boo, you whore.

I. Suck.

I've been cooking, but not blogging.

I went on a cruise - I need to blog about that.

I just need to get my shit together, you know?

I'm already up early and going today, so maybe this is the week? Maybe the cruise was the breaking point?

We shall see.

and it fell, and fell, and fell...

So I found that I was asking myself a lot of questions when I woke up this morning.

Such as, where are our front steps? How can those birds possibly be chirping at me from that tree as I push a foot of snow off my car? How can I repay the nice man who took a snow blower to our front walk? Why is that guy up the street with the braces even attempting to walk his dog?

I’m not kidding about that last one. Guy’s like three hundred pounds and he smokes. He’s got braces attached to his arms that he uses to help him walk. Only time I ever see him out is when it snows and he’s with his dog. The dog runs around, he yells at it and feigns horror at the fact that he can’t chase after the thing. He holds a lot of conversations with himself in loud tones about how tired he is and what a pain in the ass the dog is. He’s loud and obnoxious and I swear to God if he ever falls down I am only going to use my cell phone to take pictures of it, not call an ambulance.

Is there an Olympic event for shoveling? ‘Cause if there is, I win the gold. And if not, fuck you Olympics. I felt like a curler this morning anyway, vehemently scraping the ice off my car.

Well, I’m off to shovel some more, as the white stuff just won’t stop falling. Toodles. : )

the all new, all purpose me.

As I have pointed out numerous times to you, I’m sure, I’m an only child. It wasn’t until recently, when Tony and I moved into our own home, that I’d really been out by myself with no one to lean on.

I’m not saying I’m not a domestic person, because I have certainly proven to myself in the past couple of months that I’m totally capable of handling my affairs with ease and efficiency. I knew I always had the knowledge and the verve to accomplish such things; the problem was, I never had an environment in which to use them. Well, now I do.

One thing that I have yet to fully exercise is my culinary skills (or lack thereof). Please understand that until about oh, five years ago?, I was an extraordinarily picky eater. I brought peanut butter sandwiches to lunch with me every day from eight grade until graduation. I used to scrape the cheese off my pizza and damned if I knew anything about fruits and veggies – what are those, anyway?

I still have my misgivings (tomatoes, onions, certain types of meat), but all in all I’ve gotten over my food phobias and have become a well-rounded eater. (Both literally and figuratively…although it could be all the Dominos, and not my expansive diet, that’s caused a bit of weight gain.) So, now that I have my own kitchen to mess around in, I’ve decided to delve into the art of cooking.

I come from a family of great cooks, namely my grandmother. She had a garden, made pasta from scratch, and was relied upon for the best meals during holidays. She made a spaghetti sauce that will never match any other. Unfortunately, by the time I realized I wanted to learn how to cook and make such a sauce, she was gone. I’ve just now inherited a little piece of her that should help me along the way.





The 1997 edition of The Joy of Cooking. Five-ish pounds of not only recipes, but the basics of food and appliances and cooking methods. This book was always at her side and now, with it in my hands, I see the tattered and bookmarked pages – she used this thing a lot. So, now I’m going to methodically go through it and do my best to nurture my (hopefully) innate Italian/Polish cooking skills and make some damn good meals.

Yes, I am going to go Julie & Julia on you for a bit here. Sorry. But when I screw up it’ll be funny, right? And if I don’t, simply tasty – and you’ll wish you were here to try it.

It saddens me that the brilliantly bright flame of your innovation and talent has been snuffed out so soon. RIP. You were a true fashion powerhouse.

food analogies.

We had our first “pick up furniture someone offered us” experience. It was…interesting.

My best friend’s aunt graciously offered Tony and I a couch for the house. This made us ecstatic because, up until this point, we were to have only my grandparent’s bedroom set and whatever boxes we moved into the house with as furniture.

So I rounded up my uncle, who has a pick-up truck, my best guy friend and Tony and we set out to grab the couch. Turns out the initial couch was REALLY wide (although really comfy looking) and probably wouldn’t have been able to fit into the house. But, we were told that there was a narrower couch downstairs with a chair to match that we could have. Yes, we took it – but not without problem.

The furniture was in the basement of the house which was, thankfully, attached to the garage. It was blockaded in by a pool table and a pillar, though. And, as you may know, you can’t just move a pool table or the whole thing’ll have to get realigned or some shit. I didn’t know this until I was all, “Well hey, let’s get this out of the way” and it was met with “NO!!!” from all people present. I didn’t ask to kill a puppy – it’s a pool table for Christ’s sake.

So the couch had to be lifted up above the pool table then moved through a narrow hallway to the door. Well, after seeing some majorly impressive real-life Tetris moves come out of my uncle instructing the boys to move it this way and that, we finally had to take the legs off the couch to get it through the door. It’s amazing what three inches can do. (That’s what she said?)

Same thing for the chair. It was loaded on the truck and on the way to my grandfather’s for storage.

