that it's already been almost half of a year, where does the time go?) and in these first few months, my wife and I have come through a lot, and learned a lot.

Here's the thing: Thankfully because we are best friends, we had no preconceived notions that marriage was going to be Rainbows & Butterflies. We were not one of those couples that elderly married folks like to chide as being the head-in-the-clouds, you-will-complete-me-and-we-will-be-happy-forever type... which, sometimes I wonder if those couples even really exist... Anyway, thankfully my wife and I escaped with very few elbows to the ribs accompanied by the smug cliché "Just wait 'til the honeymoon's over, Heh-Heh-HEHHHHH" remarks. Which is good because they might well have made a sudden but inevitable acquaintance with my fist (I mean seriously... Why do you have to do that? Why do you have to say that? When someone says that I always immediately want to respond "Well, I'm so sorry to hear your marriage is apparently so awful." Anyways, I digress). No, we knew marriage would be difficult. Heck, just take a look at the divorce rates in the United States and you'll become very conscious of how hard marriage is.

But admittedly—and as anyone genuinely wise and helpful will tell you—knowing intellectually and experiencing actually can be very, very different. Honestly, the best advice I ever heard going into marriage was summed up in this phrase:

Marriage is a beautiful tool used to perfect us. But we don't become perfected by asking what's in it for us. We become perfected by being self-denying. Sacrifice our wants and needs every single day in order to prioritize our spouse. Is it difficult? Oh, you better believe it is. See, I knew this going in. Both of us did. So at least we were "ahead of the game." And I'm glad for that! And I do think it is so very important to be aware of that going into marriage. But it is so important to also remember that knowledge is often times a poor substitute for experience. It reminds me of how almost every mother I have talked to has at some point told me that she knew the ins and outs of having a baby and raising the him or her. She had all the books, she had all the DVDs, she had all the tips and tricks given to her by friends... but when the time actually came each of them admitted that nothing really could have been enough to truly prepare them for the experience (and that applies to the negatives and the positives). And it works very much the same way with marriage. Sure, read the books, watch the DVDs, talk to the counselors, go to the seminars, talk to married couples. All of that is a good idea. But just remember there is a point at which learning intellectually will no longer be of any help, and experience will be the only way to truly learn.

I experienced this very profoundly recently. For a few days I was struggling with something my wife was doing (something not bad in and of itself). I would try to just ignore it. I prayed about it. And here's the interesting thing: intellectually I kept thinking to myself, Remember, it's not about me, it's about her! Essentially trying to remind myself that true love is self-sacrificing. But even though I kept thinking about that intellectually, emotionally I just "could not" embrace it. So, one evening last week I promptly sat her down and, to put it bluntly (though, I'd like to think I said it with some measure of care), I gave her a list of things that she was doing that were affecting me negatively, and asked her to come to a compromise with me. One of the (many) problems with how I handled this was that, because I let my emotions get in the way, I ended up coming across more like I wanted her to just change herself for me. Go beyond compromise, and just change. Period. And because that's how she processed what I was saying, it hurt her very deeply. We went to bed both upset, and as we lay there I started to realize a very deep guilt, like I had just done something terribly wrong. I hugged her and said "I'm sorry, I have no idea what I'm doing." She echoed the same back to me, and we fell asleep.

This is the very pond. And that's Julia up there. But this picture
is not from the day I'm describing. This is from a couple months ago,
when we still loved each other.

Psyche.

The next day we walked down the street to a giant pond near us and sat on a bench. We just wanted to get out, and we had books in hand ready to just relax. But as we got closer to the park, I could tell something was wrong. We sat down and watched a ginormous flock of Canadian geese swimming around in the pond, and we talked. She was still feeling hurt by what I said. For a few minutes, my emotional defenses started to go back up... until the feeling of guilt was just overwhelming. Something was wrong. And finally it hit me.

Remembering that my responsibility in this marriage is not to change my wife... but to change myself. It's not my responsibility to make her change to meet my needs, but for me to change to meet her needs.

Now, does this mean we should never speak up about anything and just take all the dirt that's thrown at us? If a husband or wife is being oppressive, careless, ignorant of your feelings, etc., are you supposed to just keep your mouth shut and take it? No, I personally don't believe so. I believe marriage is a partnership. I believe marriage should involve openness and honesty. Summed up: marriage should involve COMMUNICATION. But of course the key to that is also how you communicate. And here is where I failed.

Rather than me getting a hold of my emotions and being able to just calmly lay how I was feeling before my wife and asking if we could come to some sort of compromise, I let my emotions take control and I blew the whole thing out of proportion and ended up hurting her.

A dear friend once told me, "You will experience fewer things more scarring than when you say something that makes your wife cry."

He was right.

And so, as I realized what I was doing, I just suddenly stopped talking, and leaned my head back, and told my wife that I had forgotten one of the key things about marriage. Self-denial. Self-sacrifice. Changing myself rather than trying to change her. And being so careful with her feelings. We just sat there and hugged for a while and then began to walk back home. On our way there, I didn't say much. My eyes just wandered about. I felt upset over my failure.... But also a small, little goblinoid voice in my head said "But it's not FAIR! I want it to be about ME!!!"

We got home and I decided to go out and do some grocery shopping and give my wife some time to herself while I took some time for myself. While I was out, I thought long and hard about everything, felt a little better, but still bothered. When I got home I found my wife sitting on the couch, writing in her journal—I knew it was about what had happened—and she looked up at me. I could tell she was still having trouble. We talked some more about the situation, and my emotions started taking a hold of me again, but rather than saying anything I knew I needed to withdraw into the kitchen and clean for a while and work on dinner. Every once and a while, as my eyes drifted across the doorway into the kitchen, I could see my wife down the hall peaking at me around the corner, and then going back to what she was doing. After I got dinner in the oven, I sat down in the dining room and started to write down some recipes. Eventually she came down the hall and approached me cautiously, I could see deep concern in her eyes. "Hey," I said. After a few moments of silence, she asked, "Are you mad at me?" to which I immediately said "No! Of course not." (because I wasn't mad at her; I was upset over the circumstances, but I wasn't mad at her). As soon as I said that she broke down in tears, and at that moment...

Nothing else mattered to me.

Selfishness was gone. Goblinoid voice was blown to smithereens. I felt like such an idiot-jerk, but in the best possible way. And I jumped up and hugged her. It was so stupid. The whole thing was stupid. I was stupid. The end.

Now here's the thing: because of how scarring it truly is to cause your spouse to cry because of something you did or said... multiple times in one argument... it would really be preferable for it to never have to go that far for me or you to realize how selfish we are being. But granted... in the beginning it may be the best way. I mean, let's face it, when you first start out, you are going to be a heckuva lot more stubborn, your heart is going to be a heckuva lot harder. And so in that there is almost a rather frightening warning:

It is really frightening. But true. What will it take? Your spouse crying? Your spouse not talking to you for a while? Your spouse needing time away from you? Divorce?

