In 4th grade my class was assigned a St. Patrick’s Day task which involved making Irish soda bread. Growing up in Los Angeles this bread product was completely foreign to me. Ask me to make a quesadilla or a burrito with carne asada….no problem. Soda bread? No. I remember making this in the school cafeteria and absolutely fallilng in love with Irish soda bread. It was like tasting heaven. That was 20+ years ago. Today I bought some soda bread to remind myself why I loved it and I have no idea what I was thinking. It’s quite hard and I can’t even imagine if it freshly came out of a warm oven that it would taste good. It’s barely edible.

What the hell was I thinking?

I have this same feeling when I think about my first boyfriend John. To continue the Irish theme, he had red hair and was of the Irish-American persuasion. I L-O-V-E-D him. I honestly felt the sun rose and set just for him. I cringe at the thought of him actually saving the MANY letters I wrote to him that explained in full detail why I loved him, why I thought he was a gift from God, and why I thought I was blessed because he allowed me to be in his presence. But it didn’t last. He dumped me in a Taco Bell parking lot while his friends were eating 99 cent nachos. But I digress….I saw John 8 years later. He had graduated from his university with a major in Philosophy, he was working on channeling his chakras through the help of his yogi, his speech was slurred from the many years of drug use and that red hair…the hair that I swooned over daily. Stringy. Greasy. Now dirty brownish-red hair. And it was at that moment where I asked the same question I ask today about this sad piece of Irish soda bread that is sitting on my desk, 1/3 eaten.

What the hell was I thinking?