Sailing.

I love my life.

Happy, Happy. Joy, Joy.

All I can say is that I'm about ready to pee myself for the next four months until I'm in Spain again. The fact that I will be with three people I love the most in life means the world to me - which also means there will be chaos all throughout our adventures in Spain.

I know that normally I'm a Hell of a lot more interesting in my posts but because I'm tired and lazy that means that all you're going to get out of me is that I'm stoked for Spain in August.

Dumplings.

Something that I wish I could do is use my hands for more than putting shit in a bowl then baking it and making it taste good. I'm not artsy. I watch all the cake and sugar piece showdowns on Food Network and I get so insanely jealous of their artistic abilities that it's almost borderline like someone fucked my boyfriend in front of me. It is THAT bad. I desperately crave to barter with the Devil and get artistic hands, ones that are able to execute when I see in my mind.

When I make dumplings, they are fucking ugly. Granted they're not as fucking terrible looking as Dani or Racheal's dumplings but they're still pretty ugly. At least they taste like they should taste and I'm happy with that but fuck man, they are atrocious. What I wouldn't do to have some tiny little Chinese lady that's like a fuckin' 100 come to my house and beat the beauty of dumplings out of me. I would almost pay for it.

Aside from my wet dreams of being beaten by an old Asian lady, today at Whole Foods I almost peed on myself when I discovered vinegars that I have never owned before. So I splurged a little and bought some additional vinegars besides the much, much, MUCH needed brown rice vinegar for my dumpling dipping sauce. Every day I'm slowly getting closer and closer to the dream of having an awesome collection of vinegar. Between my new secret Spanish market, Whole Foods and the mass amount of vinegars I brought back from Europe... I almost there.

For the record my loyal readers, I have been a very good girl on my diet. I ate two small dumplings and that was my entire dinner. I've been fruiting/vegging myself all day. I will only break my diet when foie gras is shoved in my face.

Juicing.

After stepping on my scale and realizing that I am officially a human-sized double whopper with extra cheese, I have decided that it's time to diet. The holidays are over, I'm no longer in Europe (very, very sadly), my birthday has come and gone and now I'm just a fat old frump and the beach days are quickly approaching. It's time for me to shed my deep fried morzilla sandwich weight and get back to looking at least semi-decent.

In what will end up being another poor attempt at dieting, I busted out the juicer and stocked up on produce. Now, I know that juicing takes away some of the most nutrient rich parts of the fruit and it also removes most of the fiber but I don't give a damn. The point is that I am way too lazy to chew all that damn fruit so I'd rather juice a couple extra than sit there and chew on a boring fruit. The reality is that I don't know how to make fruit exciting that does not involve mass amounts of sugar, fat or alcohol, so my culinary skills stop there. I guess I am no longer the "master-chef" as so many call me. I am revoking my own title for being a fraud because a real master chef would healthily make fruits exciting and I simply can't. Without the aid of sugar or butter or some combination of the two I become completely uninterested and am mentally flaccid.

I guess I just don't enjoy the whole "healthy lifestyle" bullshit. Sometimes I think I should develop a meth addiction so then I can have a life like the Crackie of Camden and be a wild ass bitch and just never sleep and never eat but somehow still manage to exist... Then I will say "no, no, no," to rehab and see where that gets me. If I were as lucky as that skinny bitch with the big dirty hair I'd end up in St. Lucia for a few months and then get kicked out by the government for being a drunk ass bitch and causing a whole country to be in an uproar.

The bottom line is that working out isn't fun. Dieting isn't fun. Going to the market and avoiding the pleasures of looking at the perfect cut of red meat, the best French cheese, beautiful loaves of fresh sour dough bread and completely stabbing the idea of sour cream out of my head just isn't what I want in life but I don't want to be a tub of lard either. I keep saying that one day I will invent an at home liposuction kit and I guess I will need to work really hard now on developing said billion-dollar idea because you know every woman on earth would have one at home. I'm sure I could pitch the idea to Sarah-Lee and they'll invest in it because it'll just give women an excuse to have just onnneee moooreee slice (or whole) pie, meaning billions of dollars in revenue for them. See, I am a genius.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I am on a diet and I am no longer going to be a chubbo. So, any takers on how long before I'm happily swimming in a pool of jamon de pata negra or foie gras?

