Long time, no write

     Well, its been quite a while, and not much has happened. Husband and I had an awesome weekend with Pabst and Ladyface Cleverbrain buying many bookcases. Hopefully tomorrow I will put said bookcases in their rightful places. If I can muster the courage to face the overwhelming mess that is cleaning our house.

     During this ordeal of fitting new furniture into our already cluttered apartment, I had the opportunity to go through a bunch of stuff that was hiding/not getting used. I put all our movies into one bookcase already, and it turns out that I didn't have as many as I thought we did - only about three shelves worth! Gone are the days of Savannah where I would buy a new shitty movie every other day because the video rental place (Home Run Video, if anyone is interested) was super creepy. But now with Locust Moon Comics and Netflix, I only have to buy the movies I actually enjoy. Which is still a lot. I do not have high standards. Hell yeah, Cobra!

     I also got to dig through all our VHS movies. We have a real gold mine of tapes - such Oscar-worthy titles include: 976-Evil, The Dentist and the Dentist 2, Freddy vs. Jason, and Jason X. We unfortunately do not have a VCR with which to watch these awesome films. Our amazing friend A gave us a great surround sound DVD-VCR combo for our wedding, but the VCR doesn't seem to want to work. Even with the skilled mastery of Ladyface Cleverbrain we couldn't get anything but a reverse color picture on the screen. Which, admittedly, is pretty cool as well.

     We could, of course, just buy a VCR from any thrift shop or flea market, because now they're only worth about $5. But I am wary, because the last cheap thrift store VCR I got came complete with a tape already in it, a tape called "Glory Holes 2", which amazingly I did not realize was a porn until after I had watched about a minute of it. Also, it broke after a month or so. A piece snapped off, which I didn't realize until I looked up the 15 year old manual and took the entire thing apart piece by piece.

     Disenchantment with old technology not withstanding, Husband and I are determined to be able to watch 976-Evil whenever we damn well please. Maybe we'll build a VCR from scratch. Or maybe I'll remember to check the "insert tape" slot before I go and buy another cheap one. Only time will tell.

Black Thumb.

     Spring has finally crept completely into the northeast. I look forward to this time every year, as it means there will be leaves on the trees. Theres something about bare trees thats unsettling to me, depressing even. The light seems so much warmer when it shines through bright green leaves. This is also the time of year, every year, that husband and I mistakenly assume we can garden.
     Every year for the past 6 years we've bought plants or seeds, fully intending to have a lush herb garden or some pretty flowers around the house. Winter must have a mind-wipe effect or something, however, because we seem to forget we kill every plant we touch. This is embarassing, not only because gardening is an activity we both enjoy, but because I am the daughter of a master gardener. My mom tried to instill in me a love of gardening (which I have), as well as the proper skills to make plants flourish (do not have). Some of my best childhood memories are with my mom in her garden, playing with ladybugs and eating the berries that grew there. Now all I have to look at is withering disappointment.
     It usually goes like this: Husband buys plants from his work. We totally intend to plant them, but we get too busy/forget to water them. They are okay for about a week, and then only when they start to dry up do we try and do something about it. Obviously, this is a complete loss. We end up with a bunch of sad, dead plants that we have to eventually compost or throw away.
     The worst part is, even when we actually try, the plants still die. When we have a watering schedule that we both follow, when we keep the plants in the appropriate amount of sunlight and shade, when we actually keep close watch on them, they still die. We built an elaborate garden on our roof one year, having to lug gallons of water upstairs twice daily, and everything still died. I think we had maybe one basil plant to show for it. In other words, the plants are obviously not giving us much encouragement, and they really need to work on that.
     As usual, we performed the same routine this year as many before it. Buy plants, don't plant them, freak out when they're almost dead, try to resurrect. The majority of our plants have bit the dust, including a lavander plant I was really looking forward to. We do have 2 that have survived us, however, a sweet potato vine and some sort of fuschia plant that is healthy but refuses to bloom. The secret is, we put these plants outside and haven't touched them since. So it would seem that even dumping plants outside is better for them then having husband and I care for them.
     Luckily for both sides this killing-everything-we-touch rule does not extend to pets or children. We've even managed to keep a red eared slider turtle from the Italian market alive for almost a year, when I think their life expectancy for most is about a month. His name is Dale, and he's awesome.
    Well, in the grand tradition, better luck next year, I guess.