Too much is at risk when we make marriage about us.

It's not worth it. No matter what that goblinoid voice in your head tells you. It's only worth it if you're some sadistic monster who gets pleasure out of hurting people you love and who love you. But again, I can say all I want on this subject to you, but in the end it's more than likely going to come down to what happens, how you learn, when you actually experience it.

My wife and I are only a few months into our first year of marriage, and we are experiencing what it is like to live in such close proximity with someone who is different from ourselves. We are already learning so much, and I know we've got a long way—Lord-willing—to go yet. But we knew all this entering into marriage, and yet we still went through with it. We've made an agreement, a commitment, to spend each and every day learning to love each other unconditionally, learning to deny ourselves, and allowing God to use this process to bring us closer to each other, but also closer to Him and who He is. We'll go through the heartaches, and the tears, and the anger, and the huffing and puffing, and we are going to work hard.

Because both of us know marriage is worth it. Marriage is worth killing our self-will for. Marriage is worth fighting for.

So... get out there, get'cherself a spouse, and kill yourself!

...well.... not literally, of course...

The Double-Edged Sword of Being Servant-hearted

While my fiancée and I obviously are not married we definitely feel like we are in a lot of ways based on the kind of experiences we have already run into—and we don't deny that God is already weaving us together; I mean, come on, honestly, do you really think God waits until you say "I do" and then He's like "Oh! Okay, now I can finally work you two together!" Maybe it works that way for some, but certainly not us. Anyway, I digress... It's said that one of the reasons why marriage can be so difficult is that it causes you to look into a mirror and come face-to-face with the reality of your own shortcomings. And that has certainly been happening a lot throughout my relationship with Julia.

One of the personal problems I have come to discover about myself stems from my primary personality trait. My primary personality trait is to be a servant. Now, someone may read that and think that is an excellent quality to have, but the problem is that it has some very negative side effects... if I let it. And of course, being a human being... I let it, pretty often.

One negative side effect in being "servant-hearted" is that, while I take pleasure in serving others... I don't really let anyone serve me. Not because I pridefully don't accept charity, but instead it's a fear of inconveniencing people. It's a strange assumption on my part that someone would be serving me out of obligation, and not because they genuinely want to do so. Which, of course, is very silly of me. It almost seems like an assumption on my part that I am the only person on Earth who takes pleasure in serving and that surely no one else does. 

Julia actually "lectured" me on this a few days ago—which, I am glad she did—and made a very good argument that is helping me to try harder at allowing others to do things for me. She told me that she wants to learn to be more servant-hearted, but if I don't give her the opportunity to do so, how will she learn? So of course I couldn't argue with that and had to bite my lip and allow her to do something for me :)

There is another negative side effect, and this is the one that has the potential to be more dangerous. Other fears I have when it comes to relationships with other people are as follows:

1. I don't want to disappoint people

2. I don't want to upset or hurt the feelings of anyone

3. I don't want people to look down on me or reject me

How can these fears manifest themselves in my servant-heartedness? Well the way in which I have seen them play out the most in my relationship with my fiancée... is that I don't let myself be entirely open with her. If I have messed up, or if something related to her or something she did affected me negatively, my fear of hurting her or being rejected by her causes me to keep silent.

This is bad. Very bad. And for several reasons. First off, she and I made a commitment pretty early on in our relationship that we wanted to always be open and honest with each other, no matter how much pain it may cause. So when I let my fears control me it causes me to break the promise she and I made to each other. But the greater danger this character flaw has is that it can very easily turn into "Beachball Syndrome."

In the ocean, or in a pool, if you take a beachball and push it down underwater it's not going to stay there. In fact it is going to explode up and out, like a volcanic eruption. Suppressing my openness and honesty with Julia can (and has at least once or twice) eventually lead to emotional "eruptions", which can cause more pain than the pain that would have been caused had there been openness and honesty in the beginning. Now... just in case you read that and get worried: they weren't angry eruptions. It was more me getting super-explosively upset.

That's one of the reasons why Julia and I made the commitment, because we knew that, while being open and honest has the potential to be painful, the pain is always short-lived and you work through it together, pretty easily. However, pain that is the result of an eruption because of suppressed emotion... that can be a little harder to work through. Thank God in the couple times it's happened, Julia and I have worked through it.

One of the things I am trying to do is put myself in Julia's shoes. If I knew she wasn't being entirely open or honest with me about something, even if it was something that would be painful for me to hear, yeah, I would feel a little hurt. So I have to remember that. A lot of this, between the serving others thing and being open and honest thing require me to slip out of my shoes and into the other person's and think about how I would feel were the roles reversed.

I know this is going to be a tough lesson to learn, but I am determined to learn it! If I truly care about Julia, I will fight to learn.

TraDITIONNNNN!!!...TRADITION! - Part 1

(If you're cool you'll know what I'm referencing in that title... Okay-okay-okay, you'll be cool even if you don't)

Tradition is a very big deal in my family. And it pretty much always has been. None of us are totally sure why it became such a big deal, but it did, and still very much is. In fact, funnily enough, it has become so integrated, so normal in our lives that when we talk to other families that don't have similar traditions (usually holiday-related) it shocks us.

My family is very tightly knit. We may all go our separate ways but we all always end up back at home for one reason or another. Or no reason at all. I am the youngest of six kids in a family total of eight. Of course now, with my oldest brother and oldest sister having kids that number is now significantly larger. But in the immediate family we are eight. Mom, Dad, my brother Tim, sisters Sue, Bon, Ruth, Sarah. And then there's little Joey (of course, as my siblings will be quick to point out, at 5' 11" and 185 lbs. I am hardly little anymore). As I have mentioned before, I am 25 years old. And almost all of those twenty five years were spent in one house; the house I and my parents still live in. This house is home. It always has been. It's where all of us return. Where we gather together. Where we share laughter, discuss everything under the Sun, share burdens, and of course we talk about each other behind each others' backs (I had to add that lest you think we are some perfect family :-D) But no matter what we go through, no matter what problems have arose between us, we all always come back home.

Because we have been so tightly knit, we have always done so much together. Sure we have had our divisions, but we have always done a lot together. A lot of it is in the form of family traditions.

Traditions are very important to my family, because traditions make things special. They set certain time periods of the year apart from the average day. They become something work toward, look forward to. And, of course, as you may have guessed from such a large family... we love any excuse to come together and eat good food.

We have holiday traditions, seasonal traditions, and other crazy little traditions. And many of them are old-fashioned; heck, a lot of our ideas came from books about old-fashioned traditions. So, I thought it would be fun to name just a few of our favorite traditions. Starting with probably our two most favorite...