Celebration.

I may be climbing out on a limb here to say that my horse has finally been leased. To celebrate my horse being potentially leased out I did not make myself a traditional dinner. I made myself a margarita dinner. Which means I drank 1.5 bags of bags of frozen strawberries with who knows how many ounces of tequila and now 6... 7...8 (?) margaritas later I am who knows what point of drunk. What's amazing is how awesome I can type but how poorly I can talk. I was laying in bed with Boo Boo talking about whatever blah blah i was talking about when I finally gave up on talking because I've completely forgotten how to speak for the night.

As for the horse situation, Charm was tried out over the weekend by a young client of my friend/trainer. Charm was an angel, she loved her, everything went smoothly and the father of the girl who will be riding Charm said it's a go. My friend e-mailed the final information about what the lease agreement entails and prices, so now I'm basically waiting for the signature. I'm hoping as of April 1 I do not have to pay board for at least 6 months.

I guess that means I will no longer be a broke bitch and I'll have money for Spain again this August and I'll also have money for a 6 day vacation with Boo Boo somewhere tropical for our anniversary in June.

I guess all this means for you, the reader, is that I will probably be a Hell of a lot less bitchy. That's all .

Birthday WTF.

So my birthday wasn't terrible and I was being my normal drama-queen self. Fine, fine, fine, so I will admit that I've always been a brat and have enjoyed being cooked for on my birthday but apparently now that I'm a crickety old bitch that I no longer get those luxuries. I made my own fat girl cake and it tasted yummy of course. However, after actually REALLY trying to put together a nice cake rather than just frosting it while it's in the stupid pan, I realized that I do not have enough cake decorating accessories and now I'm pissed. My mom and I were hunting high and low, through the woods, across the river, over the rocks, road camels through the desert and climbed K2 looking for my cake stand that I once had. After about 2 hours of screaming and yelling over the stupid cake stand we realized that it has been gone since 2001... When my house burned down and we haven't replaced it since. That shows how often I make nice cakes. Sure, I bake cakes all the time but I never make them nice. I'm like - here's a plate, plop on cake, plop on frosting on cake. pick up fork. stab cake. bring fork to mouth. chew. swollow. rinse with milk. repeat. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I need to work on more cakes and get a fucking cake stand so I can smooth out a cake properly.

T minus 365 days until quarter life crisis.

Today is my birthday. I am 24 years old going on a fuckin' 100. I keep forgetting how old I am and when people ask me I have to stop and think about it. Either I wish I was aging backwards or I am really forgetful, or possibly a bit of both. The past couple of "how old are you?" questions I've answered with "68, I think." That would be more appropriate because I'm an old bitty or at least I act like one. I will probably be one of those old ladies with a cane and will hit everyone with it. I guess the one thing I look forward to in old age is being crazy and being able to get away with being a complete and utter bitch.

So, somehow I got voted into cooking my own dinner and baking my own damn cake. I'm not quite sure how that happened but it happened. It all started out with an e-mail from my mom saying that my grandma called and is expecting to come over for my birthday dinner, followed by suggestions on what I should make. "Vieja really likes your sweet BBQ ribs" was in that e-mail somewhere and so I guess I had no choice. My mom is like an evil dictator that's rather coy and manipulative. I hope to one day perfect her skills but for now I will sit here and grumble and be irritable. I would almost rather have butt-itch right now like my Skarepack did last night.

Dom had planned on taking me to brunch and spending the day with me then going out to a casual dinner but just spending the day together and having fun. We also planned on seeing my horse today for the first time in months because she has someone coming out to try her and we are hoping for the best, but I have to stay here and cook. Awesome, really. My all-day date with my Boo Boo has been postponed until tomorrow but I'm sour because I like spending Sundays in bed and doing absolutely nothing other than be a complete bum in my pajamas. I know some of you are thinking that I'm always a bum which is partially true but I am not always in pajamas nor am I always laying in bed.