The Grand Tale of the Hookah

     I have been a smoker for most of the past 6 years, and sometime about 2 years ago husband and I leveled up and bought a hookah. We'd wanted one for quite some time, but we'd been putting it off because of the cost and whatnot. But life intervened and decided we got to be lucky for the first and only time ever.
     A small smoke shop opened up half a block away from our house, where an old dry cleaners used to be. Up until that point it has simply been known as the building where the alarm goes off every other day, but now it was labeled "Tobacco". Over the few months it was there, the sign gradually lost letters to the point where it just said "To  c  o", but you'd get the idea if you were walking by. I had gone in there for cigarettes one day, and was fascinated and disappointed. I had assumed a giant sign proclaiming "Tobacco" would actually sell tobacco. Not really the case here.
     The store is small. Even if you go into the awesome restaurant it is now, you can see its really really small. When I walked in, it was a small counter with two glass display cases on the opposite wall. It was, as you'd expect, a bunch of pipes for smoking whatever you may want to smoke (the sign says "tobacco smoking devices". ha!), but I just wanted a pack of cigarettes. Now, you'd kind of expect a store simply called "Tobacco" to have, ya know, cigarettes. This was not the case. This place was as bare bones as possible, therefore the only smokes they actually had was 1 carton of Marlboros and 1 carton of Marlboro menthols. Only 2 cartons, just chillin behind the counter. I was doubly disappointed in that a) they didn't have any of the regulars, and b) I hate Marlboros.  Now, the guys who ran the place were super nice and helpful, but they just didn't have what I was looking for. So I went elsewhere.
     Two days later, husband comes home with the most amazing hookah I've ever seen.
     Its green (my favorite color). It has a naked lady made of metal holding up the bowl where you put the charcoal. And, the best part of anything ever, the two tubes for smoking are cobra heads. The significance of the cobra will be explained in a later post, but even without personal stuff thats pretty freakin awesome.
     After about 5 minutes of staring in awe, I bothered to ask how much it cost. Because its not a totally necessary purchase and all. Husband explained to me the guy at the "Tobacco" shop knocked it down to half price, I guess (unfortunately) because the place wasn't doing that well and they needed a sale. (On a side note, if you are going to open a smoke shop like this one, do it near the frats, rather than near 2 grade schools, you'll make a lot more money).  He even threw in coals, tinfoil, and tobacco (actual tobacco! mango flavored!) to go with it. So that night we sat down and smoked mango flavor out of a naked lady with 2 cobra heads attached to her.
     We used this thing a ton. Theres even some burn marks in our carpet as proof. Unfortunately it started getting clogged, and was difficult to smoke through. Also, even with like 10 people its hard to finish a whole glob of tobacco like that, at least for us. We tried cleaning it, to no avail. It works a little better, but things just aren't the same. So it has been sitting as a book end (or a DVD end, because thats what its actually holding up) for months. Every time I sit on the couch I can see it, and its as if the naked lady is staring at me all disappointed for not smoking out of her. And then I feel bad, because you never want to make a naked woman disappointed.
     I have also pretty much quit smoking (eehhh... mostly), so theres even less of a chance our metal naked lady will be satisfied. On another sad (but wholly expected) note, the "Tobacco" store went under in less than a few months, which was probably for the best. It has since been replace by an amazing takeout Indian place, which is a way more useful purpose for our money than hookahs.
     And who knows, maybe one day soon the naked metal lady will make a grand reappearance. But for right now, she's covered in dust and holding up DVDs, and some cookbooks fell on her. The moral of the stupid story is it is way more crucial to spend money on delicious Indian food than hookahs. So there.
  