Saint Patrick's Day

Perhaps you were expecting Christmas Day to be at the top of the list? Well, it comes close... But, yes, honestly for many of us in the family this Irish feast day has become the greatest family tradition we have ever kept. Maybe it's the fact that it is so perfectly timed at the beginning of Spring, when everything is feeling fresh, and new, the beautiful green colors are returning, everyone feels so much lighter, and happier, maybe even reborn after the long cold days of January and February. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but there is just something about this holiday tradition that, to me, anyway, is unparalleled. So... What do we do? How do we celebrate it?

Well, we start by preparing the house itself. The interior and windows get decorated with green streamers, leprechauns, pots of gold, shamrocks, and lots of green stuff. Morning and afternoon are spent preparing for the dinner—which is homemade Irish stew, the BEST STEW EVER, and Irish soda bread. The stew, in particular, sits in a pot on the stove cooking slowly all day, filling the house with an incredible aroma, while Celtic music plays from CDs or Pandora. Then the whole family gathers together, some of us talk in Irish accents, my brother Tim supplies us with Irish jokes that always make us laugh or groan (usually makes the parents roll their eyes), and we sit at the table, Mom recounts the tale of Saint Patrick, then we feast on stew and bread until we are bursting at the seams. Celtic music is still playing in the background this whole time, by the way. Dinner is followed by shortbread and strawberry shortcake. Usually at some point the kids all go outside in the dark (I usually follow) and play games while the adults sit around the table with full bellies and mugs of coffee, maybe a glass of Irish whiskey, or Irish beer, and discussions arise going in all sorts of directions, pretty much a free-for-all as it usually is when we're all together. Sometimes before the night is over we will break out some card games or board games as well. It's just perfect. Great food, and then just unwinding.

Christmas Season

Here it is, finally. Of course you notice I don't name this section "Christmas Day". That's because for my family Christmas really does last the entire season. And even the season itself is much longer than probably a lot of people celebrate it. As long as I can remember, Christmas season in my family has always begun before Thanksgiving. Yes, that's right. Honestly, some of us in the family begin listening to Christmas music in September. But Thanksgiving week is when it really comes into full blossom. We have had a long-standing tradition of actually decorating the house for Christmas a day or two before Thanksgiving. There is just something perfect about waking up Thanksgiving morning, Christmas decorations glistening all around, the smell of turkey hanging in the house, and the traditional Thanksgiving morning breakfast: Egg McMuffin sandwiches and hashbrowns, while we watch the Thanksgiving Parade on the television.

Our early Christmas spirits have only been aided in recent years when radio stations near us started playing non-stop Christmas music in early November.

Every day during Christmas season really does seem special, at the risk of sounding cheezy. Christmas decorations all over the house and the radio, playing Christmas music, on all day long. Then we get to December, at which point in the early days we go out tree-hunting and then bring it home and put it up. Every year since we were kids my parents have always gotten each of us a new decoration every time, and the decoration usually, though not always, has to do with something big that happened in our lives that year. Then those decorations are the first ones hung up on the tree, and then we shower the rest of the tree with decorations. Now this, and most of the following traditions are not ones we do altogether, but they are ones we do separately with our own families (passing it on to another generation).

A couple weeks leading up to Christmas, we bake an abundance Christmas cookies that get stored in containers and frequently set out on the table on a huge tray when the family comes together.

We also watch Christmas movies almost every night of the season.

Then comes Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve is perhaps the most exciting day of the season, because you feel the excitement of the approaching day, and everything seems to be getting quiet outside as people start settling down in preparation. Just as with Thanksgiving, the scent of turkey baking fills the house while Christmas music plays. Then in the evening we have turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and vegetables. Then, after dinner, another long-standing family tradition takes place. Again, as long as I can remember, we have had the family tradition of, every Christmas Eve, Mom and Dad give us an early Christmas present of new, fun pajamas. But that's not all. In order to get these gifts we have to go on a scavenger hunt. Mom writes out clues on pieces of paper and hides them around the house (and sometimes even outside in the night) and we take a flashlight, follow and discern the clues, and eventually find the loot. Then we get in the pajamas, gather in the living room with all lights except the Christmas lights off, get out a large tray of cookies, usually get hot chocolate, and sit by the fire and watch the classic A Christmas Story. After that is bedtime. Now, back before I was the last one of the kids at home, we also had the long-standing tradition of all of us kids would sleep in the same room that night. And we carried this on up until the very last one of us. We'd all be piled on the beds and floors in one of the upstairs rooms and usually watch TV shows or movies until we all passed out from exhaustion.

Christmas morning... Well... we used to get up super super early, and actually it got to the point where Mom had to tell us not to come in and wake them up before a certain time. However, in later years as we all got old and tired (like you do), it ironically got to the point where the parents had to wake us up. So, we'd wake up, go out into the hall where full stockings would be hanging, grab them, and then go into Mom and Dad's bedroom, sit on their bed, and open the stocking gifts. While doing that, Dad would usually slip downstairs, start the coffee makers, turn on the Christmas lights, and put on Christmas music.

Then we head downstairs, sit on the floor around the tree... and then the most torturous thing we had to do (specifically when we were kids) was take turns opening our presents. Yup. In my family there was never any ubiquitous ravenous tearing and shredding of wrapping paper... we had to go in turn, so that everyone could see what everyone got. Which was torturous as a kid... but at the same time it was fun in its own way because it made it last longer.

Following that, we'd gather at the table where breakfast was served (a breakfast called "flippers", which is essentially just fried bread dough, dipped in syrup or powdered sugar, served with various breakfast meats), and spend a few hours just laughing and talking. Then eventually go back in the living room, gather up our gifts, plop on the couches, and just go through and admire everything.

Now, in recent years because members of the immediate family have separated to start their own lives and families, what happens now as that at some point during the day the family will come together where we will continue the gift-giving and eating (left overs from Christmas Eve).

In the Past, Christmas still didn't end with Christmas Day. For us it extended until the New Year. When we were kids we would actually stay in our Christmas pajamas the entire week, wake up every morning and head for the living room and just sit on the couches all day looking through our presents and watching movies.

Christmas truly is a Season to us, not just a single day of the year. Every day of the season is just as fun and special as Christmas Day itself.