For now, I am in my pajamas making BBQ ribs, marinating tri-tip and letting my cakes cool since I just pulled the layers out of the oven. I'm making a three layer dark chocolate cake withdark chocolate frosting. I ran out of unsweetened cocoa powder when making the cake so I should send Dom to go get some. However, I did humor myself last night. Last night at the market I bought some really odd candles for my cake. I bought barnyard animals, a gigantic question mark and the same candle at the top of the page. I also bought doggie-themed paper cups, napkins and paper plates. Again, appropriate because I'm a bitch. My mom complained about the candles and said my grandma will hate it but I say TOUGH SHIT BECAUSE I AM MAKING MY OWN DAMN CAKE THE WAY I WANT TO AND NO ONE HAS ANY DAMN SAY-SO ABOUT IT. IF YOU DO NOT LIKE MY CAKE YOU CAN SHOVE IT IN YOUR ASS.

Unfortunately, I can't really leave my house because my piece of crap "expensive" BBQ goes WHACKO all the time and it can't maintain a low level of heat and thinks that 21380912830912830912830981209 degrees is the only way to BBQ. Since I need my ribs at 225 degrees I constantly have to check on it. I chose the illustration on the right to show you how I feel about this mother fucking BBQ of mine. It is a pain in the ass and I hate it. Maybe for my birthday next year I will rent a car crusher for a day and stick both my BBQ and my truck in there, bring home my crushed pieces of metal and garbage, put it on my lawn and call it art.

I will now leave you with, "it's my party and I'll act like a bitch if I want to."

Elevator farts.

Working in a 19283719283718927391 story building with an equally as large parking structure has lend me to observe the most annoying things about working in a crowded environment and therefore justifies why I could never live in a big city without going completely crazy and killing everyone. That excludes Madrid. There's something about having an insatiable need for tapas and knowing Madrid is filled with them that makes Madrid OK in my book.

First and foremost, women are crazy about the restroom. I wrote a blog a while ago about how women love to use the end stall furthest from the door which is usually the handicap stall. Something about a big stall with an even bigger toilet is soothing, both for your ass and for your mind. So over the years I've learned the etiquette of the using the end stall.

Rule number 1.

Only use the end stall if you have to take a MAJOR shit that might take a long time. That way, it will save you the embarrassment of someone walking by your stall and peeping through the crack or seeing your feet and knowing who you are, to only later discuss why you were in the stall for so long.

Rule number 2.

When using the end stall, keep in mind that every other cunt that walks through the bathroom door will want to use it too. To save yourself from possibly getting the door ripped off by a women shitting her pants, the moment you hear the door open fake loud sniffling or coughing so that she goes to the further stall away from you because you may have SARS.

Rule number 3.

If you are selfishly using the bathroom to piss and some bitch comes in pinching a loaf, prepare to stay in the bathroom until she is gone. I have personally seen other women get into verbal brawls over that toilet. Grunt and growl, pretend you haven't eaten an ounce of fibre in a year. This way you can safely exit the bathroom without potentially getting eaten alive.

My second observation is that women with those mother fucking rolly briefcases like to congregate in large numbers in front of stairs, elevators, doorways or any place you need to walk through quickly but you are stopped like in a bad traffic jam because said rolly briefcases women are unable to figure out how to push and/or pull open doors or lift the suitcases up about a quarter of an inch so the wheels don't get caught between cracks. Sometimes I dream about running them over with my truck and seeing little wheels and body parts all over the place.

Third, when you are in a hurry is when you will hit all ALL POSSIBLE TRAFFIC IN ELEVATORS. It's funny how when I'm just crusing around the buildings, taking my sweet time to and from my office or whatever is when I never, ever hit traffic in the elevators. Somehow in the mornings when I'm running late because I lost my keys (I tend to do this a lot, I'm not sure how I'm so brilliant at doing this) is when I hit EVERY SINGLE FLOOR going down the elevator from the parking structure and then hit EVERY SINGLE FLOOR going up and somehow I always end up in the elevator with some older fat woman who insists on wearing caca as perfume and then I feel it in my throat for the rest of the day. Not only that, but said fat older woman usually weighs like 12973198273912373981273981273192873918273 pounds and usually exceeds the weight limit of the elevator and of course I'm always paranoid of the elevator wires just snapping in half and then I plummet to my death, but of course the fat lady survives because I acted as her cushion in the fall. One time some lady that looked like th Kool-Aid man but only with red curly hair got in the elevator and she was so heavy and occupying so much room in the elevator that I felt clastrophobic and paranoid of my own demise that I got off on the next floor and waited for the next elevator up to my office. I would have walked up the stairs but I was only on the 3rd floor and I was in NO MOOD to walk up to the 7th floor so I guess my laziness got the best of me. Sometimes I fart out of nervousness and blame it on the Hindu guy that works at AIG. Usually they don't speak the best of English nor do the understand that I'm blaming them for farting so thus far, I've gotten away with it. One of these days I'll blame it on the Hindu guy that speaks better English than I do and then I'll shit myself. I can only hope my elevator has a video camera and it makes it on youtube.

