Lives, distractions, cakes

Allora, mi dispiace che io non vi scriva di più. I must come clean, my friends. It wasn't a fatal case of blogophobia that's kept me from my laptop recently, but a series of interesting events ranging from summertime pastry-making, to acid indigestion (unrealted to said pastry), to a life-changing reunion.

• One of the ongoing projects in my life at the moment is finishing Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. When I told an officemate last week that I was getting near the end of it, he asked me what it was about--and that was an unexpectedly difficult question to answer.
  Here's how I would put it: Pollan takes us on a personal journey through the production of four different meals from the "ground" up: (1) a trip to McDonald's featuring a brief history of factory-farmed protein; (2) an industrial organic meal purchased entirely at Whole Foods, including asparagus grown in South America and a broiler chicken named "Rosie", raised on a certified organic farm; (3) a roasted chicken dinner (chicken is one of the main characters of the book) procured from Joel Salatin's alternative/chemical-free/non-industrial farm in Virginia; and finally (4) a feast of wild boar that Pollan personally hunts down in Sonoma, CA. The book opens with an enlightening and LENGTHY discussion on everything you might want to know about corn: it's ancestry, biology, sex, chemical breakdown, and effect on human life (corn is in everything, so corn might be God?). The book has a comfortable narrative to it, even while describing the slaughter of a factory-farmed cow. I highly recommend it.

• A couple of weeks ago, I had an iced coffee from a Dunkin' Donuts, and four hours later I felt the icy grip of death upon my abdomen. It really sucked. The next few days I felt pains in my lower chest that came in waves, that were worst during the night. It hurt to breathe, I was dizzy, and plain fucking miserable. I took off from work to go the doctor, and when I explained my symptoms to the receptionist, she told me to go to the hospital. "It's really not that bad!" I protested. She told me to go anyway, immediately, so I freaked, and called Dan.
• After an EKG, some blood work, a chest X-ray, and the obligatory preggo-test, the ER doctor (Edward Amores, or Dr. LOVE), determined that I was fine, un-pregnant, and in fact, too young and healthy to have a heart attack (though I maintain that a bloodclot could have been a possibility). At one point he told me I looked great (I didn't even have makeup on--swoon!). Dr. Love narrowed it down to acid reflux, and told me to start taking the wonder drug of our century: Pepcid AC. And since then I've been fucking fine.

• I've come upon several farmer's market temptations such as Jersey peaches and blueberries (Jersey being an ambiguous term), that I bring home, decide I don't particularly enjoy eating fresh, and bake in a cake. I based my blueberry peach crumb cake off this Peach Cake recipe from southernfood.about.com. Delicious, please! Make sure you have 2-3 ripe peaches and about a cup of blueberries (Jersey or not). Despite the heat, a girl must bake, so I proudly crank the A/C, KitchenAid mixer, and oven, in that order!

• And finally, Dan and dad are back together. Charlie and Dan hadn't seen each other in twenty-some years, until their nailbitingly long-awaited reunion last weekend. Dan also got to see his sisters, the gorgeous Stephanie and Laura, and Carolyn, Charlie's gracious wife. It might have been the most beautiful thing I've seen, ever. And I've seen a thing or two. Father and son are both thrilled to finally know each other again, and we inititated the reunion with, of course, a barbeque (the theme was chicken wings!), where we also got to meet Frank and Mike, the girls' adorable boyfriends. I look forward to more family gatherings with our new awesome family! An aside: to my chagrin, Dan is still not Italian. Instead, he's just more Irish and Scottish than we'd thought. Congrats.
  
  

Oh, mother.

It's as if she's never encountered an answering machine before, despite her years of telephone (and, can you believe it?) cellphone usage.

This shit is gold.

Bully trends

So, I'm a little peeved that I'm JUST learning about Etsy, the blissfully addictive online store of independent vendors that sell a (girly) variety of crafts, jewelry, bags, belts, art, apartment knickknacks, and my favorite thing of all: stationary. Ok, just discovered they sell cookies, too. HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS!?

No doubt I pursued the bully search, and I have to say, I haven't seen such an extensive collection of squeal-worthy bull terrier artifacts since Cafe press. The perplexing physique and endearing, pinchable face of the bully is apparently irresistible to artists. My heart melted as my mom and I found dead-on representations of the holy trinity: Snarkie, Odie, and Gracie. Not kidding.


Behold the tranquil, somewhat melancholy Snarkie, enjoying a cup of afternoon tea, contemplating a nap after several hours of reading Pascal. He thinks: "All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling."


