Archive for the ‘me me me’ Category
Word Association
Saw this on italian trivia a little while ago.
The rule is that you can type just one word–no explanations. I won’t tag anyone, but feel free to play along if you like.
1. Yourself: clever
2. Your partner: thoughtful
3. Your hair: manageable
4. Your Mother: telephone
5. Your Father: Blazer
6. Your Favorite Item: Internet
7. Your Dream Last Night: couch
8. Your Favorite Drink: cappuccino
9. Your Dream Car: hybrid
10. Your Dream Home: secluded
11. The Room You Are In: kitchen
12. Your Ex: niente
13. Your Fear: losing
14. Where You Want To Be In Ten Years? mommy
15. Who You Hung Out With Last Night: P
16. What You’re Not: flaky
17. Muffins: blueberry!
18. One of Your Wish List Items: SKY
19. Time: 3:42 p.m.
20. The Last Thing You Did: laundry
21. What You Are Wearing: sweater
22. Your Favorite Weather: autumnal
23. Your Favorite Book: many
24. Last Thing You Ate: chicory
25. Your Life: wow
26. Your Mood: up
27. Your Best Friends: American
28. What Are You Thinking About Right Now: dream
29. Your Car: Invisible
30. What Are You Doing At The Moment: breathing
31. Your Summer: uneventful
32. Relationship Status: engagedish
33. What Is On Your TV: nothing
34. What Is The Weather Like: sunshiny
35. When Is The Last Time You Laughed: “baby”
Love Thursday Seconda Parte: I Don’t Mean to Brag But…
I have the best mommy in the world (no offense to your mommies, of course).
Today I received this:
NB: This is the fourth outrageously heavy package I’ve received within the past month and a half.
Before my mom sent it, the story goes, my niece handed her an already sealed envelope to put in for me. Here are some of its contents:
That there on the left? Why yes, it *is* a snowflake cut out of a coffee filter.
Again, I don’t mean to brag, but let’s just say I’m a pretty durn lucky gal.
Cutting Corners
No, this isn’t a post about wimping out on Christmas obligations. I’m fully in the swing o’ the season and entering the homestretch, which will include a good amount of cooking in the next few days. More on that later though.
This is a post about an actual corner. The corner of my kitchen to be exact. It’s the only part of my house that is decorated for a variety of reasons–not the least of which is the reverse peer pressure of being in a place where most can’t be bothered to even string up a set of lights.
Bah humbuggers!
My grandmother used to go crazy with Christmas–red, green, gold, or white wherever you looked–including bathrooms. And I loved it. I’m getting all warm and fuzzy just thinking about walking in there after Christmas Eve mass, the warmth inside and only the lights of the tree lighting the way to the amazing smells in the kitchen.
Well, I don’t have much of a stash of Christmas decorations here in Italy, but give me time, my friends…and the food is forthcoming!
Anyway, I’m going to show you my decorated corner as I play along with something I saw a couple weeks ago on Mom O Matic:
Now, again taking Mom O’s lead, some random info about the corner:
- This is the corner of my kitchen, which also serves as our living room for the most part (the TV is in another, far less pretty corner). To the left is the balcony door. If I were a better photographer, you might see the Ionian Sea through the window (and also *not* the reflection of the overhead light in the glass of the picture above the fireplace). Sorry.
- Those blondies in the picture in the lower left corner? My niece and nephew. A good three years ago, but they’re just so darn cute in that shot, I can’t take it down. There’s a black-and-white of them, too, on the lower right side by the Christmas teddy (paw dated 2003), but you can’t see it very well from this angle. There are also individual pictures of them on the mantle in the off-white square frames. One could use the word obsession. I wouldn’t be offended.
- I bought the 1895 map of southern Italy above the fireplace on Ebay for $2.99 (plus shipping) and got it framed and matted here for 20 euro. Many of the villages now on the coastline aren’t on the map because they weren’t built until after World War II. For anyone who hasn’t seen them, you can tell this from the concrete, institutional-like architecture that lines the coast. Very becoming.
- My mom recently sent me the festive tablecloth and the basket that is sitting inside the fireplace (that woman can fit anything in a shipping box). These are the only new additions to the scene this year, but they really make it, don’t you think?
- You already know a little about the heart on top of the tree.
- That circular thing above the window? It’s a Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign that says “Bless this House.” My mom is Pennsylvania Dutch, which, if you’re wondering, is not remotely Dutch and is not the same as Amish, although many Amish are indeed Pennsylvania Dutch. Please research this one on your own if interested as it’s far beyond the scope of this two-days-before-Christmas blog post.
- The orange splash of color on the table may be my favorite thing about the picture, but I had to throw out at least half of those lovely clementines. For a few days straight, I was greeted by two maggots on my table in the morning. Always two. Swiftly eliminated. Thank goodness I don’t eat risotto for breakfast or it could’ve gotten ugly around here. Even more disturbing was that I never found the culprit, and I sure hope I didn’t eat it.
Now, come on, fellow bloggers. Show me your corners!
National Association of W Lovers
Over at Red Red Whine, Guinness Girl was tagged to make a list of ten things she loves starting with the letter G. She then generously offered up other letters for fellow bloggers to play, and I have received “W.”
If you’d like to play along, use the first letter in your name and then please leave a comment directing me to your list.
And, incidentally, if you think I’ve made up the title of this post, get thee to Sesame Street!