Maybe I'm just a sour bitch because I hate working. The irony in that is that I love my job and I'm happy when I'm there. I guess it's because I'm sitting behind a desk and not cooking or bitching is why I hate working. I guess that would be correct. Whatever way you look at it, it will not take away my vivid dreams of running over the wheelie ladies and then shitting on them.

Omgz Greenz

Today was St. Patrick's Day. I say WAS because it's almost over and I don't want to hear about St. Pat's anymore. In other words, today is the 1 year anniversary of when Dom's dog broke his wee wee while humping a wall and I spent St. Pat's with his sister Sabrina in the doggie ER while he was getting his pecker sewn back into place by the doctor who worshipped A Flock of Seagulls. Otherwise, St. Pat's means absolutely nothing to me. Since I'm turning into an old, frigid bitch that also means I don't wear green and I disown anyone that's excited to drink green beer. The only holiday that's important that is coming up is my birthday, which is this Saturday, the 21st. I suggest mark it on your calendars, put alarms on your phone to remind you of my wonderful birthday and DO NOT forget to buy me a birthday present. If you do not buy me something wonderful like a waffle iron or tampons I will probably cut your dick off or stuff you like a build a bear and you don't get to choose your fate.

As for WHAT I am doing for my birthday I have no idea. I remember when I used to have a birthday month which slowly dwindled down to a week or two and now I don't even give a rat's ass about the actual day. I think Dom's present to me should be him just working his magical fingers and massage me all day because I think he's better than a majority of the masseuses I've used over the years. Just FYI, that is how he sealed the deal with me almost 6 years ago. He gave me a mind-blowing body massage and I think a couple of hours later I called my day spa and fired them.

What I really want for my birthday is to magically be on a plane flying into Madrid/Barajas but I guess shit like work gets in the way. wtf. I need to make a carbon copy of myself and send my clone to work and to stay back and watch the dogs while I go eat my way across Spain. I guess I'll continue to wait to go back until August but this will be terrible
and I will probably bitch, whine, complain, throw temper tantrums and stomp my feet until then. As long as the moment I land in Madrid I can get a deep fried morzilla sandwhich I guess I can survive until then but just barely. I will have to make monthly trips to the Spanish market in BFE to keep myself satisfied until then.

Sometimes you just gotta pat yourself on the back...

So apparently I have a shitty camera and it doesn't have enough pixels or whatever to pick up all the colors that I want to show. I'm also not very good at camera angles because when I look the picture of the soup I made I'm not like WOW THAT LOOKS AMAZING even though it did IRL. Well, whatever. I made carrot habanero soup which was fucking delicious in every single way, shape and form and it's probably going to be my new go-to soup for parties and such. So, I kicked the ass of River Lounge in London and I will now formally challenge them to a carrot soup throwdown. Don't worry River Lounge, I will come to you. I'll even pay for my own tix.

Boo-ya shaka.

I'm happy I didn't let my mind go into overload again with this soup. I had been thinking about it for way too long and if I would have waited another day to make it my mind probably would have exploded. That could have been messy and who really wants to clean that? Yuck.

Unfortunately for the people in my life that will never truly diet with me around, I have about 12814912849127 more dishes to try out. This time I'm actually WRITING DOWN MY DAMN RECIPES and I'm keeping them under lock and key and I'm determined to get my fucking book done. It seems to be taking a major turn towards the tapas direction but who knows. I think after my month in Spain I will do this summer and hopefully next winter I will be able to go to Cuba for a couple of weeks. I think the maximum stay for Cuban-Americans or Americans with family in Cuba is 2 weeks. So, that would be nice to be able to spend some time with family and really get to know Cuban culture for what it really is, not the washed out culture that I know. I want fresh mamey shakes, something I've never had. I've never seen mamey here in CA other than in frozen baggies but I've had it in FL before. Supposedly the mamey fruit grown in FL is horse caca compared to that in Cuba. I guess I will have to see for myself.