  

Food!

     So husband has been away for about 4 days, and it is not going well. For me, at least. I had a whole plan of starting to be a better human while he was away: go to bed early and wake up at a reasonable hour. Exercise. Eat healthy. Get all pretty looking for him when he comes back. It has been almost 5 days and I have done none of these things.
      Thats not exactly true, as I've been eating a little bit better. Husband is super into fitness and eating right/ethically and all that, and thats totally awesome. But the little 13 year old rebellious girl in me won't stand for it. If he tells me I should be doing something, with the best intentions, even if I know it will benefit me completely, I won't do it because someone else is telling me to do it. I can see the situation completely logically  - you want to lose weight, you want to be healthier, husband is trying to make this easier for you - but my body does the complete opposite. If he's eating a salad, I want a big nasty sandwich. Something with the sodium content that I should be getting in a month in one sitting. I will glare at him, eating my artery-clogging meal, in my mind yelling "thats right, I'm doing it." By the way, my mind only listens to Papa Roach and Limp Bizkit. I kind of hate that guy.
     Anyway, I've been cooking for myself more lately. And anyone who knows me even a little bit knows I CANNOT cook. There are some people who burn everything, but I can actually cook something so that it looks like food. But I can't seem to put flavors together in a way that makes any kind of sense at all. There are some people who can do this and have it come out awesomely - I am not one of them.
     This is continuing from when I was very young, making my dad "soup" which was basically just cold water with every spice my mom had in the kitchen haphazardly thrown in. He would pretend to choke it down as I looked up at him expectantly, which I love him all the more for. Then there was the apple pie my dad and I tried to make, where the only things we had were pie crust and apples. For those of you that don't know, those are not nearly all the ingredients to apple pie. It was a massive burnt, gross failure, so we made crumb cake instead. Which actually ended up being pretty good. Maybe because we actually used a recipe on that one.
     The few things I can cook are pretty good. I can make bangin' vegan italian food, because I grew up eating italian. I know what its supposed to taste like. Anything else is kind of a complete guessing game, one which I consistently lose.
     I'm posting this tonight because I successfully made cornbread, one of the easiest things in the world to make. This was a huge deal to me, as I didn't burn it or make it taste terrible. I'm going to post more consistently about food than anything else, mostly because it is something I love greatly and want to get more well acquainted with making. And there will hopefully be pictures next time. Mmmm, food porn.