New Year's Eve and New Year's Day
The year always ends with a great big fun bang. New Year's Eve is the day upon which, if we haven't already, all the presents we have been leaving in the living room have to go into our rooms, and we all finally get out of our pajamas and back into regular clothes. Then the day is spent preparing for the—you guessed it—feast. The New Year's Eve feast is probably the most perfect way to say goodbye to the previous year and hello to the new one. The menu? Homemade meatball sandwiches, cream of broccoli soup, chips, sour cream and onion dip, pickles, crackers and spray-on cheese, and pull-apart/monkey bread for dessert. The difference between this holiday and others is that generally we don't all eat at the same place. Usually people eat in the living room, watching the Pre-Ball-Drop show, or scattered around the table, or leaning on the counters in the kitchen (which is where I usually end up). As always, we talk, joke, laugh, and usually act all 'round silly. And yes, everyone stays until Midnight. Leading up to then we usually break out some board games or card games until everyone is half-asleep... then we eat more food to wake us up. Then at 11:59PM we gather in the living room in front of the TV and watch the ball drop. With the advent of the New Year, most of us rush outside, grabbing pots and pans and wooden spoons along the way, and then we clang them and shout as loud as we can. We also take pennies that have the previous year number on them and throw them out into the darkness. After spending literally ten or fifteen minutes clanging and hollering, we make our way back in the house... and eat some more. Then everyone's usually passing out by 12:30 or 1AM, so we call it a night.

The next morning we wake up to, as with Thanksgiving, Egg McMuffin sandwiches, and usually sit in the living room and watch the New Year's Day parade... but not always... because most of the time we really don't care all that much to watch a bunch of hungover clowns (literally) dancing with umbrellas to the song "Golden Slippers"....

Then we usually conclude the day with leftover meatball sandwiches, relaxing and enjoying ourselves one last time before entering into the rush of the New Year.



Well, there are plenty more traditions to write about, but I think I will save others for a future blog. I look forward to sharing the others, and I look forward to passing these traditions down to, Lord-willing, my family. To me, tradition is just such an integral part in keep a family close together, which is something I think we need in our families now more than ever. So I hope and pray these traditions we pass on to our kids will only spread and continue through generations to come :)

Pike Place Roast: My New Favorite Coffee

So I was walking around the ACME Supermarket a few weeks ago and I wanted to get some new coffee. Specifically I wanted to get a Medium Roast coffee. And the reason I wanted to get a medium roast... CAFFEINE.

Normally I get Dark Roast, because I like to have something that will really give me a punch and wake me up. Because Dark Roast has more caffeine in it....

Or so I thought.

To my surprise, as I read an article about types of coffee on the Internet, contrary to what I thought, the darker the roast the less caffeine is in it. Whoa. Mind-blown. Because I did not know that. I don't know... for some reason I just assumed the darker it was the stronger it was and therefore the more caffeinated it was. But apparently not. But that wasn't really a big deal to me... because I actually was discovering that most of the dark roast coffees I was trying really did taste like cigarette smoke. So, I was excited to try something new. So I went to ACME and browsed through the medium roast coffee. I specifically looked at the Starbucks brand coffees. I saw many traditional ones, like original, or breakfast, and such. But then my eye was caught by the more 'exotic' ones. And my eye first locked onto Starbucks Medium Pike Place Roast. Now, obviously that doesn't really sound exotic, but it's exotic in that it's not a simple name like Traditional or Original or Breakfast Blend :) So... I grabbed it.

A few minutes later I was home with it and getting it ready in my French Press, which—thanks to Julia—I now prefer over automatic drip coffee, though I usually use the latter more often, just because it's honestly simpler. But when I have time I will use the French Press. So, a few minutes after that... I was sipping the best coffee I had ever had in my whole life. Seriously... I don't know that I will ever buy another coffee again.

Okay, maybe I won't go that far. Because admittedly I have not tried the other Starbucks medium roasts. So... maybe there is one even bettererer!

Whoa... I think brain juice just droozled out of my ear at the that of that possibility.

Recipe: Con Queso Casserole

So, a few weeks ago I devised a new dish that I wanted to try—though I'm sure someone else has thought of it. Last night I finally got all the ingredients needed to make it.

I present to you Con Queso Casserole!

Now, what I made was for a 9x9 pan, which serves about 2-3 people. So this recipe is based on that. You can adjust as is needed.

Ingredients

3 Cups of Noodles (Your choice which kind, I used rotini)

1/2 lb.Ground Beef

1/2 packet of Taco seasoning

1 Cup of shredded sharp cheese

1 Jar of Salsa Con Queso (15 oz.)

Preheat Oven: 400°

Cook noodles for about 10-12 minutes until al dente or soft. Strain water. While noodles are cooking, brown ground beef in skillet, breaking apart thoroughly. Drain grease. Then follow the instructions on the Taco seasoning packet (if making the amount I made, only use half of the water and half the seasoning listed in the packet's directions) and mix together with beef. Once noodles and taco meat are finished, in a large bowl mix together the noodles and meat and pour in the jar of Salsa Con Queso. After stirring for a few moments, pour into greased lasagna pan. Spread shredded sharp cheese over top. Place in the oven, middle rack, for 15 minutes. Remove and serve.

The result should look something like that pictured above :) Now, in my humble opinion... this was DIVINE! I definitely want to make it again. However, if anyone has any ideas for heightening the epic-ness of this dish, I am open to suggestions!

I hope you enjoy!

Depression... and My Furry Friend

So, parts of this post a probably going to sound like a "Oh boohoo" Dramatic Hallmark movie post... But I don't really care. I'm just going to post it how it is. Because this is my story... this is what I remember.... when I lost all that I had... and there was only one person that was there for me...

My imaginary friend. Mr. Furries.

Psssssych. Not really. Of course now you're probably upset because you were thinking this was going to be immensely entertaining. Well... hopefully it still will be :)

No, I didn't lose everything. And I didn't have an imaginary friend.

However, I will be honest and say sometimes it felt like I didn't really have anything. There were several factors to this. I hit a point in my life where I was at my lowest, in my relationship with Christ, in what I was doing with my life (I was unemployed for one thing), how I perceived my self-image (I was over 300 lbs. at the time, and as much as I just wanted to be okay with that, I wasn't), and then of course feeling the ever strangling grip of Loneliness as far as my "love life" was concerned. All of this threw me into probably one of the most deep emotionally dark wells that any human being can experience.

Depression.

Very few people knew I was dealing with it, and those that did (mostly a couple family members) didn't even know to what extent I was experiencing it.

It was one of the most difficult seasons of my life. You know, recently I read the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. The theme of the book? All is vanity. Solomon, having strayed from God, was in the darkest lowest point of his life, and he didn't hold anything back. Reading it, I was able to totally empathize. That was what I had felt during my Depression. All was vanity. Nothing mattered. Everything was hopeless. I would steal a few moments of happiness here and there, but those moments always came to an end, they never lasted. So whenever something good happened to make me feel happy, I would almost immediately inwardly start despairing. "Why am I getting happy?" I would think. "This is not going to last."