Horse caca.

Owning a horse is the stupidest thing a person can do. Unless you're made out of TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS or you REALLY enjoy being broke every single moment of your life, then I guess it's ok to be a horse owner. Otherwise, horse ownership is for the very stupid. Clearly I was once very stupid.

Let me just say that my horse has brought me a great deal of inner strength and emotional support in hard times and blah blah, but instead of hugging a stupid fucking horse I should have been hugging a bottle of xanax which is significantly cheaper. Since this past fall when I decided I wanted to sell my horse, she has been nothing but a pain in the ass and a pain in my wallet. My horse has been nothing but a barrel of STUPID FUCKING PROBLEMS that are all expensive and irritating. I am at the point now where I am going to sell her per pound to Carni Equine because that seems to be my only option of getting rid of her. Otherwise I might just ask my dad if I can borrow his shotgun and put a slug between her eyes.

Furthermore, put it on the record that I hate horses. If I could possibly grow anymore disdain for the thought of horse ownership I would probably be spewing hate fire out of my nose. I probably wouldn't have a problem if she mysteriously disappeared off the face of this Earth.

Munching.

My mind's been running wild with foodies I want to make tomorrow for dinner. Unfortunately, my mom bought China's entire March harvest of mussels earlier this evening which means I should make paella de mariscos but then I'm making something I've made a million times which is not inspired by my recent food adventure. I've been thinking about the carrot soup I had at River Lounge in St. Katherine's Docks in London - and how I can make my own variation of it. What it lacked was an over-all punch. It had bits and pieces of zing from a tiny bit of chopped up cilantro but not nearly enough over-all WOW factor. I'm thinking about jazzing it up with some roasted shallots for additional sweetness and some other ideas that are running through my head. I shouldn't give it all away before it's said, done and written down in my book, right? Right.

These. These right here. These puppies. They are a given. Papas Bravas and Salsa Brava. Done deal, set it stone. They are like a classic
Jackson song. Either it's done right or it's karaoke. I'm not fucking with these. Why ruin what's already perfect? Sometimes a chef/cook or whatever needs to know there are some things you fuck with - and some that you don't. I have been thinking about these mean and awesome little fuckers since my plate was empty and I was asking for more but I was told I had cosido waiting at my cousin's house for me to eat and other classic Spanish dishes so I unfortunately had to say no to plate number two.

Oh my mind, she is crazy. I should probably take a xanax and sleep for 14 hours then wake up and caca and go back to sleep. Since I need to get up in the morning and find a whole fresh cod fish to make baccalao I guess I can't live the druggie life... And I'm well aware that it's spelled bacalhau and it's referring to salted codfish but that was when Spaniards and Cubans were poor and used salted codfish. Now that there's such a thing as fedex overnight shipping so stupid Americans can make cod dishes from fresh cod.

blahblahblah whatever. be jealous.

Lagging from a jet.

