you & me could write a bad romance?

Well, I'm in a Carrie Bradshaw mood today, so I'm going to write about relationships. I started thinking about this after listening to "Love the Way You Lie" by Eminem & Rihanna. I've never been an Eminem fan at all, because I find him disgusting, but I oddly like this song. Yes, it's violent and masochistic, but I still like it for some reason. And obviously, a lot of other people do too, because it's at the top of the charts.. but why? Are we a self-loathing society?

But I don't think we are, I think we're attracted to the extreme passion in the song. For some reason, passion=romance.. even though it's violent passion. Hopefully most of us can't relate to physical abuse, but I think that the abuse they sing about can symbolize emotional abuse, which most of us can relate to in some form. And for some reason, we're attracted to this Bad Romance. We want the kind of romance that no matter how bad things get, we still need each other and can't stay away. It's nothing new.. think Romeo and Juliet. They were forbidden to be together, but ended up dying for each other. Not the healthiest of relationships. Or what about the Notebook? We all remember when Noah said, "So it's not going to be easy. It's going to be really hard. And we're going to have to work at this every day. But I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, every day."

That kind of thing gives us a rush, makes us believe that such a romance can exist. But the reality of things is that when a tornado meets a volcano, something's gonna go wrong. Lady Gaga wants your ugly and your disease.. or at least she thinks she does. I think that an actual disease might be manageable. But what about those that are emotionally shut-down? How do you deal with that one, Lady Gaga?

That's the opposite end of the spectrum: the passion-less. While too much passion may be explosive, the lack of is just as hurtful. The match might be perfect on paper, and you might look really good together.. but the deeper you dig, the more problems you find. Maybe he's only with her because it's easy and convenient, or maybe she just can't be alone. I think that's why our divorce rate is so high. People get married before they've ever had to go through a hard time, simply because that person was there, and seemed like a good match. But then when that time comes, they can't deal. They find out that they weren't really in love, they were in "conveniency like".

I don't know about y'all, but that's not good enough for me. I consider myself to be a somewhat passionate person.. I do what I love, and I don't hide my emotions. But even I put up a wall sometimes. I spent several weeks recently blocking out certain parts of my life, and while it did make things easier for the time being, those things never disappeared. I've still had to face them, and it honestly feels better to hurt than to feel nothing at all. I feel sorry for people who are so emotionally closed off that they can't feel. And I think that it happens more often than we realize, to people that we don't expect. That girl with the new job and house that seems to have it so together might secretly be afraid that she'll never be able to let her guard down. And she would probably trade it all for that happiness.

But at the same time, I don't want the kind of passion that Eminem sings about. Let's be honest, we don't love the way you lie. I, for one, hate being lied to. If you don't, then you should probably seek help. I want to love and need someone, but I don't want to hate them too. Or want to set them on fire. Surely there's some happy medium between burning your beau, and being bored with your beau?

and life goes on..

Ugh. My hard drive on my Mac crashed. I lost everything. EVERYTHING! It's mostly the pictures and music that I'm upset about. Supposedly I can reverse sync my ipod and get my music back, so that's good... and most of my recent pictures are on facebook. But still.. finals start Thursday, so this could've happened at a better time. I'm having to do this at the library, so double ugh. There's not much I hate more than the school library.

Anywho, I have been cooking a bit lately. Nothing terribly complex, but cooking just the same. I tried the Maestro method with steak the other day. As in, used the same butter that they do. Which is butter mixed with truffle oil and rosemary, all of which I just happened to have(seriously). Rub that all over the steak, and cook, either on a grill or on the stove (which I did since it was raining). I made a baked sweet potato and a delicious greek salad, and voila! It was fab. The key to a good greek salad is what olives you use. I usually use black, but this time I stepped it up to kalamata, and it made a HUGE difference. So much better.

Other than all the computer crap, there's not much going on in my life right now. I never know how much detail is too much in the blog world. I'm not one for keeping secrets or anything, so I'm pretty open about things. I don't know if people who read my blog (yeah, I know about those 2 of you out there) really care about the minute details of my life, but then I figure if you're reading this, you're either really bored, or interested. So I guess I'll keep on dishing.

