Marinara Stinks

Otherwise titled..."Things I've learned workin' in a dumpy pizza place~

-Pizza sounds fun....it isn't.

-Never, ever use the Parmesan cheese shakers...cheese in a warm room all day...I think that's reason enough.

-Out of control, hyped up toddlers aren't cute...especially when they've just spilt an entire pitcher of rootbeer all over the floor.

-When you order a veggie pizza for delivery & then complain that it's "soggy"-your a dumbass...it's hot, steamy vegetables trapped in a cardboard box...of course it's soggy!!

-Anchovies on a pizza??? That's just nasty

-Speaking of nasty...when little timmy loses his first tooth, don't leave it balled up on the table in a bloody napkin...

-When you show up on a friday night to celebrate your little league victory with 15 plus people, don't act shocked that we can't immediately seat you.

-And Marinara stinks

Memories and Tastebuds

The Jack in my drink swirls around in its' icy concoction, making my blood race just a little faster and the tip of my tongue impatient with profanity. It tastes like LA to me. All the dirt and the grim, all the blaring noises and opaque people. One knows that it really isn't good for you but you can't help how good it tastes, and how easily it goes down, swallow after swallow. There'll be time enough for gut aches and regrets tomorrow.

Southern Blow

I stumble to my feet. I can feel the unnatural sway of the room around me, the grit in my mouth and the blood on my tongue. I'm a survivor-no more, no less and for that I'm proud. But this blow, this pummel, this smack-has kept me down far longer than I would have thought and given fuel to the smokey whispers of defeat which swirl around me. The roaring in my ears is constant and as I shake my dizzied head, I can only guess as to which way to turn.

May May Maybe?

I've been slowly cleaning out my attic and last night I came across a box of pictures I'd taken on my 1st trip overseas. There I was outside Venice enjoying my first taste of grappa. A snapshot of crumbling ruins and gelato. Pisa, Assisi and Rome, & then me in front of the Panthon. And as I searched the 17 year old face defiantly staring up at me from its celluloid prison, I wondered where that girl had gone. Look at those dark ass eyebrows, wild and untamed, I look positively russian. And not a trace of make up upon my face. Yet somehow I looked more captivating then...more sure footed and courageous. More sure of what this world had to offer. Or more tellingly~more sure in what I had to offer.

April Already??

I am on the edge of wildness.

March the Springy

Today, while nannying, I wanted to shout out at the top of my lungs "This Kid is Not MiNe!!! Seriously!! I'm an On call Nanny and I've neVer meT them beFore!! I NevEr would have taken them to toddler playland if I knew they were gonna push Down all the baBies and have Bad Bed head all day!" Instead, I bent down and picked up all the feathered tiaras they had just knocked over and thanked the heavens that they weren't mine.

March March Already!

Well the winter gloom has finally set in and little monsters of jealousy have broken loose, and are beginning to cause havoc within my head. My mom and brother just road tripped down to LA, the land of sun n' fun, without me and I'm here, in all my soggy exuberance, hating them. On the opposite spectrum of things, my darling man told me that I have three smiles. Three uniquely, separate kinds of smiles and for him to notice that, is just beautiful=)

March Already!

Now that the wedding fever has begun to subside and the last few pieces of cake have been nibbled away, I can get back to my bitter tirade against my small town existence and keen wildly for my urban city. Right after I go weed my garden and bake the home grown squash my grandma gave me this morning that is=).

February the Sunny!

I guess what they say is true and that you really can't go back again...not exactly anyway. My sister called this morning to let me know that she is giving up our Hollywood apartment. Like a battle weary lieutenant , she's valiantly tried to hold onto it but the siege of times passed and hard urban living have land claim to it's ceramic steps. I have loved that place more than anywhere else I have ever lived. I found myself within its' walls and created the life I wanted on its' plantain covered balcony. I can close my eyes and see the honey color of the worn wood floor, the afternoon light dancing off my orange bedroom wall and the cracked bathroom tiles. I can smell the delicious scent that only two girls that live together and who use different perfumes and the same incense can create. Ya~there are reasons why I left LA, but that apartment and living with my darling Aubrey sure wasn't one of them. I'm going to miss it more than I know.

February the 1st!

The gray mellow of the afternoon settled around me as I counted out my last minutes of freedom before succumbing to the yeasty monotony of the small town pizza parlor I've been ensnared in. Maybe something exciting will happen tonight~like a bar brawl and someone will break one of our four stools and throw a bottle of coors light at one of the three flat screen TV's which adorn the walls. Then at least, I won't have to subject myself to another football game and I can watch my boss cry. Well, one can only hope.

January the Balmy??

It seems that the Washington rain spirits have answered all our soggy Seattlite pleas...for once it's pouring rain in LA and it's a nice springlike day here. HaHa Vengence!!! It's a small consolation for having to leave my beloved life of urbanity behind but it does make me feel a tiny bit better=)

January the Bleak

The melancholy of Maltby has set in. At least in LA, I had the illusion that I was doing something memorable with my life.

January Bright N' sHinY

I've decided that 2010 is the year to get things done. So that is why, at this ripe and stormy hour, I have drank a cup of left over coffee to keep me awake long enough to eek out something worth writing about. However, it doesn't seem to be that forthcoming. Hmmmm?? How about a classic list of New Year's resolutions?? It can't seem to hurt...not today anyway. A year from now, it could possibly make me cringe with guilt and feelings of slothliness, but right now, a resolution list sounds positive and even a bit optimistic. So here goes....