It took me almost 2 weeks to get on European time and now Im going to suffer to try to get to American time. It seems like American time just sucks so much more. I feel like I'm turning into that pompous guy I briefly dated when Dom and I were on what I thought was permanent hiatus. Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy and all that jazz, but I reallllllllly do not deal with with someone who thinks they're always right. The only person who can be right all the time is me, but solely because I have a vagina. Not because I'm smart or anything, just because I possess a vagina. I can continue on with the reasons of why said guy was not good for me, but then it would take away the beauty of my post. So I'm turning into him in the sense of that I've been bitten by the travel bug. Europe. Europe. Europe. blah. blah. blah. blah. I guess the only difference between me and him is that I am posting it on the interwebz on my own private blog rather than being a bitch and shoving it up everyone's nose. Okay, maybe a little bit about the JAMON DE PATA NEGRA but with good reason.
That reason is that Jamon de pata negra (Iberico ham) was illegal in the US until 2005. It is now available in very limited quantities and very difficult to find. It is still illegal to import ANY kind of meat from ANYWHERE into this country without proper packaging and Dept. of Agriculture approval. Well, my cousins in Spain kept shoving chorizo and jamon de pata negra down my throat at every given opportunity which means I had to eat like, the whole time I was in Spain. I am surprised I could fit on the airplane.
Anyway, so my cousin sent me home with said jamon de pata negra, carefully packaged of course. I will admit that the whole time while going through customs I was a nervous wreck about getting caught and getting a $2500 fine, but it turns out people in Miami are lazy fags (literally, butt fucking fags that are possibly too lazy to butt fuck) and the beagles in the airport are just as fucking lazy because I not only got away with meat by the beagle that sniffed my luggage, but also by the people who are supposed to go through my luggage and make sure I'm not doing anything illegal. Next time I know I don't need to shove cocaine up my ass. So, I made it home with JAMON DE PATA NEGRA that my wonderful family gave me. Well, as it turns out, this shit sells for $96 dollars a pound. Yes, you read that correctly. $96.00 a pound. Which means that a whole jamon goes upwards $2000 and higher. What it also means that I have meat that you will not be eating because I am a spoiled bitch and I am going to eat it all and not share. What's also awesome is that because I have family in Spain that loves me, they're going to spend 200 Euro's and buy me a whole jamon de pata negra and switch the labels on it put a Serrano jamon label on it which is legal for export to the US by butcher shops. In exchange, I will be sending them Levi's 501's because apparently Levi's makes their money in Europe, because they charge 150 Euro per pair of jeans which I find completely insane.

This weekend I plan on opening up my notebook that I wrote in while eating everything I could, going through my notes and creating recipes on what I've eaten and how I can make these dishes in my own signature way. I've been inspired beyond belief and while I still have the tastes and feeling of yum in my head it's time to be creative and make other people fat while in the process of being creative. I've already given up on the fact that I will never, ever surpass Pizzaria Rustica in Lecco, Italy because they won second place in the world pizza finals. They must put crack in their pizza dough because their shit was addicting. It was the only place I ate at twice in my week in Italy. My second time was in the morning when the owner had all the fresh focaccia bread out... And of course it was pizza and focaccia heaven. I made friends with the owner and I told him I would write a review for him on FOODSPANK (please see my links for the blog) which I will do this weekend. Seriously, I want to work for him for a month for free to steal his techniques. I already told him that though so if he reads this, he won't be surprised that I am crazy that I want to work for him. He already thinks I'm crazy for wanting to move to Italy. But now I retract that statement and I want to move to Spain and if I have my way I will become a dual citizen of the US and Spain and buy a piece of land there and build on it as the years go by, then I will retire in Spain and live out the rest of my life eating jamon de pata negra. I might even be asked to be cremated with one.
Surprisingly, the thing that drove me the up the fucking wall in the best way ever were the fucking olives. Yes, you heard me, the fucking olives. I don't know what we're doing wrong here but US as a whole needs help when it comes to curing olives or finding good ones to import. The most insane olives I ate were from this Bristol Farms-like market just outside of Lecco, before driving into town, but a close second were the olives at Da Scapin in Verona, Italy. Unfortunately they didn't speak any English and I know enough Italian to just barely get by, so unfortunately I couldn't ask them questions about the curing process or where they get it or whatever, but those were also mind blowing. If I were to spend my time typing about the food and food alone, I will probably not sleep for 2 weeks straight because I could easily write a novel for each and every single thing that I ate.

Unfortunately I will need to sit tight until summer to experience the food orgasm that is Spain again. The food in London was both fabulous and terrible, the food in Italy was mind-blowing and the day I spent in St. Moritz, Switzerland I got to try a local meat only made in the area and this AMAZING barley soup with bits of speck but you know, Spain trumped all that is food heaven. So, I will bitch and whine until I get to spend a month in Spain (and Portugal and possibly Morocco) this summer. I should probably not attempt Morocco in summer because it'll be 1298731928731928471924719248712987 degrees but whatever. I am easily swayed by the thought of delicious Moroccan food.

Clearly, I am a fat person and I'll embrace that fact. Thank you.

Lost in translation.

You know, I have about 1294712471298457192857912875189275981275987 things to type about. I didn't spend a whole heck of a lot of time on the internet while in Italy or Spain, so I guess I have to make up for all of it. For now, I will leave you with a few photos from Madrid, Spain. Just know that I am planning on packing my shit and moving to Spain. I love Spain.

