I am going to have to write this in bits and pieces, because for some reason I decided at 9:00 pm that I really needed to make banana muffins. Actually, I decided a couple of hours ago when I pulled 5 frozen bananas out of the freezer and chucked them into a bowl to thaw. Of course, I didn’t have a recipe to speak of, so I had to trawl food blogs for one.

This one from Whipped caught my eye. And I had had my hubby get a bag of chopped pecans out of the freezer to thaw – so it looked like good planning. Maple Pecans Banana Bread – how awesome!

Except I had too many Bananas so I decided to double the recipe. Then I didn’t have enough butter or Maple Syrup – so I made up the difference in fat with canola oil and in sweet with honey. And I was using eggs from my chicken flock, who apparently failed to attend the USDA standard egg sizing class – so I had to finagle the number of eggs I was using.

Who knows how it will come out? It’s a Mystery. But that isn’t why I am posting this evening. I wanted to share with you a little slice of my life:

A truck on the kitchen counter

The view from in front of my stove/oven.

Here I am cooking along merrily (I made Avgolemono soup for dinner – we ate it with a side of left over homemade Parmesan nuggets. Yay meal planning not) and this is what I see when I glance to my right. Here’s the thing, it doesn’t bother me at all. My approach to housekeeping is, how shall we say, flexible. But it isn’t that I am completely lazy, I think I just have different priorities.

I don’t mind that there are toys strewn all over my house. That when I go to get in bed and flip my covers into something resembling a sleep-able bed I uncover several cars who had been residing in the “garage” that had been built out of my quilt. And this view, this view is something that makes me happier than I have ever been in my life.

I am sure I should be trying to impart some responsibility or some such approved parenting stuff by making my little man clean up all of his toys and keep them in one spot. But you know what? My stuff is all over the house too, it’s my house. It’s his house too, I don’t believe in restricting him to one designated room that can be closed off so that we can pretend that there isn’t a child in the house and everything is presentable.

It took us five years to have this child. The process of having him almost killed me – but it was worth it. Every time I glance up and see a little reminder that he is in my life I am happy. This little truck, standing sentinel over my cooking while he sleeps away in his bed keeps him close to me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.