I can't move.

Oh, archery. A test of skill for sure, and a test of how much your arms and shoulders can take. I'm exhausted! I wasn't using a bow with a heavy pull, but still, I'm not used to using those muscles. After we shot, I took some ibuprofen and stretched out some, and thank god I did. If I hadn't, I might never have lifted my arms again. It was so worth it though! I'm not a great shot, but I'm getting much better with practice. If I keep this up, I'll be a dead shot when the summer ends, and have epic shoulders too.

After archery, we started cleaning my friend's room. Started. That's quite a project...she has a lot of stuff. It really got me thinking about all the junk I hang on to and why. Pretty soon you'll see a post where I went nuts and cleaned my room like a madwoman. All my stuff will be gone, and I'll be much happier. Or, alternatively, I'll go home, think about cleaning, then realize my shoulders are sore and find a marathon of America's Next Top Model.

Pictures of my deadly accuracy with a bow will be posted soon. In the meantime, be good to yourself.

Mmmmm yummy cookies.

At a request from Liz's mom, we spent the afternoon making banana drop cookies with banana frosting. Because they are absolutely freaking delicious, I'm going to share the recipe with you. Let me know if you make them.

Anyway, you're going to need some ingredients first.

For the cookies, you need:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour (I used whole wheat flour)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 stick butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup mashed bananas (about 2 medium bananas)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

For the icing (optional, but highly recommended, it's delicious)

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup mashed banana (one small banana)
• 2 tablespoons softened butter
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

To start, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Make sure you check the oven, someone might have filled it with pots and pans while you weren't looking. Use some shortening and grease a baking sheet. Then, mix together the dry ingredients.

Then, use an electric mixer to beat the butter for about 30 seconds. It's seriously fun, as nerdy as that sounds. Mama P's mixer lets you set the speed and time so you can walk away from it while it mixes, but where's the fun in that? Once you've beaten the butter, add the sugar and beat it until it gets fluffy.

Then, add the eggs and vanilla to the mixer and beat for a while.

Then, take turns adding the banana and the dry ingredients. Beat well in between each addition. Then, eat the dough.

Alternatively, you can continue making the cookies by chopping up the walnuts and adding them to the dough.

The original recipe says to drop them by teaspoon full onto the cookie sheet. I think that makes ridiculously tiny cookies, so I use a tablespoon instead. Then, bake them for about nine minutes.

While the first batch is baking, you can make the icing. First, sift the powdered sugar. Put the sugar into the sifter, then tap it against your hand until all of the sugar falls through.

Then, mix the rest of the ingredients together.

Once the cookies are finished baking, take them off of the tray. I let mine cool on a wire rack, but if you don't have one you can just lay them out on paper towels. Don't leave them on the tray, they'll stick like gum on the bottom of a new pair of pumps. After they cool, spread the icing on top. Then, share them with a friend. Haha, just kidding. They keep just fine in the freezer, so you can hoard them.

The cookies won't turn out right unless you rock out while you make them. Turn on some music and go nuts. Enjoy your cookies, and peace out.

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

That's one of my favorite quotes, partially because my mom started drilling it into my head at a very young age. I was always raised to be fiercely independent, and to shun the oldfashioned notion that a woman needs a man to take care of her.

Now, I'm single, and I'm trying hard to resist getting caught up in all of the relationship drama going on around me. I'm always hearing gossip from my friends about unrequited love, and about who had sex with whom, and about who's in love with whom. It makes me feel like my life is somehow incomplete without someone by my side. The social norm in my generation is that if you aren't in a relationship, you should be looking for one. Women who are focused on their own lives, instead of searching for Prince Charming, are looked upon poorly. Think about your typical Katherine Heigl movie, for example. Career-driven women who don't search for a man are portrayed as "missing something." I'm sick of it.

As much as I would enjoy the companionship and stability of a relationship, I'm perfectly fine without one. No matter how hard society tries to turn me into one of those desperate, clingy women you see in romantic comedies, wasting all of their time searching for someone to tolerate their mood swings and irrational insecurites, I won't cave. I have excellent friends, a loving and caring family, and most importantly, I'm happy with myself. As long as I can fall asleep at night knowing I'm a good person who lives an awesome life, why should I stress over being single?

After all, a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

That's-a one spicy meatball!

Ok, they weren't really spicy, because preggo doesn't eat spicy food. They were still delicious though!

First, we took some ground beef and seasoned it. We used seasoned salt and some pepper, but you can add a lot of other things. I personally like basil, but that's just me. I'd add basil to nearly anything. Seriously. Name a food, and I'll try it with basil.

Then, Teri shaped them into balls. She likes them because they look like tiny hamburgers. I didn't have the heart to tell her that they are, in fact, tiny hamburgers.

Once that was done, we heated a couple of tablespoons of oil in a pan. We heated the oil over medium heat, then turned it down to a lower heat when we added the meat.

Once the meatballs were brown, we served them with spaghetti sauce on top of spaghetti noodles. We also poured some Parmesan cheese on top. We're white, we like cheese. So sue us.

Mmmm, yummy. Be jealous. Actually, don't. This post is over, so be good to yourselves.

Tell me all your thoughts on God.

And blue is nice, but other colors of cars count too. Racism towards automobiles is a very real issue, people.

Actually, it isn't. That's an incredibly stupid, uninspired thing to say, and it isn't really funny. If you did manage to produce a chuckle, shame on you.

That's what I'm thinking about right now...the mundane, unintelligent, unimportant things we say all the time. When we want to get to know someone, we talk about silly popular culture references and what pizza toppings we enjoy. For some reason, we avoid deeper issues like the plague. Religion, philosophy and politics are the Lord Voldemort of polite conversation, they simply aren't mentioned.

And yes, when I say Lord Voldemort I mean @Lord_Voldemort7. He may be interesting or funny, but when you start talking about him at Thanksgiving dinner things get awkward.

So why don't we try to give our conversations a bit more substance? Think for a minute about some of your family and friends. Do you know whether or not they believe in God? Or fate? Or gay marriage, for that matter?

Find out. Really get to know the people you know. Sharing your thoughts will help you grow.

Peace be with you.