And what is this?

To continue where I left off, I would have to go back to Friday, February 27th. Since it’s now Sunday, March 1st and I’m on the plane to Italy, I might as well just write one long blog since I need to keep myself occupato before I land in Milan. I’m currently on an Airbus 321 via Alitalia and although I’m more of a Boeing girl, the ride has been very smooth and Alitalia did a great job installing very comfortable seats in economy. I probably wouldn’t have complained that much about the seats in AA’s 777 if the seats leaned as far back as these do. Actually, the seats lean so far back that I moved my seat forward a bit to type more comfortably. Alitalia’s blood orange juice is the best I’ve ever had that wasn’t fresh squeezed and their pound cake is so moist and delicious that I almost cried thinking plane food could be that good. I’m reminded that I’ve been eating like a fatso this entire trip which under normal circumstances that would mean I’ve been gaining weight like crazy but because my legs feel like j-e-l-l-o (it’s alive) I guess that means I’ve burned some calories. I even said to Dom this morning in our hotel room how thin I look considering I’ve been eating nothing but shit.

Let me just say that traveling with my family and Dom has been nothing but comedy and chaos. My mom and dad are seriously something else. My mom complains at everything in the world and she asks the stupidest questions known to man… Or when she’s arguing with my dad and calling him a stupid man. My dad’s a total block head and I swear his brain is made of rocks. I know I’ve called him brilliant before in past blogs but I may just take it all back now.

I am considering writing a script – the next blockbuster hit will be “Traveling with the Motta’s + 1 Cognata.” I think if produced into a movie, this London trip would have had everyone on the floor pissing on themselves. I know I covered the room in my previous blog, but I have failed to mention everything else. We had a bunk bed in the shit room – which my dad INSISTED on being on the top bunk and my mom on the bottom. Dom and I got the large bed – not because we are fatsos, but because my dad is a hairy, dirty, shitting, scruffy, giggling beast that my mom wants to kill on a daily basis and she cannot sleep with him for the life of it because of said hair, dirt, shit, scruff and giggles. So my mom’s on the bottom bunk bed bitching about the room and her life and blah blah blah and my dad purposely leans over towards the wall where he knows the bunk bed will turn a bit and freak my mom out. So, he did. She turned white as a ghost, her hair stood straight up and I think her eyes temporarily turned to the back of her head. She was screaming something about her dying and breaking her neck and how unsafe everything is and blah blah. So she fly like a flying squirrel to our bed screaming at how horrible my father is and how she was going to kill him if he got down. Dom decided to join in on the fun and jump on top of the bunk with my dad and jump up and down like a monkey to make my mom nervous. Of course anything that involves Dom getting hurt freaks me out because half of the reason I’m with Dom is because he’s incredibly good looking and if he breaks his face or loses a limb I’m not sure how much I will love him anymore. I mean sure I’ll love him but I’ll have to have a good looking boyfriend on the side or something. Then Dom and I get stuck with the bottom bunk because my mom wanted the big bed so I kicked my dad off of the top bunk although Dom didn’t care so I slept on this uncomfortable cot-like bunk for the rest of the night. It was horrible, uncomfortable, the room smelled like caca and yeah, that’s about it.

Thankfully we didn’t spend a lot of time in our room. We did, however, spend a lot of time in Colin’s cab. No, not a cab company – but actually a guy named Colin who was our cabbie. He picked us up from the Paddington Station and we took his number and called the guy for EVERYTHING. He was actually the coolest cabby ever and since I’m hoping to be in London again in August, I’ll be calling him to pick my ass up from Heathrow. We did the touristy things – we saw Big Ben, toured the Tower of London and played with weapons, saw the Crown Jewels, walked around St. Katherine’s Docks, walked around Westminster Abbey, but we didn’t go in since they wanted to charge 800 million quid to get in, walked up and down the Thames River, went to the Imperial War Museum where I think both my dad and Dom died a little bit and they had just WAY too much fun, went to Harrod’s and bought some stuff, spent a couple of hours walking Windsor castle and the town, ate both good food and shitty food and over-all had a shit ton of fun.

