regarding adulthood, a reunion, book snobbery, V, and a not-half-bad quiche

Last night, in anticipation of my family reunion, I made my first quiche. It turned out very well, which thrilled me. I have maintained a reputation for not cooking that has served me well- no one blinks when I show up with store-bought goodies at a potluck dinner, or at most make some dip. Lately it's been a new mission of mine to teach myself to cook. I'm no where near ready to tackle baking bread, which is my ultimate goal but intimidates me. I am planning a deep-dish pizza from scratch tomorrow. The successful quiche experiment made me feel like I have finally arrived firmly in Adulthood. This is weird, as I'm thirty years old, but I've lived kind of an extended semi-adult-college-student life up until now. Shane & I eat like dorm rats- fast food, pizza, & sandwiches. (As a result, we're too damn fat.) I've been such a slacker since my teenage years that I still felt like I was a teenager in a way. Marriage didn't quite feel like the initiation into the world of Grown Up, because we'd been shacking up for four years and nothing changed except I have a nice ring. Having Molly, though, has been the kick-in-the-ass-hello-reality wake up call I needed. I want to live up to the great example my mom set for me, and for Molly to have wonderful sense-memories of her childhood, which includes a kitchen of yummy mom-smells.

The family reunion was fun. Molly got to meet her surrogate great-grandma, my late grandmother's sister, and we finally got to meet baby Mary, my cousin's baby who is 4 weeks younger than Molly. My dad was beaming all day showing off the baby. We met my cousin's new girllfriend who seems great- I secretly wish she'd introduce her as her girlfriend rather than her friend, but it's not my battle. (Actually it kind of is. The whole family for whatever reason found out I'm bisexual even though it's a non-issue as I've never had a real girlfriend to bring home. I've always been a wee bit bitter that I got to be the family's queer girl when we have an actual lesbian, but whatever...)

Someone brought a huge bunch of old books to give away, and I found a copy of The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. I yelped with joy- I finished Veronika Decides to Die recently and I was really impressed. It was good timing. I needed something to read really badly. Shane's dad gave me a fantasy novel, but so far I'm not digging it. I'm incredibly picky about books and if the writer's not up to my standards I find it impossible to read- I keep editing and rewriting in my head. People are always suggesting fantasy and sc-fi, which I love, but there seem to be a lot of shitty authors in those genres. I also pickled up some old Stephen King- that guy can write. Plus he has a really cool wrought iron fence. We stopped in front of his house when we went to Dad's place in Maine a couple of years ago and snapped some fangirl pics.

Speaking of fangirlishness, we saw V for Vendetta finally, and now I want to buy all the comics. It was incredible. I love Hugo Weaving. His voice makes me want to purr, and he's just such a badass. The story was great- I swoon over dystopias. I think it was as good as The Matrix. Rock on Wachowskis.