I tried restoring my relationship with Christ... yet for every step I took forward I felt like I would dive seven steps back. I wanted to have purpose for my life, but because of my damaged relationship with God (or at least what I perceived as a damaged relationship) I had no motivation to find purpose. I tried to lose weight, and tried hard, but to no avail, and eventually lost energy and motivation to even try. I tried to muster up courage to try and connect with the opposite gender, but found that all the women I went after had the annoying habit of either being engaged or already married, or just several decades older than me (okay, maybe not several decades), and of course aside from that my self-image was very low, therefore my self-confidence was low.

To sum it all up? It was a horrifying time in my life. "Horrifying" is honestly the best word I can use to describe it. No one could help me in the long term, God was distant and angry with me (which was not true, but that's how I perceived it) and I was angry with Him because if He didn't want me to fall into sin than then why was He allowing me to do so? He's in control, so I He can stop me, but yet He's not. So it's His fault.... Even though deep down I knew this wasn't true. Horrifying time period.

Now... There were many things that helped me survive this time period. But there is one that, last night as I was thinking, really had one of the bigger impacts on me. And it might not be what you'd expect. Or it might be.

There was some"one" that was always there, throughout all the disaster, all the horror. Some"one" who gave me such happiness (and entertainment) when I most needed it. Some"one" that, in a lot of ways, felt almost like a best friend... or maybe even weirdly enough a "sibling."

Are you ready for this? Can you handle what I am about to tell you?

.....

This is my cat. This is Jean. And she is by far the best cat, the best pet that I have ever had in my entire life. So now you're wondering... am I a creepy cat person? Well... all I can really say is that I probably am not as creepy as some, though the way I talk about them would probably come across as otherwise to the onlooker. Oh well.... maybe I am a creepy cat person. I do often treat them (Jean, especially) like a person. I talk to her and most of the time I think she can understand me, she just pretends that she doesn't :-D I believe she can think. Annnd of course I do personally believe she will have some part in Heaven/the new Earth.

Some animals really have strong personalities. Well... let me tell you, Jean has strong personality. She really does. And it makes me laugh, no matter what mood she is in.

Jean, like most cats, believes she is the center of the universe. She is the queen. We humans are her servants. And other cats are foreigners that intrigue her... but overall they are beneath her and are subject either to her ignorance or her taunting and abuse (any new cats we bring into the house... either she just sleeps and pretends to ignore them, or she chases them incessantly around the house). Now Jean goes into moods where she forgets that she is the queen. You start petting her, you start playing with her, and she relishes it. Buuuuuut then suddenly she remembers that you are a servant and decides she does not want to enjoy what you are doing. So she strikes with gnashing teeth and claws.

The only thing that she doesn't mind no matter what mood she is in is using the human lap as a human bed. She never turns down an open lap. And I mean never. If you are just sitting there minding your own business and you have nothing on your lap... consider yourself about to be used, majorly.

As you can see from the pictures... Jean is... well endowed. She is.... blessed with great abundance. She is...... fat. She puts Jabba the Hutt to shame. She is a mass. But that all goes with her personality, and what I love about her. She is often a grumpy, lazy, self-centered pig. But... I still love that about her.

Everything she does, everything she is, entertains me. Sometimes all I have to do is look at her and I start smiling or laughing.

And that is the very effect she had on me during those tough years of my life. No matter what she did, whether it was forgetting her royalty and purring as I pet her and played with her, or getting irritated with me and slapping my hand for daring to touch her with my filthy servant hands. It all made me smile, made me laugh. It would make me laugh that, whenever I went to the bathroom or took a shower she would sit outside the door and just wait for me to come out. That early in the morning she would decide it was time for me to be up and start reaching her white paws underneath my door and crying. And of course she has one of those insane ninja skills that most cats seem to have. You look all over the house for her, call her, rattle the food can for her, but she is no where to be found. Then a few moments later you feel the hairs on the back of your head stand up... and you turn around and there she is, just sitting there, calm and quiet, staring at you, almost as if she has always been there and wondering with amusement what you were doing wandering all over the house.

The other thing that makes me laugh about her is how she pretends to be graceful and agile, when really... she's not. Whenever she jumps up on a surface, she always just misses a complete landing and instead catches the side with her claws and tears away frantically and nervously, trying to pull her hugeness up. She tries to perch and even sleep on surfaces half the size of her mass and seems bewildered when she falls off suddenly.

But sometimes when she causes a disaster it is not due to her inagility (I just coined a new word there)... it's due to her royalty, and all things are subject to her. Often times she will jump up on my entertainment center or bookshelf, and move in such a way that objects start falling off. But she will totally act like it's an accident and just sit there and stare at the objects as they fall, pretending to wonder why things are falling off. Then, as the surface is clear, she will walk around in a circle... and then lie down (usually knocking a couple more things off in the process as she splays herself out).

Another interesting habit she has is that she likes to sleep on paper. Annnd it doesn't matter what size the paper is. It can be as big as a newspaper or magazine... or as small as 1x1 inch ripped piece of printer paper. If it's on a bed or the floor, she will lie on it.

She also every once and a while suddenly gets very hyper. And she will suddenly run around the house, scraping the floors with her claws as she moves frantically, and the sound of the scraping only drives her more insane as her ears go back and her pupils dilate. She will attack random spots on the ground, like microscopic stains in the wood or the carpet. Then... she notices a furry snake following her every move behind her. She stops. Gets a very crazed look in her eyes. The fur on her back starts to stand up. And then... she flips around to attack her tail and chase it in circles. Finally she flops over on her side and is able to catch her tail in both hands and then pulls it to her mouth and chomps down, which causes her to cry out and growl, most likely assuming that the "furry snake" is what is causing her pain.

Also, she likes to go in the bathroom and jump up on the lid of the washer and wait for someone to come in. Once someone enters... she will do everything she can to stop you from leaving. She'll stare at you and cry, and if you try and walk by her she will reach out and swipe you with her paws.

She also has a tendency to act tougher than she actually is. Usually it's with other animals. Like kittens, cats, or even puppies... and sometimes even mice. She will arch her back, bush up her tail, and growl, acting as fierce as she can. The thing is.... most other animals (including fellow cats) really don't take her too seriously. My sister and brother-in-law Sarah and Andrew have a cat that they bring over often. Jean will do just what I mentioned, act menacing. But their cat... well... she just doesn't buy it. So... she usually walks right up to Jean and presses her nose against Jean's. This totally freaks Jean out and she will suddenly take flight and frantically scrape the floors as she runs away. I have seen animals much smaller than her chase her around the house.

Another thing she does is if there is a cup of milk, and the milk is really low in the cup, she will sit in front of the cup and reach her cutest little paw ever deep down, dip it in the milk, pull it out, and then lick her paw, and it is pretty much the cutest thing you will ever see. Even people who don't really like Jean think that she is cute when she does that.

The cat has gotten outside twice, accidentally, but by her own choice because she wanted to explore this big new world out there. But both times I think all the "breath" outside frightened her (I don't think she knows what wind is), and both times I found her trembling under the porch, pupils completely dilated, and fur all roughed up.

