Creating Stories - Negroni - LOVE

This is not a Valentines story. I want to be very clear about this. I am extremely loved and taken care of on a daily basis. I want to keep it that way.

This, my friends, is a story about love, friendship, courtship and a long caring relationship that creates countless stories.

Oh yeah and a love potion - a cocktail  recipe like no other.

This is our anniversary.

The proximity to Valentines Day, was unintentional. Our wedding was in the middle of a road trip, on a Mexican beach, barefoot, with family surrounding us. It was simple, it was perfect. We were living out of "Goldie" the van, climbing and biking our way across North America with our trusty side kick of a dog.  His ring was purchased from a sweet little Mexican street vendor and my beautifully simple dress was found at a beach shop in a perfect little beach town.  It was love not fuss. It was a party, not once was it stressful. It was beautiful and I watched J cry and knew this is for real. 

These past few years have been amazing, full and meaningful. These past few years we have created wonderfully wild stories that we will tell our kids and then grandchildren. These stories will explain why we most likely will limp, have creaky joints, numerous scares and sun spots. Our bookshelves will be lined with first edition climbing guides and pictures of forest, oceans and trails. With relatively few married years that we have together our stories are deep and rich and I look forward to many more that lay ahead of us.  I have a new sparkly ring that sits next to the one given to me on the beach.  It signifies where we started and where we are going.

Love for me comes in the form of a red bearded, Irish Pop Eye, southern gentleman who can do ANYTHING.  I am inspired by his zest for the outdoors and his natural yearning to play outside. I try to keep up and I learn so much in the process. Our lives together has made me a better person and naturally a better athlete. He has learned patience because I like to move like a sloth while he darts around like a hummingbird. We work it out.

Our adventures, love, future plans that include more wild adventures are the things that make our lives meaningful together. We don't let things gather dust, continue to make exciting plans, and weekly dates as we battle through hardships and challenges but come out on top at the end of the day (or at least by the end of the week). We talk about having little ones some day.

Our love comes in the form of longing gazes across a crowded room, a passing kiss while moving about the house, faith and trust in each other and space to be ourselves.

We are a team.

We have it all. We have each other.

This is my love potion served as a small sip to start an evening.

Start with Campari, the bottle is sexy enough alone being Italian and all, a perfect ingredient for a love potion. Campari is considered bitters, which is a refreshingly simple infusion of fruits and herbs that is deep red in color. Campari is then mixed with gin and sweet vermouth at which point you get a Negroni, love potion. The Negroni is considered an apéritif, a pre-dinner cocktail intended to stimulate the appetite and/or love.

Nigroni

makes one cocktail


One part Gin
One part sweet vermouth
One part Campri

orange peel garnish
Combine ingredients in an iced filled shaker, shake until well chilled and strain into you favorite cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange peel.

Go ahead and be stimulated for whatever comes your way and have a wonderful evening!

Shared with the Monthly Mingle hosted by Paulchen's Foodblog

The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Within a couple days of each other I have had some very profound advice shared to me by two people I respect immensely (who both I wished I lived closer to and hope to maintain a close relationship).

**Here comes the soapbox! Don't think you were not warned!**

I like to believe that I live in a little fairy tale world where I fell head over heels into a magical relationship - ummmmm..... from what I understand of my husband and my realationship and most of the the other couples that are within our circle of friends..... these rarley exsist. Sad I know - I am the queen of ideal, happy go lucky scenarios, truth be told, I am just going to hold on to that ideal, it is truely worth it and set out to make the happiest and most fulfilling relationship I can.

What I want to share (besides the fact that we are not all perfect) are these few nuggets of advice that were shared with me. These ladies are on to something and since it was gifted to me it is now time for me to pass it on.

I am not going to get  into the details of my relationship - this is not the place. I am going to get into the lessons I learn while sharing my life with someone, someone I love and care deeply about. I feel that some things are very personal and should be kept that way but other things need to be shared and expressed so others can relate and people can communicate these experiences that we all share. As lonely and distant as some of these experiences and feelings can be, we are in this together and often are going through the same sort of ordeal.  As much as I dislike to admit, we are not that unique.

A bit of motherly advice and 20 mores years of experience put the words to a feeling that I  know many of use face and deal with on a day to day basis.   We are all raised in very unique situations. We are the products of very distinct situations. Some people can be raised next door to each other and have an extremely different experiences or just the opposite, they could live on the the other side of the country from one another and share very similar experiences. I was raised in a very different household than my husband, different parts of the country, cultures and climates but have other upbringings that are rather similar, this is what makes us individuals and unique but also challenging to live with from day to day.

The mastery of understanding that each person is a product of their eviroment, embracing the situation from which we were created and then developed and understanding that each one of us are very differnt. We will never understand what is happening, the true thoughts and feelings that race through anothers being, this is a mistystery and is completly beautiful and enchanting in the same breath. Being able to share these distinct worlds together may be the greatest gift and the hardest challenge that people who choose to spend their lives with someone else may ever face.

I choose to embrace these challenges, as hard as they often are and as rewarding as it can be imaginable.

Moving on... to the second nugget...

Now understanding that we come from very different backgrounds, we come together and choose to move on through this this world as a couple. Yeah, the fun begins. Day to day - the most intimate of situations, every day (almost) the good and the bad, let us not forget the farts and the roses (for the record there are more farts than roses in my relationship). We can do the day to day, but can we do the day to day for the rest of our days? 

Moving, moving in the same direction, together. Yes, we may be two very different people but what matters is that these two lives are moving in the same direction, parallel paths. Our paths may be very different, involve different logic, different people and events, but they are pointed in the same direction. In the end, these two people choose to be at the same place at the end of the day, decade and helped one another get there.

We are different but both are going to the same place, my path is a bit foggy, wondering and often a bit confusing, where his is very linear, straight forward and planned out. We are taking care of each other and at the end of the day that is what is real.



I am a big sappy pile of pleasant thoughts, terribly missing J and his warm embrace, I must get outside, outside my head, and hope that I can convey to him how much he means to me as different as we are.