Odie is poised for attack, but he's not sure why, or what he's looking for. He thinks wants a treat. He thinks he saw a squirrel. He thinks he heard his name. He pants, waddles around and gives up with a sigh. As usual, his intentions are good, but he just can't get it together.


Finally, the princess has arrived. Gracie is well-aware of her spoiled brat status, and fully satisfied with being the cutest, youngest, and simply the favoritest of the flock. ...I give up, this friggin' painting looks exactly like her and it's totally freaky. She even lies down that way, and puts her ears back like that, especially when she's about to receive some serious petting.

This Easter: thoughts on my Catholicism

One of my co-workers this past week laughingly referred to me as a "Christer": a so-called churchgoer who makes biannual trips to Christmas and Easter services(actually, I do Christmas Eve - less kids). With the Easter season afoot, I routinely try to come to terms with my Catholicism. And I just don't feel like it. That could take forever.

There's no avoiding it: I'm just one of the many 20-somethings who've fallen into that slump of not practicing, not really adhering, but still believing and, thus, suffers from the occasional wave of guilt. And my current state of "belief" is just about as confusing and contradictory as growing up Catholic; nothing has changed there.

Technically, I'm a fullout baptized, communion-ized and confirmed Catholic, raised from the very beginning to take Jesus' blood and pray to the Virgin Mother. I got the double-whammy upbringing from both parents, and on top of that, my even more Catholic grandmothers (who still go to confession, to confess God-knows-what). I remember that everything needed to be perfect on my First Communion: my mother gave me her tiny, white pocketbook where I stored my Catechism book (perfect size for little hands) and my plastic rosary (also white). I was seven, skinny, and content to take Christ's body into my own. And He tasted like paper.

A couple of years later, my parents were divorced. I recall mother describing the annulment process as "too expensive, too complicated, and takes a long, long time". Yikes!

My mother taught Sunday School for several years, and we went to church throughout my early teens. At my Confirmation I wore a sexy dress, tight around my new-forming curves, when I was sweet 16. In High School, I made friends with the offbeat metal-heads and skateboarders, who were baffled at my strict adherence to Sunday mass and crucifixes, which decorated my room. My choir teacher, a loud, large, dogmatic traditionalist, never failed to lecture us on the "hard times" his Catholic schoolboy past, and encourage us to sing the Ave Maria with tears in our eyes.

Then came sex, birth control, and college in that respective order. At Sarah Lawrence, Catholicism was a direction of study, not a belief. It was okay to take religion courses, but it was NOT acceptable to think that stuff was actually real. At campus art shows, poetry readings, lectures, and even in class, the topic of Catholicism was slurred over as a silly childhood superstition. It was on par with political conservatism (probably rightly so).

I wasn't offended - I took it as a sign to move on. You have to remember, by that time I'd committed at least one carnal sin, and wasn't on the way to make an honest woman of myself. I took a course on Medieval Christianity and the cosmos (really) and wrote theses on heresey and inquisition. I took Latin and read the Aeneid. I took a Russian novel class and fell desperately in love with Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (Google it, then read it).

When I spent time in Italy and studied abroad in Florence, I experienced mega-basilica-overload. I saw enough statues, icons, and mosaics and triptychs of saints and angels to fill another Catholic girl's lifetime. Though they weren't just objects. Every piece filled my heart with fascination of their beauty, mystery, and pain. I felt a return, in some way, to my faith. I went to Assisi and saw Saint Francis' tomb (that's what they said it was!). I climbed the fucking cuppola on the tippy-top of Saint Peter's Basilica. I read Dante for the first time, chuckled at his Hell, and loved his version of what Heaven could be. It was a journey into the world that carried the origins of a beauitful Catholicism; wherever you turned there was a sign that this was the mother land of it all. Though, interestingly, the Italians I met couldn't really care less about being surrounded by chuches.

I know, this glimpse really doesn't say enough. But, like I said, coming to terms with my beliefs takes a while, and to be honest, might not ever completely happen. In the meantime, I'm going to keep living in delicious sin with my boyfriend, watch Pope Benedict on TV and shake my head, and spell God with a capital "G".

Éire go Brách

Taking the day off for St. Patty's to celebrate with my resident Irishman/small-time Leprechaun. (I'm also avoiding the loud a-holes in green on the commuter trains). Enjoy the beautiful day drinking beer, eating blandish meat and potatoes, and kissing good-looking friends of Irish descent. Maybe read a little Joyce, too?

God, I miss real Ireland...