One time my sister Sarah and I tried to give her a bath.

It didn't go well.

Oh, and she hates the chemical-y smell of flea gel, and she actually even remembers what the container looks like. You have to hide it behind your back, walk up to her, pet her until she gets comfortable... and then when she's least expecting it squeeze it out on her lower back. And immediately she knows what's just happened and she will then run all over the house all insane-like.

If you make a pfff! Pfff! sound with your mouth and hold your hand out, she thinks you are spraying something at her and her eyes will tremble and wince as if she's getting something in them.

One time—this is kinda gorss. Yes, gorss—she actually got infested on her back by fleas, and they bit her so much and so bad that she lost a lot of fur on her back and her skin got all brown and green and dark red and bumpy. It was SO GORSSSSSS! But we took her to the vet and they injected her back with numby-no-itch'em-stuff so she couldn't feel it. SO it eventually got healed. But the funny thing is—and all this happened several years ago—even now, many, many years later, her back is still extremely sensitive, so if you start scratching it she will start purring like crazy and start licking herself uncontrollably. As soon as you stop scratching, she will stop purring and licking. It's really funny. Okay? You don't even know.

She also likes to sit like a human being sometimes. Or Jabba the Hutt, depending on how you look at it. Excuse me... her.

One time my friend Bob was over at our house and he was eating a slice of pizza. Jean decided that he should not have that pizza and that instead she should have it. So she hopped up on his lap, stepped up his chest, reached her paw into his mouth and literally pulled out the bit of pizza that he was chewing on.

It seems even now that a day does not go by when Jean does not do something that is either thoroughly adorable or thoroughly irritating... yet always, whatever she does, it's entertaining.

And that... is exactly what I needed during those tough years of Depression. Jean could always make me smile, make me laugh, make me get annoyed but then laugh because of how stupid she could be sometimes. In a lot of ways I honestly believe God used her to help me keep my sanity. The bonds some people have with their pets can be incredible. Pets are one of those extra little bonuses thrown in to make life more interesting. And yet... sometimes they can be more than that. I certainly view Jean as more than just a "bonus" in my life.

In a lot of ways... she really was my friend.


Of course, I'm talking about her like she's dead. No, she's not dead. Still alive and well and just as crazy as ever. But of course things are different now. By God's grace I eventually got out of Depression about a year and a half ago. My relationship with Him was restored, I started losing a heck-load of weight, I got a job that helped give me a sense of purpose because I wasn't just sitting around doing nothing anymore. My life really turned around. It's incredible looking back and seeing that now. Of course, as all of this happened, Jean didn't get nearly as much attention from me as she used to, but every once and a while it would be like "old times".

Earlier last year I told my fiancée about how much Jean had helped me in those darker years. Of course Julia took the opportunity to sit down with Jean and pet her and be happy that the feline was there to help me... but then of course she went on to explain to Jean that she was losing her job as my 'supporter' and 'helper'. An "occupation" transfer that I don't mind one bit.

And now, like John the Baptist... Jean is decreasing as Julia increases :-D


The other night as I was getting ready for bed, I shut off the dining room light and just before all the light flickered out of existence I caught a glimpse of Jean sitting on the couch in the living room, watching me. I smiled, flicked back on the light, walked over, and knelt beside her and started petting her. And I found myself reminiscing about how much she had helped me when I most needed something small to just make me smile or laugh. And so I started to talk to her about how much I appreciated what she had meant to me during those long years (heh, even had to fight back some tears as I was doing so), and then, as I continued to pet her, I shifted the conversation to thanking God for giving her to me; giving me a gift that was so small, yet so effective.

Jean will always be my most favorite cat, most favorite pet, most favorite "furry friend". It's not that people around me didn't try to help me with my Depression. But Jean honestly was one of the few creatures in my life that could truly afford to be with me all the time, any time, when I needed the company, and when I needed to be able to smile and laugh in the midst of being choked by the ever thickening darkness around me.

I truly do thank God for her. And I do hope that someday, if not here and now, I can convey my deep gratitude toward her, and, perhaps, in a way that she, at the very least, somewhat understands. That's up to my Heavenly Father to decide and figure out. For now, I will just continue to pet her, kiss her cute fuzzy head, and hug her tightly despite the fact that she clearly hates being hugged, and hope that maybe, just maybe, in some small way she is getting the picture.

Keeping A Hold Of The Inner Kid... For Sanity's Sake

First off, let me explain that I knew it was going to take a very particular woman to really fall for me, given my... interesting characteristics. That's why I knew it would be nothing short of a miracle when said woman would come into my life. It could only be God.

I alluded to some of my characteristics in the very first post of this blog. But here is where I will go into some more detail about this more interesting side of me. Not so much talking about the emotional side of me right now as much as I am talking about the more kid-like side of me.

"Don't stop being like a kid and being fun when you get older and married." — My niece, Kaylie

I will never forget those words that my niece said to me when she was very young. She's around twelve years old now, but at the time she said that she was probably about six or seven years old. And I have done my best to live out that request... though it's not like it's been some obligatory thing. It's really been rather natural.

I have developed a rule in the last several years, essentially reflecting what my niece said. I will grow up, yes. I will mature, yes. But... I never want to lose the fun, kid-like side of me. Because I just don't see how I'm supposed to have any fun being an adult, otherwise.

I can play the part of the "adult", yes. I can take the lead. I can go to work. I can pay bills. And all that silly stuff. I have no trouble doing that when it's needed. But I really thrive when being more kid-like.

One of the areas I like to be kid-like is my humor. I love to make people laugh (as much as I love to laugh). And I have found that something that gets a lot of my adult friends laughing is when I take on a sort of more kid-like humor. Because the fact is most of them aren't expecting that kind of humor coming from an adult. So it really lends itself to a lot of fun. Have I run into adults who felt my level of humor was much too immature and beneath them? Of course. Buuuut I just courteously shrug and say "Whatever." While I may be tempted to think those people are much too uptight... the truth is that they aren't wrong, just different.

There have been, of course, times when I have had more fun and gotten along more with kids than I have adults. It takes a very specific kind of adult to be able to really engage with me—and by the way, this is not me saying that I am some kind of special person that can only be appreciated by special people.... well.... actually... I am "special" alright... but no, what I mean is that I'm not raising myself above everyone else when I say that—specifically kids between the ages of three and twelve or thirteen.

Now of course there are some people in my life that are close friends, but they don't quite get my humor. But rather than thinking I'm "beneath" them, essentially they just shake their heads and roll their eyes but still "put up" with me and get along with me. Which I don't mind, that actually makes me laugh.

So, in what other ways am I kid-like?