But like I said, I'm at the library, so it's not somewhere I want to be for long, plus I'm tired. Ciao!

my bucket list

Yesterday I was on my way back to Auburn after a lovely 4th of July with my family, and for some reason I decided to make a bucket list. So here goes..
1. Live abroad for some period of time. Hopefully I'll be living in France for a few months next year, so this is no prob.
2. Legitimately learn to fluently speak French. Yes, I'm on my 5th year, but I still stink at speaking the language. I want to really be able to speak it and communicate, and then pass this on to my children.
3. Learn to effectively shoot a gun. For some reason, this has seemed important to me recently. I need to be able to defend myself, I'm an independent woman. This may also involve joining the NRA.
4. Open a successful restaurant.
5. Go to Europe and just go with no specific plans. Definitely not by myself.
6. Learn how to ballroom dance.
7. Be in the audience at Saturday Night Live.
8. Buy a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. I know I'm trying to be less materialistic, but this is a long-time dream of mine. Totally worth it.
9. Plant a garden of fruits, vegetables, and herbs.
10. Fall in love with a God-fearing Southern gentleman who makes my knees weak.
11. See the Northern Lights.
12. Go to every Disney park in the world.
13. Have kids and be a great mother.
14. Name at least one of the above children after a Harry Potter character. Currently, it would be Lily.
15. Attend culinary school.
16. Learn to be more spontaneous.
17. Snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. Not dive, because I'm not that intense.
18. Learn to see the good in people and appreciate the small things in life.
19. Be in Ireland on St. Patrick's Day.
20. Finally have my own horse.
21. Have a restaurant review published.
22. Sleep under the stars at least once.
23. Kiss Taylor Lautner.
24. Learn how to make coffee finally. It's the one thing I can never get right, ironically.
25. Eat at a restaurant with multiple Michelin stars.
26. Go on a blind date. Just once.
27. See either Britney Spears or Lady Gaga in concert.
28. Be able to be that person that tips outrageously well.
29. Drive across America with friends.
30. Win some kind of contest.
31. Stop worrying about unimportant things, such as what other people think.
32. Watch the sun rise on a beach.
33. Live in a way that other people know what I believe.
34. Go on a Mediterranean cruise.
35. Attend some Olympic event.
36. Attend Fashion Week in New York.
37. Go back to Egypt.
38. Learn how to sail.
39. Actually finish some sort of workout plan.
40. Learn to be happy whatever the circumstances.

That's all I got for right now, but I'm sure there are a bunch more that I just haven't thought of yet!

la vie est belle

Once again, it's not really about cooking today.. it's just so hard to be motivated to cook for only myself.. knowing I'll be eating the leftovers for the rest of the week. Omelettes are about as much as I've done lately.

However, yesterday I did get an amazing opportunity to go to Atlanta with a couple of my friends, Brittany and Jessica. Brittany's gotten involved with this ministry called SafeHouse Outreach in downtown Atlanta, so I went to see what it was all about. It's an outreach to homeless people, but not really a shelter. They provide counseling type sessions, and have worship services and food every night. I got the opportunity to meet a lot of the staff, and it was really cool. One of the guys that does counseling now is homeless himself (he lives in the SafeHouse). John told us his entire life story, and let me just say that nothing that's ever happened to me even comes close to his better times. His father was a coke dealer and his mother was on heroin. From there, his life just continued to spiral downward, and even when it seemed like things might get better, something horrible would happen and he would end up homeless again. I guess I've always kind of thought that if you work hard, you'll be successful, but John was living proof that this wasn't true. He has a college degree which he worked his butt off to earn, and through a long series of events, still ended up homeless, and even in jail at one point for asking for a sandwich.

But he wrapped up his story by saying that he had been through all of that to get to where he is today, and where he is today is exactly where he wants to be. He gets to help people and he gets to wake up every day excited about his job. He said, "the people who work in those skyscrapers always look so sad", and that really made me think. I've become a very materialistic person, exactly the person society wants me to be. I've wasted so much time and money in my life on things that bring me temporary happiness, if you can even call it that, when all along I don't need anything for happiness. This man has almost nothing to his name, but he loves people, and he gets to show God's love to them everyday.

I'm not saying that I'm going to stop buying things, but what I want more than anything is to experience the joy that this man had. And I know that to do that I'm going to have to completely re-evaluate my relationship with Jesus. I've really let that slide over the past few years, not just because of college (not that it helped). I've just fallen into the way of the world; not being bad by any means, but certainly not pursuing a growing relationship with Christ.

So perhaps this breakup wasn't such a bad thing. I think right now I just need to get things right with God, and then maybe in the future I can concentrate on a relationship with a guy.

After all, everything happens for a reason, right?