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.