Waking up...

Halfway through a mug of coffee with breakfast (a cupcake! Shhh.) in my stomach, I'm finally starting to come awake. Bright light is now more than a haze, it's something clearer now, illuminating the long list of things I have to do today before I can finally crawl into bed. Like most days, a third that list will go neglected, either from circumstance or an indulgence of laziness.

Most of it will keep.

There's a sharp corner pressing uncomfortably into my elbow, which I recognize as the edge of my desk, and a timer is going off with a rhythmic beeping that's actually preferable to that annoying new Avril Lavigne song (brought to me by AccuRadio). Groggy, my eyes fix on the neon pink postit elevated like a flag over the top of my flatscreen monitor. I'm supposed to email Donna, but I have no idea who she is or what the email is to reference.

It's just another fluorescent morning, brought to you with a flick of a switch.

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Set at three hundred and fifty degrees...

I love to cook. When I have a hard day at work, I usually stop off at the grocery store, pick up a few items, and have a field day with one of the cookbooks in my library. This worked out well when the Teach was my housemate, as she also loves to cook. I did play around with food blogging, but... I don't know enough. And it got annoying.

It's still fun taking pictures of food in restaurants though. More on that later.

Anyway, I can feel it. It's a Saturday of a holiday weekend (all though I'm sitting here in the lab) and the clock is ticking toward five o'clock. It's time to do something wild. Party. Go Crazy.

Break out the KitchenAid from the box it's been sitting in since I moved a week ago. I didn't mean it, baby, I'm sorry.

I'll be making three, maybe four baked goods tonight, depending on how ambitious I get. The first is Paula Deen's Red Velvet Cake, for three reasons.

1. Sideshow has about four bottles of vegetable oil in his house, and we need to find ways to use it up.
2. Who needs clear arteries?
3. It's so PRETTY!

I'm almost curious as to what would happen to her recipe if I changed the oil to that 'healthy' (read, run right through your GI tract) oil, used splenda, and used egg substitute. But what would be the point? Plus, my last baking experience with splenda was not a positive one. So half of her recipe will become cupcakes.

What will I do with the other half? Haha! You'll have to wait and see.

No just kidding. I'm making Tie Dye Red Velvet (Duh) Cheesecake, though this one I am lightening up a little. Again, the colors are pretty. Are we seeing a pattern?

The third recipe is another one I found from TasteSpotting (see link bar to right), submitted from a blog called Vanilla Garlic. I heart TasteSpotting. It is fabulous. Vanilla Garlic (the blog) is pretty good too. And the recipe is Maple Bacon Cupcakes.

I'm too curious. I can't help it. And the recipe only makes six.

Finally, the fourth course (!) will be a dozen or so grasshopper cupcakes. I don't know what the recipe is because I haven't decided yet. But no grasshoppers will be harmed in the making of this delicious treat.

Happy Saturday!

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On aspiration, philosophy, and relief.

Cause when push comes to shove you taste what you’re made of
You might bend ‘til you break, 'cause it’s all you can take.
On your knees you look up, decide you’ve had enough
You get mad, you get strong, wipe your hands, shake it off
Then you stand
--Rascal Flatts,"Stand"

If you're still reading, and wondering why I'm starting a blog post with song lyrics (when I've vowed so many times that most people who do the same should be punched in the head)... it really is me. The safety word is "Hyacinth." I have not been kidnapped, lobotomized, and replaced on this earth by aliens (or bicycling missionaries) poised at the edge of a coup against society.

It's just been a long couple of weeks.


I passed my qualifying exam, and I'm very, very relieved.

I didn't really appreciate until later what I had been thinking, while I was waiting in the hallway for their verdict, the memory of my blank silences and dry-mouth stuttered explanations fresh in my own ears: what would I have done differently? The logical answers came of course.. study longer.. study smarter.. finish the lists of possible questions I'd come up with, and then study those. But the priorities that had actually taken precedence over this plan of mine in the week leading up to the test.. my family and my friends.. were never once called into question. Not for a second did I wish I had locked myself away in a room, ignoring the people who I care most, when they needed me.

