Cooking

The word Cooking is loaded with implications in my life right now. When one thinks of the word, either a positive or a negative reaction follows. Either you are the type of person who doesn't love to cook, and the thought of reading a recipe and putting together a complicated meal makes you tired. Or you like to cook, and the idea of letting some inevitable combination of oil, a meat, and either garlic or onions or both sautee while you chop fresh vegetables gets your mouth watering for the end result, so much so that you decide to get up off the couch and make it happen. Fortunately for me, I am the latter type of person, although it would be a valid point to admit that right now it is I on the couch, and my wonderful husband in the kitchen, chopping and sauteeing away, creating what in twenty minutes will be a wonderful almond chicken dish with glazed broccoli.

The word cooking also applies to two other aspects of life, particularly the two I'm experiencing right now, the first of which being school. This is my last semester of classes (besides voice lessons that I'll have to take all summer still), and it's dawning on me that come Fall, I will no longer need or have to be at school- I will be graduated. On one hand, this comes as a shock, seeing as how graduation has been my long-term goal for the past six years. And on the other hand, it's ABOUT DANG TIME!!! I've been trudging away at every semester- chopping the theory core, marinating the voice lessons, and pureeing the general education classes to combine into what will undoubtedly prove to be a delicious outcome, yielding six servings of satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment.

The second other experience relating to the word cooking is slightly more apt- I'm referring to my pregnancy, of course, and the little tiger who is currently tapping out morse code for what I'm sure translates to, "Please sir, may I have some more?" on the inside of my stomach. I'm six weeks away from my due date, and after hearing comments from five people in my life who have delivered a baby in the last six months warning with a laugh how "everything changes" once you have kids, I feel like the last almost-eight months have been the cook time indicated on my recipe.

Children:

Prep time: 1 year of being newly married

Cook time: 9 months

Yields: 18 years of everything being "different", dedication, commitment, and if you added the ingredients correctly, happiness. Serve hot, and enjoy.

As I said before, I am the latter type of person concerning the matter of cooking, and it's always the part right before you finally combine all the ingredients, when everything smells so good that I get super hungry, and at 34 weeks I'm kind of nearing the end, so BRING IT ON baby!

I mean...bring on the baby!!!

The Amazon?

I can't believe I'm actually writing up a blog post- I never do. I'm sitting in my living room, after having done laundry, cleaned, dishes, eaten, read, and caught up on all my favorite TV shows online. Well, technically, the last load of laundry is still in the dryer, which takes me to the Amazon. Our clothes dryer is perfectly functional, however the air duct system in our building is not, leaving us to resort to an external box that filters lint and puts the warm, humid air into our apartment, instead of in the wall. This is somewhat troublesome in the summer, but in the winter, it's great. I turn off the heater and the humidifier, and let my dryer do the work, plus I get double mileage out of the heat I'm already paying for to dry my clothes. All I have to do is crack a window or two, and it equalizes to a lovely, just humid enough temperature for my comfort as a singer.

Introducing a slight problem- Greg and I recently insulated our three very leaky windows with plastic insulation from Home Depot- the kind that you tape to the sides and then blow dry to shrink the plastic and then they actually look pretty good. However, now I can't crack any windows- and unless I want to risk the entrance into my apartment of one of either the stray balls, stray cats, stray kids that are abundant in the halls outside my front door by leaving it open, I am, for the time being, living in an apartment with an identical climate to the Amazon.