we move comfortably back into our pre-honeymoon lives: up at 7, a run, 40 minutes in the car accompanied by an audio book (currently Michelle West’s The Hidden City, as narrated for Audible by my sister-in-law, Eva Wilhelm!), my windowless office, a lunchtime walk to the student cafeteria more for the sake of the walk than the fountain soda at it’s destination, more windowless office, the commute home (a palindrome! my workday, it’s a palindrome!), assemble dinner from the CSA veggies in the fridge and eat it in front of the TV, then those precious 2 hours that are mine for whatever strikes my fancy. usually, blogging, or baking, or blogging about baking. or reading blogs about baking.

today’s gloomy gray cloud cover finally gave way to a blue-sky-golden-sunlight evening, and it inspired a walk to Lincoln Square for a pre-dinner drink. (WHEN will i learn that going for a “pre-dinner drink” at Tiny Lounge actually means that we’ll be having whiskey and fries for dinner??). i came home and spent the rest of the evening saving 69 cents-worth of overripe bananas from going to waste by combing with $10 of ingredients to make $36* worth of elevensies banana muffin snacks. well, $33, because i already ate one.

we remind ourselves that these days of DINK profligacy are numbered; we’ve decided that 2014 will be the year of house-buying and baby-having; this will leave us considerably less freedom or expendable income for $10 whiskey drinks, and then before we know it “family dinner” will be a thing and we’ll have to pretend that we don’t actually want to sit on the couch and watch 30 Rock while we eat just as much as the kids do.

but i get ahead of myself. all these big grown-up life steps; they loom on the horizon and haunt my sleeping hours with anxiety-driven what-ifs. up till now most of my life choices have been reversible (don’t like the job? find a new one. moved across the country and it’s not working out? you can still back out of it. don’t like the new car? trade it in.) but marriage, house-buying, kids — these are not reversible choices. if they don’t fit into your life, you’ll have to adapt your life to make them fit; not the other way around.

and yet i also know with certainty that if i look back on my life at 70, or 80, and know that i missed out on having a family because theatre always took everything that i have to give, that it won’t be enough. i love being good at it, but it’s not enough.

*the recipe, a combination of this and this, with chocolate chips added and divided into muffin pans instead of loaf pans, yields a dozen muffins, which, if individually purchased at a cafe would probably be $3 ea. economy AND procrastination!