Now, the list:
1. Wine. Well this is kind of an obvious one, isn’t it? I love red and tolerate white, but I use white more for cooking than for drinking. For the most part, we imbibe P’s father’s homemade brew, which, thankfully, does not at all resemble vinegar like so much of the paesano wine around here does. The second most popular in our house comes from Cirò, another Calabrian town. Yeah. We keep it real.
2. Whiskey. Staying with the alcohol theme, I do love me some whiskey. Preferably Jack Daniel’s. Preferably with Coke. Yes, I’ve been known to bring this with me from the States even though they have it here. It’s cheaper there, in case you wondered.
3. Winter clothes. I would live in turtleneck sweaters, jeans, and boots if it were at all possible. As I live in southern Italy, alas, ’tis not.
3. Words. Writing. Writers. These are grouped together for obvious reasons, but also because I didn’t want to be considered a cheater for my very first meme as a blogger. I am fascinated by words, how they evolve, who uses them, and why. I love putting them together in ways that no one ever has, sometimes making them up myself, and, most of all, I love reading other writers doing the same thing. I’m a wordgeek and proud.
4. Walking. I used to live in a city, so walking was a forced kind of exercise, and I didn’t always appreciate taking a stroll. Here, though, I’ve learned to love it, especially when accompanied by Luna. Our favorite routine takes us down a mountain road that, 10 kilometers later, would land us in the next village. Although we haven’t gone that far just yet, on this Road Less Traveled, Luna and my mind both run free. Lovely.
5. Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Although Willy Wonka, not so much. He’s kinda (a lot) creepy. But oh how I long to lick the wallpaper and have the Schnozzberries taste like Schnozzberries.
6. Wendy’s. The fast food chain. I’ve already mentioned this, but let me add specifically how much I enjoy Wendy’s fries dipped in an Original Chocolate Frosty. To die for. Someone, somewhere, please do this for me and report back with the tales of glee.
7. Watching movies with P. We watch only in Italian, so he acts as my real-time interpretor. It’s quite handy. Yeah, there’s the closeness and bonding time, blah blah, but really it’s more about the live dictionary thing for me. Shh.
8. World Wide Web. Three W’s for the price of one. This little invention made my moving to another continent, an ocean away from everyone I knew, a heck of a lot easier. I can’t even imagine what it was like for people like my ancestors who left their homes and were able to exchange only letters and photos at the most.
9. Weekends. No explanation necessary.
10. Women friendships. As I’ve gotten older, I appreciate more my relationships with other women, my mother included. Bottom line is that we get us, and no matter what else is going on in life, I know that certain women will always have my back. Grazie!
And now some things I don’t love starting with a W:
W, a.k.a. Dubya; war (beauty pageant answer); weapons of mass destruction (assuming they exist); washing windows; whiny adults (children have a certain leeway with me); “wazzup” just in case anyone is *still* saying that; weathergirls in Italy (yes, we have them); weddings; and winkers who insist on winking even though they physically cannot close only one eye at a time.
OK, who wants to play?
Blogging Baptism
*Warning: Non-bloggers will most likely not give a whip about this rant. Neither will many bloggers. But it’s my blog, and I’ll rant when I want to.
Twelve days into blogging, and I’ve experienced my first bug. Actually two glitches, and they both happened early this morning. I think this means I’ve been baptized as a blogger. Maybe. Advice welcome.
The first problem was something I was readily expecting having read others’ blogs for months. My trusty Blogger in Beta (up until now) wouldn’t let me add pictures. How rude is that? But even more inconsiderate was that it didn’t actually say “We can’t add your pictures right now” or “Please try later.”
There was nothing out of the ordinary to even warn me. Instead, obviously in denial of its own shortcomings, B in B acted like nothing was wrong, like we were peaches and cream, like, well, you get the picture.
It let me put in the link, it let me click “Upload Images.” It even told me that the picture was added and that I could publish it to my blog by clicking “Done.” All the same stuff it normally says. Only there was no picture.
Can I add here that I’m on a dial-up connection, so it took a good chunk of time just to learn that I was wasting clicks? Because, of course, then I had to try sixty schmillion more times to be sure.
Even if it doesn’t seem so, I assure that I’m pretty much over this one now as things are back to normal. But this minor snafu *did* throw off my posting intentions. Now you’ll be a day behind forever! But moving on…
The other problem was much more disconcerting. I use Google Analytics to keep track of my number of visitors, where they’re coming from, etc. I clicked this morning and there was *no* data. I’m not just talking from yesterday or even the day before. All of the data that had been collected from when I started blogging was gone. Zeros. Donuts. My blog is a big fat nothing, and I have the columns of inadequacy to prove it.
Now, to be clear, I’m not very concerned with the number of visitors, but I do find it interesting to see where my readers are, where they’re directed from, and how many return. Thank goodness I now have that nifty map over on the right for partial backup at least. (Kudos to Katerina Fiore for the silent inspiration!)
So I emailed Google’s help desk or whatever, and I got back a form message of potential causes of the problem described in my message, which no one even read. One of the possibilities was that all those goose eggs may be because of routine maintenance, and that everything should reappear and be back on track within 72 hours.
Uh huh. Ci credo quando lo vedo.
So, fellow bloggers, I feel initiated now. I feel baptized as a blogger. But my question is this: should I? Or are there more “normal” problems I should be prepared for before I get my wings?
I don’t like to expect the worst, but I do like to be prepared.
For now, though, I just kinda feel like doing this:
Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
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