Okay, so there are times when I am outside taking a walk... where suddenly (as a music composer) I start composing a track in my head. And then suddenly the kid takes over and I find myself imagining events taking place around me, going along with the music I am composing in my head. I see knights and goblins at war. Dragons flying overhead breathing fire upon the woodlands. I see a company of heroes traveling through the tall grass. And then... what's this? A goblinoid commander noticing me? Brandishing his sword and glaring at me, placing one of his iron-clad boots behind him... ready to charge? Well... how else am I supposed to defend myself but to grab the nearest stick just as he reaches me, and lift it above my head to block his furious attack...? And he obviously is not going to leave me alone. He is going to be relentless. So I am forced to fight back with a vigorous flurry of stabs and slices! Meanwhile the music in my head is taking on total EPICNESS, with brass jabs and sharp staccato strings accompanying each swing of our swords! You cannot even behold the awesomeness of the scene that is taking place. If you saw it... you would probably have no choice but to fall to your knees and weep at its splendor.

Orrrrrr you might instead cock an eyebrow and curl your lip at the sight of a quarter-century-old man in his backyard wearing not a ragged tunic and cloak and weathered boots but a Star Wars t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, and rabidly swinging a foot-long twig in the air.

Orrrr... perhaps not a mere twig.

Twinkle and Icingdeath, hanging in wait to deal lots of deaths
to many a bloody evil assailant of DOOM!

A couple years ago, my sister and brother-in-law, Sarah and Andrew, got me one of the coolest Birthday/Christmas gifts ever when I tore open the box to find replicas of the twin scimitars Twinkle and Icingdeath used by one of my favorite fictional fantasy characters of all time, Drizzt Do'Urden, a drow elf created by fantasy author R.A. Salvatore for his Legend of Drizzt novel series.

Well... suffice it to say, these two scimitars have been used on multiple occasions to fight off many an attacking foe. There was a time a couple years ago when I had just finished watching the awesome film Willow, and it was snowing outside, and my adrenaline was pumping like nobody's business. So... I grabbed the scimitars, ran outside into the deep snow, and it was still falling from the sky... and flipped and twirled and swung the blades "epically" in the dark white of the snowy night.

And then there have been other times when just in my home I have taken the swords out and sprinted through the house swinging them violently. And yes.... more than one occasion has left a mark or scratch or tear in walls, ceilings, and furniture. (However, I would like to point out that I actually was prepared to use the swords legitimately one time when I thought someone had broken into my house; I got them out and, holding them at the ready, searched cautiously every room and closet in the house).

Other than that... There have been times when I have grabbed one of my Die-Cast Star Wars vehicles, or the replica of the USS Enterprise 1701 Refit from Star Trek: The Motion Picture hanging underneath my icon-shelf... and just for literally a second or two "flew" them through the air in my bedroom, of course making engine noises with my mouth as I do so.

Another thing I do often is pretend I have superhuman abilities. Like conjuring balls of energy in my hands that can blast through doors and walls. Or have telekinesis to lift objects like cars or people. And other times if I am out and come into contact with an automatic door... I will thrust or wave my hand in front of me, as if using the Force to open the door. Or I will try and cast webs from my wrists like Spider-man.

Sometimes if I am alone in my car I will imagine I am being interviewed for some epically awesome movie that I composed the score or did the sound design for. Orrr sometimes imagine I am a stuffy-nosed pathetic sounding Politician who is being asked what he hopes to accomplish if he is elected. Or take my phone, turn on the audio recorder and pretend like I'm some weird plumber guy, or creepy British doctor, or a person with very bad English. Or sometimes if I'm really hyper I will do weird beatbox noises. Or sometimes I just make really loud annoying noises or laughs to see if I can annoy myself.


Yes. Yes... All of this is very true. And I'm laying it out there for you to see. I warned you.


I have discovered that I really need this side of me. I really do. It honestly keeps me sane in the midst of a very crazy world (the world's "crazy" and my "crazy" are very different). It has also helped me (almost therapeutically) in the past, as well, to stave off Depression.

There have been times when I have truly tried to fully assimilate an "adult" personality. I found that life extremely dull, tiring, and altogether lifeless. It just wasn't for me. Again, sure I'm not doing away with all adult qualities. But I have discovered that there really is a way to do what needs to be done as an adult without sacrificing the inner kid. If I lose the inner kid I know that I will lose a very large part of who I am.  So... I hold onto it. And thank God I have actually not only been surrounded by a family and a number of friends who really appreciate this side of me... but of course He has also brought an incredible woman into my life who understands, empathizes... and even has a really really awesome inner kid herself. In my past I have tried to engage in a relationship with women who neither shared nor truly understood this inner-kidness. But because, at the time, I was so desperate to be loved, I actually began to pretend to be something that I wasn't. And after a little while I realized I didn't like who I was having to pretend to be. And realized that if I couldn't be loved for who I really was, then it wasn't really love, just a very distant resemblance. And I thank God He helped me realize that. Because little did I know at the time that "the One" was waiting for me, who not only understood this part of me, but admired it and shared it herself. It was incredible when I discovered that I truly could be myself with my fiancée, Julia. And not only did(/does) she love me for who I am, but I found that the more I was myself, the more she loved me. Heck, the night we began our relationship (February 14th, 2012) I told her I loved her (with her permission). She told me she didn't feel like she could say it back just yet, that I had to woo her first. Now, in my mind I'm thinking about dates, flowers, love letters... but after a few days of merely talking over GoogleTalk... she suddenly told me that she loved me. I was taken aback, and said "But I didn't even do anything!" to which she replied "You were just... yourself." And that was enough :-D

So... given the circumstances of the kind of man that I am.... Yeah... I knew if I was ever to find a woman who could love me for who I was... it could be none other than someone sent by God :)

The Simple Things...

I think one of the big things I have been discovering in my relationship with my fiancée is that you really don't have to go all out to make things special. Sometimes smaller things can be truly more personal and more, dare I use the R-word... romantic *wolf-whistle*. Yes, every now and again it is fun to just splurge and not really worry about the money and just have a good time. Julia and I actually did that twice this year. And they do definitely leave an impression in memory.

But I have found that the times that have truly had more meaning to the both of us are those times in which we have done more simple things.

For instance, here in this part of the East Coast there is a chain of convenience store/gas stations called Wawa Food Markets (I know... that name is... very special). Wawa has its own specific brand of coffee. And most of the time it is very good. My personal favorite coffee drinks are their cappuccinos. And specifically during the Fall/Winter is when they have my absolute favorite cappuccino, Pumpkin Spice. Anyway, I digress.Wawa has coffee, and it's usually good. And it's also a great price. And Julia and I have developed a habit of just driving to the nearest Wawa late at night and picking up some coffee and then going for a drive. So simple, yet it's one of our favorite things to do. Usually what happens is we end up getting into these really fun or even serious conversations, over a cup of coffee.

