The Relationship Ninja Volume 6 - Salmon Ceviche and Rebound Sex

When I first went through the horrible pain of a divorce, I went to Nina cause I knew she would know what to say to me, what to feed me and best of all how to relate everything she was feeding me to what was happening my life....and she did.

     I will have been divorced for 5 years this September. None of it is ever easy, and the longer you've been married it seems like the more junk you have to work out. It is a sad situation that we sometimes find ourselves in. The good news is that time does heal things.

    Once again, I was blessed to have my ninja Nina share her wonderful and sometimes harsh advice. This time it was about 'life after divorce." 

    I was gone from Arizona for nearly 18 months and had just recently returned. We hadn't seen each other in a while, but had spoken via phone and she knew that I was coming home to Phoenix. I came back in January of 2012 and it was February before I made it to see my friend. 
    While I was gone, I was involved with someone and things were perfectly fine for a while, then it got dicey and weird. I couldn't figure out why. I knew Nina would have an answer.

     I got the feeling that I may have been interrupting her 'alone time' but she opened the door, saw me, wrapped her arms around me, nearly squeezing the breath out of me and said "Bella, you are home!"

     A brief time later, we were at the dining room table, just off the kitchen having coffee. Nina handed me a giant piece of an amazing "I can't believe anyone would ever want to stop eating this" chocolate cake. 
     It was a Saturday and we had the house to ourselves, her family was all out doing things even her husband had gone off to golf.  

    She reached across the small table and lifted my chin so that I was looking her in the eye. She held my face in her hand for a minute while she looked for something in my eyes, when she let go she immediately said "Let's Make Ceviche!" She got up and headed to the kitchen. I was confused but followed her anyway.

    "Get some things out of the fridge for me?" She half asked, half ordered. She began pulling large bowls and pots out of the cabinets.

"You know Ceviche, yes?" I shook my head. “Well, you will learn now, Bella....There's a large chunk of salmon in there, and some limes in the drawer." I brought her a half of a raw salmon and a small bag of about 8 limes. “Get me the cilantro, a couple of tomatoes, the peppers in the bottom of the fridge and a red onion." Her request was nearly automated, as she cut the salmon into chunks and put them in a large glass bowl.

"Salmon go upstream to spawn." She said I nodded. This is something that I did actually know, being from a Michigan, where many salmon go to spawn.

"Those little basturds will do anything to make this happen." I giggle and she proceeds into the real reason she is teaching me this lesson. 

    "You are the salmon. Follow me Bella?" I shook my head. At that point I was completely dumbfounded. Did she just relate my situation to a spawning little basturd of a salmon? I think she did.                   
       She continued to cut the salmon, when she finished. She took out the hand juicer, began juicing the limes, and continued to talk "Salmon swim upstream against all odds to return to the place where they were born." She paused. I had no idea that she knew so much about fish, but then she always amazes me. "You are the salmon. You want love and attention and rebound sex." Who doesn't want love and attention? It's the rebound sex, I didn't understand why she was calling it that.

    "Nina, explain 'rebound sex' to me please. I just spend 18 months in a place I didn't wanna be with someone who I thought was someone they weren't. This is all very confusing." I told her. She nodded. 

     I get it, “she answered " but there's more to the story and the cooking." She held up her finger in infamous Nina style, signifying that she had one more point to make. 

     When the limes were juiced, she set them aside and diced and chopped the Serrano, the tomatoes, and the onion into a separate bowl, she added some spices and tossed them for a minute.

"This is you before you left Phoenix." She pointed to the bowl of items that she just tossed together "A bit of a hot mess, no?" I smiled, nodded and agreed with her. She continued "Confused, hurt, and not knowing what you want besides attention and love, yes?" I nodded again. "Bella. No one wants their life to collapse. No one wants to be alone." She touched my chin again, making me look her in the eye. She was shaking her head. 

"So after they make it back to the place where they were born, the fish I mean. They will lay eggs. 

    Rebound sex has to do largely with being the object of someone's attention. That's not the person you are going to spend eternity with, especially if you are not equally yoked...ah, on the same page, I think you call it. Sex is physical, it doesn't have to be 'on the same page'. Relationships have to be on the same page or it fails." She made a signal as if cutting her throat with her finger. 

    She went back to making the Ceviche. "Now, we add the lime to the salmon, this 'cooks' the salmon. In reference to the rebound sex, this is the part when you will have had just about enough and are ready to move onto something more permanent or perhaps be single for a while." I look at her in disbelief. But I recall how I felt at the end of the short lived fun and I realize that she's right. She leaned over to me and though we were the only ones there she half whispered "Rebound sex is something that no one really talks about. But I'm telling it to you, so you can recognize where you've been, now you can move forward." 