In 2010 I want to:

Get MaRRieD! Yep yep yep....Edgar and I are gettin' hitched SoMetime this year....Either when my family can settle down and quit arguing over when and where it's gonna happen or more plausibly, when Edgar and I finally come to our senses and just elope.

Wallpaper my hallway....yes the other hallway...the one we didn't wallpaper a few weeks ago...joy joy

Get some sort of ReliaBle & RuNNing Vehicle...at this point I really don't care if it's a military tank as long as it starts up in the morning.

Write more letters....

Be a better friend...really do need to work on this...if you call me and it takes me a 1000 plus years to call you back please, please don't take it personal...I'm just really not a phone person and I guess I'm a little flaky too but that doesn't mean I don't miss you=)

Visit someplace, really anyplace outside of this soggy state...

Go to NY, LA or San fran....any of them will do...I just need to breathe in one of them before I shrivel up from lack of urban culture...my dear SeAttle is just a little bit too squeeky clean to do the trick.

I could think of a hundred other things I should do this year but the buzz the stale coffee awarded me has worn off and now I'm sleepy and if I hope to accomplish even one of my resolutions, I need my beauty sleep. So CheeRs~

December the Swift

I found a poemish sort of thing I wrote a few years ago when I was down in LA pining for the soggy Northwest. With the downpour we had today though, I must have been hallucinating from a Vitamin D overload to have ever truly yearned for weather like this. Anyway the poem~

Emerald City

Lavender clouds dot the sky....and it begins to rain.

I have waited months for this~the annual baptism into my city.

my heartache,

my home.

How I have missed your towering fortresses, your skyline, your scent.

I abandoned you....too early...even before I had to....

yet each time I return....you accept me~without question~without judgement.

And I think, intuitively, you know, in your emerald wisdom, that a part of me will always stay~

scattered somewhere between Brooklyn Ave and Ballard.

For you were my first love, my growing pains and who could forget the memory of that?

November the Dreary

I'm so freakin' tired this week. Maybe I have mono. Or maybe the depression I feel about still not having finished my damn living room has finally caught up to me. Or maybe I'm over worked. Maybe I'm just a sniveling little whiner who is just lucky enough to have a house and JobS! to complain over. Or maybe I'm getting soggy and growing gills from all this rain. Or maybe maybe~I'm just tired =)

Novembery

*Today's To Do List*

Vacuum wallpaper shavings and Dagobaz fur from living room carpet

Call Miss Alice

Return library books

Bury dead garage possums

Pay gas bill

And so the possum saga continues....I decided today was the day to reclaim the garage and revert it back to it's original use instead of being used as a furniture warehouse and possum cemetery. After digging a hole and disposing of two shriveled little bodies, Edgar informed me that I had one more to go. Unfortunately for him, he had discovered the 3rd causality a few days earlier while attempting to find a leaf rake. Fortunately for me, the possum had had the good sense to die on a blanket. Now I'm the last one to throw anything away without using up the very marrow of the thing. And even though it was from mexico and in perfectly good shape-I had to toss the dead possum blanket. No matter how many times you wash it, there's something about cozyin' up in a blanket which a small mammal expired and indeed decayed on, which is downright unpleasant.

November Chill

Had an infamous Lake bonfire last night and my baby sister was her spritey little self, which was nice. Anyway, standing around a roaring fire with crickets chirping in your ear and a cold beer in your hand, one gets philosophical. And so, keeping with the theme of last night and honoring the good ol' boys aptly named drew & ian, here is my list of bonfire truths~

1. People die too young sometimes and there's nothing you can do about it but honor who they were and what they might have become.

2. Sometimes the only thing holding you back from what you want most in this life is your own self imposed chains. Barriers that you've built around yourself for one reason or another and that only you can take down.

3. That good men & women are hard too find. Should you be so lucky to stumble across one-do whatever is in your power to hold onto them.

4. People surprise you. You find out that your dad, who you've never seen throw a football or kick a soccer ball, ice skates every winter. Or that your mountain man of a brother wants to move to Dubai.

*November*

I smell of bleach and beer. This small town existence is killing me. Oh Hollywood~

October Leaves..

Today, while my mom and I were moving furniture, I scrunched a possum's mummified skull. Besides how utterly unsettling and downright nasty this was and overlooking the fact that I can still feel it's little cranium cracking beneath my feet, it was rather a comedic moment. I nearly dropped the headboard I was carrying and i think my mom is still chortling over the squeal of disgust which escaped my lips. And no worries animal lovers, it had been dead for quite some time prior to me stepping on its head.

October the Grey

Making popcorn to help me eat away my financial woes. I hate being responsible sometimes. Every spare dime, nickel or dirty little penny I have seems to be sucked up by my bloody mortgage and I've been subsisting on potatoes and the random bag of vegetables my grandma gave me which mostly consists of cabbage. Who outside of Russia eats cabbage?? I don't know what the hell to even do with it. But at least now I have popcorn~which gives me some sort of nutrition I suppose. Oh yah~thanks for the butter mom. I stole it out of your fridge while you were in the shower.