One thing that kept us all laughing were our accents. Apparently it’s impossible to speak to people with accents without picking up on theirs. I spent a majority of my time pinching my mom to stop picking up on their accents because not only did she sound like an idiot, but she elongated everything so she sounded like a retarded English boy because somehow her voice got deeper. She also does this weird thing with her mouth when she makes these accents that it looks like she just sucked on a lemon or thirty. I mean, really – that can’t be comfortable and it’s so unnatural I don’t know how she doesn’t notice she’s doing it. Then when I pinch her she gets pissed off and tells me that she’s not copying the accent and yells at me in Spanish… With an English accent. I’m not sure how she accomplishes that but she does.

Let me just say that fish & chips suck in London. The one thing I wanted to eat more than anything was fish & chips. Somehow – someway, we went to the gay pub and had fish & chips. Those sucked. When we moved to the new hotel, we then went to the Paddington Fish & Chip Shoppe that Colin recommended as being “one of the better ones” and it sucked a fat donkey dick. They didn’t even fry the fish fresh and it was sitting there in a warmer tray. I also do not like that the skin was on and I felt like a dog chewing a rubber toy. There was no point to having the skin on because the meat would just fall off of the skin anyway, so you missed half the batter since it was stuck to the skin anyway. For fuck’s sake, that’s all I wanted… Just some damn good fish & chips. I wasn’t going to tell Colin that he has dog shit for a palate but that’s what it was. Lucky for me, I love all forms of potato + deep fried so I had a shitton of chips, even with breakfast. The chips were served differently everywhere I had them so I guess I’m not sure what’s traditional for chips but hey, they’re fucking fries. Can’t fuck those up too much, right? One thing I did notice was that the chips were significantly sweeter than anything I’ve ever had back home. They were slightly sweet potato like and I wish I could get them like that in the states. Combined with extra fine ground salt, they were heavenly.

For our last night in London, we moved to the Cardiff Hotel at Suffolk Square which was adorable. The buildings were probably 200 years old and everything was made for skinny midgets but lucky for me, I am not a total fatso and I am a midget. My parents got a triple room and Dom and I got a single since that’s all that was available but we were happy as Hell to no longer be at that horrible Kensington ‘hotel’ aka the torture chamber and no longer sharing a room with my parents. It’s not that sharing a room with them is difficult, it’s just that my dad snores louder than 20 bears sleeping in a cave. It makes trying to sleep impossible and there is no such thing as deep sleep. The only thing that was horrible about our hotel was that it didn’t have a lift. Not only did it not have a lift, but we were 981274912874912874198274987 floors at the top since those were the only singles with private bathrooms. It seemed as though the higher we got, the more narrow the stairs were. At one point I thought I was going to fall down an entire flight of stairs. You know, I have small feet… But apparently people in London have smaller feet because my foot barely fit on the steps and there was no guard rail, followed by a 20 foot drop to the previous floor. I am very thankful I didn’t die. This is why we left our luggage with my parents in their room. Dom and I were so exhausted that we both fell asleep around 8:00 pm and slept so soundly that we woke up at 3:30 am thinking it was almost 7 am and that we had missed our flight to Milano. It’s amazing what a combination of lack of good sleep and jetlag can do to a person.

I guess the most hilarious thing of all was in Heathrow airport, outbound to Milano. My Mom and I got separated from Dom and my Dad because we had to pull over to the side and go through our bags and fill a baggie they gave us with anything that was gel or liquid. We were going through security and my bag beeped like crazy so they pulled my bag to the side and strip searched it. I guess I had a bottle of water in there that I was unaware of. Suddenly Dom came running over to us laughing his ass off but looking semi worried and he’s like “OH MAN, YOU KNOW THAT KNIFE YOUR DAD THOUGHT HE LOST? WELL, SECURITY FOUND IT!” My poor dad put his pocketknife that he thought he lost in the hotel room in his fucking computer case, which was his carry on. Oh yes, oh yes, you can imagine they pulled him to the side, called the cops on him, detained him and gave him a good grilling. Since we weren’t allowed in the security area, we saw a woman with a box full of rubber gloves walking into a room and we all died from laughter thinking they gave him a full cavity search. After about half an hour they let him go and it’s too bad because they didn’t cavity search him. That would have probably completed the end of the London trip if they did but all that happened is they took away his pocket knife and put him on “the list.” He will forever be on a list with terrorists.