then PLEASE don't read this. It'll sick you out, especially if you ate the food.

The food that one of the women brought? SOO good. She can cook and arrange flowers like nobody's business. 

But let's back up to the night before the shower.  I've cleaned. I've wrapped gifts, arranged flowers (not very well), and have much to cook. 

I should say that I am greatly at odds with food lately. It just doesn't do much for me. I don't get excited about it. It usually grosses me out, and since I've somehow lost that sensation of getting hungry like normal people do, i just forget to eat.  (I know. Sorry. Nothing can incite a mommyblogger revolt faster than that pathetic story. But it isn't great, and no you don't wish you had that problem, and it's fine -you'll lose any appetite you have if you keep reading this. promise.)

So, it's the night before the baby shower for 'Dear Friend I'd Do Anything For, Even Touch Fruit.'  For some reason I decided to make banana bread, zucchini bread, sausage balls, and a sausage cream cheese crescent casserole thing. And touch/arrange/smell a lot of fruit.

Huh?  I don't really cook.  And

a) banana bread?  I have to mouth-breathe to even handle bananas, and wash vigorously, surgical style after touching them.  I'm pretty sure banana bread actually means smooshing the bananas, therefore making them smell even more banana-y. 

b) zucchini bread? I like zucchini, but OH MY GOSH the fatty fat stuff in that recipe. No idea what I was thinking. I was apparently NOT thinking 'this needs eggs' because I forgot them and Mike had to go to the store at 9 to get them for me. Then he wisely disappeared before I could ask him to help make a diaper cake.

c) sausage balls.  Y'all.  Doesn't that phrase make you just GAG?  Sausage BALLS.  SAUSAGE balls.  Oh. my. gosh. 

I made the sausage the day before.

Now, I had a country cooking grandmother who could do some amazing things with sausage. I ate sausage as a kid. As an adult even. But not in a loooong time, due to the weird food aversion thing I've had going on. (it started with a long TMJ problem, and it's a long boring story) 

Seeing the sausage 'browned' really icked me out.  It was SWIMMING in thick grease. No, it was drowning.  So I spent twenty minutes draining, blotting, and removing ALL traces of the icky grease and fat.  Great. One less thing to do the next day. 

Sausage balls (oh! that nasty phrase!). They require only 3 ingredients, which is probably the only reason i decided to make them in the first place. Or I was feeling very 70s, I don't know, I have NO idea when that bizarre little decision came to be. Anyway, those 3 ingredients are sharp cheddar, sausage, and dry Bisquick.  Can I get an 'ew?' 

So you're supposed to mix those things with your hands and form into balls. I did NOT read that part of the recipe before deciding on these, otherwise it never woulda happened. I don't know how I thought they were going to magically form themselves into balls, but squishing meat in my fingers was really not on my to do list.

It didn't work anyway. Picture the sausage, the grated cheese, the dry BIsquick.  Yep, those are the 3 ingredients, and yet there is NO way those things are smooshing together into balls.  I stare into the bowl, wondering what I did wrong. 
Aha.  It was the UNLISTED FOURTH INGREDIENT that I had painstakingly removed.  Fat.  Those things were supposed to hold together with FAT. 

Mike walked in. I told him what happened.  He looked in the bowl, and said, "There's olive oil behind you."  (Yuh huh. Rachael RAY olive oil, that he purchased, and displays on the COUNTERTOP and not in the cabinet because somebody has a bit of an 'admiration' for her and her pretty face is on the label.)

"ADD the FAT BACK?! NoooO!"  I gagged over the bowl.

Rachel Ray is not going anywhere near my nasty sausage balls.

"Apple sauce," he suggested.

I checked. None without cinnamon.

"Water," he said. 

And that worked.  I still had to squish meat between my fingers, but whatever. It worked.

I ended up skipping the banana smooshing headache, since I didn't have butter.  (how can you not know you don't have butter and eggs in your house, kels? why, EASILY, thank you for asking! i usually do have eggs, but not butter.) 

The morning of the shower I spent much time arranging fruit.  The fruit fumes were overwhelming.  My hands got fruity. I kept telling myself that for this particular friend, I'd do anything, even touch a lot of fruit.

We've known each other forever. Well, ten years at least. We couldn't stand one another at first. I thought she was so snotty. She thought the same about me. Then we became friends and it's been a lasting bond I don't always understand, but I treasure.  She was on the phone with me when the pregnancy test was in the bathroom and I was too afraid to go see if I was indeed expecting Ethan-7yr. We spent many an afternoon wondering where in the world her God-given appointed husband was, and what was keeping him from showing up already. He did show up, eventually, of course, and I got to be her Matron of Honor. She came and stayed with my kids when I was SURE I was in labor and spent the night in the hospital a few weeks before Caden-3yr finally showed up.  And she was with me at a Beth Moore Bible study the morning I got more violently sick than I've ever been, just before Seth-1yr was born.

For this dear friend, I told myself, I can touch cantaloupe. So I did. Even though cantaloupe is cold and slimy, and it smells like cantaloupe.  For love of the right person, I can conquer fruit. It was a big realization.  (No, of course i didn't eat it - that would just be insanity)

So dear friend:  I love you more than I hate fruit.  Thank you for who you are, and who you've always been.  This probably doesn't make a bit of sense to anyone else, but that's okay.  And everyone else is probably wondering if you'll even read it since the first line says not to read it if you were at the shower, and you clearly would have been there... but I knew you'd ignore that anyway.  Love you.