     Thirty minutes later she served those little salmon basturds on a crunchy tostada shell and we had Ceviche for lunch.

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Relationship Ninja Vol 5 - Equally Yo(l)ked

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The Relationship Ninja Vol 5 - Equally Yo(l)ked

     A long time ago, my good friends Peggy and his sister Jeanie told me that if I was ever to find what I DID want in a significant other, that I would first have to discover all of the things that I DIDN'T want. And of course, like always, they were right.

     Today we are cooking with eggs. Nina is in an "Egg Frenzy." We are not making one egg dish, we are are making several. On the menu line up for the egg recipes are: deviled eggs, meatloaf, and an assortment of sweet breads. They may not all sound like egg dishes, but they do all require eggs.
     There is generally a purpose to all of this cooking, or is there? I think Nina just loves to cook and share her gifts of  her delicious treats and knowledge with the world.
     Our first acts of Eggery are a banana nut bread, followed by a cranberry orange bread. Nina has all of the ingredients spread out on the counter. She hands me the loaf pans and motions for me to grease and flour them. She's told me before 'without a good base, food will crash and burn, just like your relationships.' And I know she's right.
     "First understand that eggs are used for many different reasons. Leavening, richness and moisture and as a binder. They are for leavening when you don't have baking soda or powder," Nina stops talking and holds her index finger up in the air, looking over her glasses that are falling down her nose, scolding to make her point. "or to off set acidic agents like vinegar or buttermilk, like in banana or a nice cranberry orange bread. There are many people who are the leavening agent in their relationships. I've seen you do this before child... It's not always healthy to be the leavening agent. You see this can often mean that there is something toxic in your relationships....maybe the other is a drinker, or they do things in excess that can damage the relationship. But we need leavening in the breads. Yes, a stabilizer. Many people are looking for a 'stabilizer' in a partner for various reasons; it's a common form of denial in my opinion." She emphasizes the 'O' in opinion. 
"I generally think those looking for a 'leavening agent' don't have the confidence to love themselves. That makes me sad." She shrugs her shoulders and begins adding ingredients to a large mixing bowl. 
     When the breads are safely in the oven, She takes out a large pot to boil the deviled eggs in. She puts about five inches of water in the pot and asks me to bring her two dozen eggs from the fridge.     
     She takes the first carton from me and and withdraws one egg at a time, placing them carefully in the water. "These are the beginning of what needs to be equally yoked. You understand equally yoked?" Apparently the look on my face says that I do not understand the phrase, even though I give a little chuckle to the 'yolk' pun she's used. 
"Equally yoked is what John and I are, what that cute little Italian couple you told me you knew as a child were, and your grandparents were. They had the same 'core' values. They believed the same way. They didn't worry about trust or lack of it. They knew, they BELIEVED in each other...and God too." She points to the ceiling and then quickly signs the cross in front of her. Your generation, not so blessed maybe." She finishes adding the eggs to the water in speaking silence but gently hums a tune I recognize as 'It had to be you.' 
       Once we have the boiled eggs peeled, cut, and the yolks in a separate bowl, the lesson continues 
"The yolks provide the rich taste in the whites. Another purpose of eggs is to have richness in flavor. Richness, like adventures. Equally yoked is also about having fun and feeling fulfilled. Adventures, like travelling, raising children, or something as simple as laughing together, provides the foundation for memories, making your life rich." She smiles and mashes the yolks with with a fork. A short time later two dozen beautiful deviled eggs share an 'equally yolked' platter.
       Our final task, to finish the day's cooking is a meatloaf. As she's forming the loaf in the pan and arranging it for it's final oven destination, she tells me..
"The eggs are a binder in this case. A binder holds things together. In the case of the meatloaf, it binds with the bread crumbs and meat, coagulating in togetherness in the oven." She laughs then, so do I. She can be very silly sometimes; it's one of the reasons I adore her. " A good relationship binder are two who are willing to share responsibilities, like work, gardening, and chores. Also, equally and if not more important in being equally yoked is your emotional state of being. One will quickly outgrow the other if they are stifled by the other instead of encouraged, or one remains trapped in the past, unable to let go of the past, or refuses change altogether. You must be like the meatloaf, that changes from it's raw form to a juicy encrusted cooked dish. Even it has to go through a transformation to become edible."

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