From Ariel, noted to make later.

Cake
1 18.25 oz pkg yellow cake mix
1 pkg vanilla pudding mix
4 eggs
1.5 C strawberry mix

for the strawberry mix
1 pkg frozen strawberries, thawed
.75 C water
Put this through the blender

For the glaze:
the rest of the strawberry mix
1C sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

mix cake ingredients, pour into bundt pan prepped with Pam for baking. Bake at 325 for an hour. While that’s baking, cook the glaze on medium until reduced, the entire hour (gentle boil for the last 5 minutes).

Stab cake repeatedly once out of the oven with a skewer. Spoon on the warm glaze. Enjoy!

7:39:25 PM Ariel: It’s simple, and with no oil, relatively healthy too
7:39:28 PM me: So simple, and so awesome.
7:40:26 PM Ariel: I took a rum cake recipe I had, and just played with it until it worked
7:40:57 PM me: Can you do essentially the same thing with all fruits for the glaze?
7:41:03 PM Ariel: As one of my friends is allergic to alcohol, and as such I had to figure out something to do for her birthday that’d be awesome
7:41:23 PM Ariel: Yep. Normally I use peaches, but you could probably try cherries too, or raspberries
7:42:14 PM me: my mom has a thing for cherries. the boyfriend has a thing for mangos. Both of those came to mind. :D
7:42:42 PM Ariel: *nods* Mango would probably work quite well
7:43:06 PM me: that’s what I’m thinking.
8:15:20 PM Ariel: Apple and pear, probably not. It has to be a more liquidy fruit, although if spiked with apple cider it might work
8:16:11 PM me: That makes sense. I was thinking of replacing the water with mango juice, too, with the mango idea.
8:16:32 PM Ariel: *nods* Yep. Bolthouse farms mango lemonade maybe?
8:16:44 PM me: oooooh, that’s a good idea!
8:16:57 PM Ariel: I could drink that stuff by the gallon :D

Next week the boyfriend and I are taking a trip to Kansas City, MO for a concert. We’re stopping Thursday on Saint Louis for a night with my Aunt Lisa and her awesome husband. I’m stoked. I’ve been craving a road trip, and the boyfriend is stoked because we’re going to see his very favorite musician (on his birthday).

This is what our trip will look like (so far).  This week Zeus gets an oil change. And a good deep cleaning.

I have to admit that the difficulty I had with resolving this problem was probably self imposed, but it’s taken me a good 5 or 6 hours of research and reading to come to a very simple solution, so I figured a post was in order.

Short version of the problem:

I wanted to be able to have each post type (specifically Category in this situation) display as its own page on the site (which WordPress does on its own with a category-post link) on the Navigation Menu (which is also possible in combination with the Pages). There are a few plugins that say they’ll make it happen, but I couldn’t find anything that worked exactly the way I wanted it to. I spent a bunch of time researching page templates and thought about creating a different one for each category in an attempt to hack together my own way using The Loop, and to put it simply: it just wouldn’t work. I was convinced I was missing some huge link, and was staring at an obvious solution.

Not surprisingly it came down to the simplest of solutions ever: an .htaccess redirect.

I created a Page with the title I wanted to use (to make it show up in the menu), and then redirected to the category page.

Redirect 301 /$PageName http://example.com/archives/category/$CategoryName

… duh.

Much thanks to Ipstenu for the Aha! moment.

He knows me from my Pagan days. Knows me as a child of Draconis and Eris. Knows me as someone to poke fun as Christians in specific, and religions that believe in a single god in general, and not really care that I’m stereotyping.

“I don’t believe in God.” He says, after hearing that I go to church every Sunday, and have for more than half a year. I immediately want to defend myself. Don’t lump me in with all of the rest of your Christian friends! I haven’t reverted! I’ve gone forward!

Instead I say “Why not?” and hear exactly what I hope to, and it tells me we’re still in sync, he and I.

“I believe in a power greater than myself, but I won’t call it God because I don’t presume to be able to comprehend and contain in a single word something so much bigger than me.” (<3<3<3)

Yup. All of that. And so much more.

There’s a huge whirlwind of thoughts in my head that cover everything from religion in general and my faith in specific, to my thoughts about what removing the emphasis on streamlined beliefs and belief systems could do for humanity. I think I’ll let it percolate a bit more before bringing it out for public discussion (which is as much a part of how I operate as anything else).

But man. What a ride the last year has been, inside this little head.

This is my response to Ipstenu. I thought it would be interesting to you folks:

“Funny enough, I had a very similar situation. I’m dating a boy who is very traditional with these sorts of things (which is a first for me).

I work a shift that is typically 2-4 hours earlier than him, so I am almost always up before he is. I took a snow day the day of the blizzard, but the next day I had to the office. I got up, bundled up quietly, and headed for the door. The boy’s older sister was at the house that morning, and gave me the most incredulous look when I told her my plan to shovel my car out. That set the tone, alright.

I went out and cleaned out the snow and drifts around my car and the ~15 feet out to the alley, went back and showered and went about my day. While I was shoveling a couple of the older guys (both mexican) around where he lives expressed disdain because I was out there, and the boyfriend wasn’t. “He takes care of me, but I’m certainly more than capable. I don’t need him or any other man to take care of me.”

That night, the boy tried to yell at me for doing it myself. “You should have gotten me up! I would have taken care of it for you!”

I tempered my inner strong-willed woman, and came at him with logic. “Listen, we need to get this thing straight. I will never be the kind of woman that asks you to do something because I’m ‘not supposed to’ according to society’s gender stereotypes. You can do all the ‘taking care of me’ that you want, without being asked. You open doors for me, and take the trash out, and protect me from the crack heads without being asked. That’s awesome. But I insist that I always be able and willing to take care of myself, too.”

He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. “Okay, fine. But you don’t have to do it alone. Next time wake me up, and we’ll do it together.”
__

It’s definitely bred and cultivated into many cultures, still. The boy is second (maybe third) generation, but the predefined roles of women and men in his family are still very strong. “