Over the last few months, the concept of success, hard work, the need to excel in my 'profession' have become more important to who I want to become as a person. But I never, ever want to be a person who puts work above the needs of those closest to them. What kind of success would that be?

The way I prioritized these things without even thinking didn't actually sink in as important until I was reading a book the next evening that Half-dozen lent me, called the five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom. Its not a book about religion, as Sideshow assumed when I showed it to him. At least, it wasn't for me. It's a book about self-reflection.

"Sacrifice," THE CAPTAIN said. "You made one. We all make them. But you were angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost.
"You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. Its not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. . . .
" . . . Sometimes when you sacrifice something really precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."

There are big sacrifices. Going to war, regardless of whether you support the cause or not, would be one. Giving up your life to your children, to really make them the first priority, would be another. And there are little ones. But whether great or small, they're made every day when we make a choice. And, relieved as I am that I passed.. I'm more affected by the knowledge that when opportunity was provided to question such a choice, I didn't. It's easy to be a selfish person, to rationalize other people out of the equation when considering my own hopes and fears. But because of this one thing.. maybe there's hope for me.

I'm very, very relieved (if not mildly self-righteous. We'll see how long this lasts.).

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Fixation...

Why do people fixate on the 'normal' progression of relationships? Here's how it goes, according to our parents, Disney, and every issue of CosmoGirl out there...

Boy meets girl.
Boy and girl date.
Boy and girl get engaged.
Boy and girl get married.
Rugrats soon to follow.

What about the things before? In between? What about the people who don't fit this paradigm?

People go on and on about the divorce rate in America, and how it's so high. There are a lot of reasons for that.. education, for example. More equal treatment in the eyes of the law and society. Access to alternatives (doesn't it sound cold, referring to a 'new relationship' as an alternative?). And so on. But I also wonder how closely it correlates with the number of people who force their relationships into this timeline, when they really have no business doing so? And why do they expect other people to do so, too?

I think there's a huge gap between a sensible outlook, and a desire for social conformity. And I've seen it both ways. I've seen women (and men. JUST as many men) go on and on about how they want to get married some day, how they want to find their soulmate and raise a family. And I've seen men (and women) go on diatribes about how they don't believe in marriage or they have no desire to rush into this social dynamic just because people think they should.

Both camps miss the point.

It's not about 'getting married.' It's about who you are or are not marrying. A judgment that you want to be married or you never want to be married is complete bullshit, because a marriage (and the decision to get to that point) isn't a solo act. It takes two people. What you're really saying is that YOU do or do not want to marry that person, regardless of their own feelings. You're just trying to spare yourself the guilt of hurting theirs.

Marriage is not about 'completion.' Sure, there's something to the idea of soul-mates I guess, as people who match you so well it's startling. But I don't think this is just one person. What kind of evolutionary mechanism would that be? If it were the case, believe me, population problems in this country and globally would be non-existant. But if one significant other sees the other as critical to their identity as a whole person, well, doesn't that make love less than altruistic? They become needy of the other person. It's in their interests, not in the interest of the relationship, to keep the other happy. It's selfish. And what happens when both parties change, as so often happens? Rather than develop into his or her own person, the needy spouse now has to conform to what the other has become. Can we say resentment? No wonder the divorce rate is so high...

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Prodigal daughter. Or something like that.

The nice thing about a blog is, when I neglect it, it doesn't bug me. It doesn't complain that I don't call, write, or email. It doesn't nag about how we never do anything any more, or about how I didn't even notice it's new shoes. Or whatever.

So, in appreciation of how GradAdventures is still here, unvisited, unused, and taking up its own measure of space on the 'internets' I might just give it another go.

I'm back from vacation (see posts to come) and back to work, with my proposal due on Monday and my qualifying exam set for May 15. Last year, 5 our of 6 people failed.

I don't like failing.

Hopefully, it's not too late to make up for a year that was lacking in motivation. Who needs sleep? I just slept more than twelve hours a day for a week. God, it was great.

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