It got off the truck and into the garage fine. My uncle left and myself and the boys stayed to talk to my grandfather. Not two minutes after walking out the door my uncle was back inside.

He backed into my car with his truck.

So now Mo (Moesha is her full name) has a crinkle-fry hood that needs to be completely replaced and a jiggly headlight. My poor baby

We have to pick up another couch from a friend of ours. Can’t wait to do that. Maybe I’ll have a pancake for a car afterward.

since when do i wash clothes? seriously.

Guess what? It’s merely January 20 and, already, 2010 is my bitch. Take THAT, new decade.

I’ve learned a lot in the past twenty days. Renal has to do with the kidneys, people at utility companies are generally dumbasses, and I should never go to a dollar drink special that runs for two hours.

In between all of the science term editing I’ve been doing (fuck you, National Institute of Health, for having so many science-related acronyms on your site), I’ve also been organizing things for mine and Tony’s house.

Yep. The girl who has only ever lived away from home was when she moved to Philly (and moved into her boyfriend’s parents’ house anyway) is moving into her own digs.

A year and three months shy of being a quarter of a century old and I’m finally feeling like an adult.

Please join me on this journey. I shit you not when I say that I’ll probably have a couple of mini breakdowns (which’ll be funny, in retrospect) and a lot of hilarious things will go down.

So, about this house! Huge living room that opens up into a nicely sized kitchen. There’s a pantry off the kitchen. The steps are right in front of the front door and go straight upstairs, where there’s no hallway; you come out into a common room. To the right is a spare room and to the left is the master bedroom. There’s a bathroom in the bedroom and a half-bath downstairs .The basement is unfinished and scares me (as most basements do) so I’ll be avoiding it for the duration we’re living there. I read Stephen King books. You can’t image what I think is going on in the cellar of every house I’m in.

I can’t even express to you how much storage space is in this bitch. I can fit all of my shoes AND my books AND Tony’s DVDs in the house and still have a MASSIVE amount of room.

I also already have colors planned for everything:

I’d love a green and blue kitchen. Think navy and a more pastel green, but a bit darker. (I can’t think of a name for it. I’m not Martha Stewart.)

Definitely a red, black and grey bedroom, a Japanese theme. Tony and I are pretty gothic people as far as tastes go.

The middle room upstairs will be my reading/working room and I’m thinking rustic colors. I have a lot of sepia paintings and pin-up girl-like things, which is completely my style. The other room upstairs will be Tony’s game/movie room so I’m letting him do what he wants with that. I’m going to wager black, since the kid looks like Johnny Cash on a daily basis.

As far as the living room goes, I’m not sure. There’s wood paneling, so I can’t really paint. Probably gonna go with Earth tones in there.

God, when did I get so domestic? Oh yea. When I started making to-do lists like this:





Mini breakdown, here I come.

funny people.

Oh, hey. Happy 2010 : ) Tons to tell, but that’ll come later.

So, yes, I do play Facebook games. I’m deeply involved in Restaurant City, for God only knows what reason. In order to play the game to the best of my ability, I often friend people temporarily and then delete them. Sometimes they decide to IM me on Facebook chat for those couple hours that they’re my friends, and most of the time they either speak horrendous English or are trying to hit on me.

But yesterday I stumbled upon someone who gave me a little view of how people view us Westerners. He’s from Indonesia, a school teacher in his 30s. We were talking and I told him I was from Philly. This is what he said:

i don't know why, if i hear philadelphia, i just think many big building like in italia with many Negro, and they 'r doin' many violence, like at a film.

Ah, like at a film. Thanks, movies.

And while it’s true that, yes, there may be a higher population of African Americans in Philadelphia and there are certainly some parts of the city that are heavily laden with crime, I find it disturbing that this is the first thing that comes to mind when this man thinks of the city where America begin, the site of many an important historical spot.

We spoke for a bit more, and then he asked me this gem:

But there's a question, is there the women there like to grab their friends breast? because every women of america at facebook show that photo at their profile.

HA. Oh, my. Our drunken Facebook photos really DO reach millions, don’t they? WE LOOK LIKE A BUNCH OF ASSHOLES.

I explained to him that that’s commonly a joke among friends (leaving out the part that it’s almost always booze-fueled) and he said this:

hahhaa, that's just a joke? if u try that thing here maybe you will get a hot slap from the women here, lol hahahah

He explained to me that it’s disrespectful there. From that point on we spoke of traditions. He said that they have a lot of them and it makes him feel as though they are all “reigned in” because they cannot do so many things. He said that we are very free here and he thinks freedom is good, but he also thinks that rules and traditions are important to have.

Sir, I could not agree more. While I value the freedom we have in this country, I sometimes wonder if we take certain things too far. Years and years ago, manners were better and different things were valued. Sometimes I wish the vast majority would be more respectful of one another and wouldn’t take things for granted so much.

My Indonesian friend summed us all up quite nicely:

hahaha, west is funny.