We also sometimes will just go for a drive during the day and just pick random roads and see where they take us. Usually I will pick ones I've never been down before and just keep driving until I see something I recognize.

A few days after Christmas, she and I had one of our more memorable "simple" date nights. And it wasn't totally planned. One evening we had the need to get out and do something active, like taking a walk or, as I suggested, going to the nearby park and just swinging on the swing set or something. We got to the park... only to get out of the truck and be greeted by the cruel biting gales of Winter. So we turned around and got back in the truck and decided... to go for a drive and look at houses decorated with Christmas lights. We picked one town and just zigzagged through all of the streets for over an hour, all the while listening to Christmas music and looking at all the houses while engaging in some very deep discussions about family experiences. We got home a couple hours later and both of us could not get over how amazing something as simple as that had been.

I have had a lot of fun in those times when Julia and I have gone to see a movie or gone out for dinner or something, a lot of fun... But there was something much more beautiful about taking a drive around a town drowned in Christmas decorations while sharing memories and thoughts about Christmas and our families.

Don't underestimate the simple things. Because it truly is those things that you end up remembering more fondly.

.....Annnnd this whole post sounds like a heckin' Hallmark commercial. Great. Securing my manliness for generations to come....

"Fatigue" Is Just A Polite Way Of Saying "I'M DYING!!!"

Okay, perhaps I am making it more dramatic than it actually is. But still, there is probably nothing more irritating than feeling tired all of the time. I have been dealing with this for a very long time, actually. Probably almost three years now, if I am remembering correctly. It first started to truly blossom when I hit my era of depression, but even though I got out of that... the drowsiness has clung to me very tightly.

There are probably only a handful of times throughout the day when I don't feel sleepy. Thankfully I rarely feel the drowsiness when I'm at work, thanks to the fact that my job is physical, keeps me on my feet and moving all day. But it will hit at lunch break when I am stationary for thirty minutes. Usually I will get a second wind when I go back to work, but then when I get home it will hit again. The next time I get some life back in me is usually somewhere around 9:30-10pm, and usually I can ride that wave until bedtime around 12:30 or 1am.

Essentially, early on in this struggle of mine I was determined to not waste time, so basically what I do... is just fake it. Fake that I am really not tired, and I do things that I don't totally have the energy to do, but it's like... I refuse to waste time. Wasting time sometimes feels like the worst thing that I can do in my life, because yeah, while life doesn't end here on Earth, life here is still precious. So I fake it. Almost as if to hopefully trick my body into thinking it really isn't drowsy. Sometimes it works. Sometimes. But not often. It works most successfully when I am with other people, like Julia, or members of my family. It's a lot more difficult when I am alone.

But it seriously is one of the worst feelings you can experience. Because there are very few things that are worse than something that sucks away your energy and prevents you from being able to do anything so that, essentially, all you want to do is lie in bed all day... though, you realize that wouldn't help anything because that only makes you more sleepy.

Reading online I found that there are several things you can try. Perhaps changing up one's diet (I have never been a big "greens" eater, though not necessarily because I don't like them but just because I don't really think about getting them). I already drink tons of water every day. Adjusting the amount of hours one sleeps (I have tried multiple times with this, ranging from nine hours to five hours). Exercising (I already do this). And cutting down (or out) caffeine.

Now this latter one I haven't done, and perhaps it's something I may have to try. It's going to be difficult because I really like coffee, a lot. But at this point I am desperate to try just about anything if it means getting more energy. So I think I will attempt to cut down on coffee as well as increase my intake of greens.

If anyone has any additional tips please share them!

Ohhh, The Things We Do For Our Women

I don't like seafood.

I made that expressly clear in the early stages of my relationship with my fiancée. So, of course, what did her girlfriend ears translate that to her brain as when I told her?

He must have some seafood.

It was actually quite interesting, kind of like a psychiatrist she asked me several questions about why I did not like seafood. My answers were that I did not like the general texture of seafood, I don't like the smell of seafood, I don't like the look of seafood... in short: I don't like seafood. What did her ears translate that to her brain as?

MUST. Have. Seafood.

Though, to her credit, she did ask me if she could, perhaps, persuade me to try some. To which, at the time, because I was all googly-eyed over her (heh... as if I am any different now), I reluctantly said "Yesssss...." So... my very first in-person visit with her in March 2012 we went to a restaurant called Top O' The River... and she had me try some catfish.

I will admit... it was okay at best. Definitely not something I felt the need to eat a lot of, but I could see myself having it every now and again.

Since then I had escaped any further attempts by her to get me to try seafood. Almost made it through the year... until this last visit over Christmas break.

She's lucky I think she's so dadgum purdy...

On the night of her last day here in Jersey I took her to a local Italian restaurant called Venice where I ordered lasagna, which... was out of this heckin' world, I will have you know. Seriously, I can be pretty biased when it comes to lasagna, because I love my family's recipe so much. But this... this was absolutely deevine. And Julia...? Well... Julia got spaghetti and clams. I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. There she was, eating it up, when suddenly she locks eyes with me, and holding me in her stupid irresistible gaze asks...

"Do you want to try some?"

At first I thought I could reject the question, I gave a simple "Nah..." But of course, with an almost puppy-dog like glare from her blue-grey eyes she remarked:

"You're not even going to try it?"

Stupidstupidstupid. How in heck's sake could I refuse that. Plus, in saying that she reminded me that, as a cook I do make it a point to try anything and everything at least once. I mean... how do I know I don't like it if I don't even know what it tastes like. Sooooo, reluctantly I received the clam-laden fork from her, and popped it into my mouth.

Look at it. Look at it, I say. Disgusting, isn't it.

As I remarked, as I chewed it.... It was... interesting. The taste itself wasn't too bad. But the texture was pretty disgusting. It felt like chewing on a piece of rubber, or a wad of bubblegum that you have been chewing for way too long. Plus there was this little imagination in my mind... what if it suddenly started moving and wriggling around. I almost gagged, but kept control and swallowed it with an awkward smile.

It really wasn't bad. Just such a weird texture. All seafood has such a weird texture. Sheesh. Maybe if it wasn't so weird to eat I would like it.

Anyway, I am sure a lot of guys are shaking their heads reading this, knowing or remembering full well what it's like to be in this kind of situation where you really don't have much hope in refusing a request from your woman to try some type of food that you really don't want to try.

Ohhh, the things we do for our women.

If heaven could be contained in food...

By the way, this is a picture of the lasagna. And yes... it was every bit as amazing as it looks. Why chew on rubber when you can have this, I ask. Why? WHY!?

I don't know.

But this I do know... I don't believe my attitude toward seafood will change anytime soon. Though, of course, that won't stop me from trying it... because I know I'm going to try more of it.

She will see to that.