My Brain is Falling Apart

         So husband is going on tour this weekend, starting Saturday, for ten days. At first, I was excited about the extended alone time (so many uninterrupted craft hours!), but a few days later it started to dawn on me that I haven't been in this situation in a very long time. I seem to have forgotten the horror that is me when I am alone for several days.
        I have pretty severe anxiety issues, compounded by trying to quit smoking, and due to this my brain seems to be on permanent misfire. When I start to freak out, husband is always there to give me a tight hug and sweetly tell me to "man up". I go to sleep at night comforted by the fact that he will probably wake up and get us to safety if the house decides to spontaneously combust, which I am just certain it will. Even with him gone, however, I think I will be able to get through all that on my own. I also have fairly extreme manic episodes too, though, and that's where things take a turn for the crazy.
      Thinking back on it, the last real alone time I had was sometime back in my freshman year of college. I was already all off kilter because of moving several states away and not knowing anyone. I did finally start to settle in at about two months, and that's when my roommate decided to visit home for a few days. I had the whole dorm room to myself (which was fairly large, they were all converted hotel rooms), and I started to get super psyched about all the things I could do. I mean, I could just pretend I was actually an adult and living in my own apartment (as an aside, I don't know why anyone would fantasize about that - being an adult sucks, and your apartment is probably going to be a falling down piece of shit). Things were pretty great (having ALL the soda in the fridge be mine for a weekend!), until I tried to go to sleep.
      My body was not having any of it. I was so damn wired I could barely close my eyes. It was like a little kid on Christmas eve, except all that was waiting in the morning was a stupid project I didn't want to finish. After about 3 hours of this, I decided to just get up. It was two in the morning. This was the beginning of my epic not-sleeping-for-three-days thing.
      I could not sleep. I couldn't calm down at all, for that matter. I have never done cocaine, but I think I understand what it feels like just from that weekend, as my body seemed to be producing it on its own. I worked out a ton, both trying to make myself tired and making sure I used ALL the extra room I had (I was king!). I walked to the gas station a few blocks away at four in the morning, even though it was Savannah and the dorm was pretty much in the projects. I made endless amounts of the worst art, clothing, and jewelry ever which I thought was ABSOLUTELY AWESOME at the time. Granted, I seemed to think that about everything at that time. I was a workhorse ball of energy ready to punch the world into submission.
      At about the middle of the third day, I started to finally relax. Which meant I lost all track of time, looked like a massive junkie from lack of sleep, and was incredibly sore from constantly moving. When my roommate came back, I was sure I eloquently asked her how her weekend was, how her family was, and if her drive was okay. To her, I'm sure it just sounded like a bunch of random words tenuously strung together before I passed out in a pile of glitter and magazine clippings on the floor.
     Obviously, because I'm in my 20s I'm sure I've matured past that stage (just as I'm sure I know pretty much everything there is to know about anything), but it should be interesting to see how this goes. And if it ends poorly, at least you guys can look forward to many, many pictures of cat and dog dressed up in the awful clothes that I will be producing endlessly.

    I know I promised silly, funny stuff, but that's just not how I'm feeling this week. My grandfather passed away Tuesday morning after a very long illness. He and I were fairly close, and I'm feeling things I haven't felt in a very long time. Mostly helplessness, because grief is not something you can turn off. It seems ... odd, to have an internet tribute to a man who pretty much never used it, so I'll leave it at this: Joseph Petrozziello was a great man who taught me many things. Most of all, he showed me the value of hard work, determination, and what it means to have a great family. He was a man who came all the way to Philadelphia for my wedding this August, even though he was very sick, had a glass of wine and introduced himself to every person there. He was a man who greatly loved dogs, and most of the pictures I have of him are sitting with them. A man who wrote me long letters in beautiful penmanship. Although I feel I knew him well, there is so much more I would've loved to learn. I guess everyone wishes they had spent more time with a loved one who has passed. I have lost three grandparents and a close friend, and that is the feeling that comes up the most. The wish for more time, or that I had done more with the time I had.
    So, sorry for the downer post. I guess I just had to put these feelings somewhere that doesn't involve crying while hugging the dog. I promise I will soon get back to writing about the usual, such as what I'm currently failing at cooking or embarrassing childhood stories (oh so many). But for right now, I need to deal with this.

Failure to Communicate.

First blog post, and some background information. I met the husband in Savannah, GA, and we moved to Philadelphia in 2006, along with dog and cat. All were disgruntled with the move, mostly cat and me. All we had were two small cars and whatever we could carry in them. I wish I still had the pictures of cat in his hot pink leopard print leash and harness sitting in the grass in front of a sign that said "Welcome to Delaware", looking pissed as usual. Out of frame, there sat me, holding the leash, looking just as angry. I grew up in NJ, so moving to Philly from Georgia seemed like backtracking, when all I wanted to do was see new and exciting places. Seeing how rough this was on me (and less importantly to him, the cat), we made a deal - leave Philly in 3 years, max. How excited I was when this was agreed upon, sitting in our apartment in the northeast that no one would come to because it was too far from the city. And then we moved to West Philly.
     For all those that have never lived in Philly, it is a trap. Coming from Savannah, a fairly transient town, we weren't used to what real friends could be like, with the exception of 2 wonderful people. As much as I dislike this city in general, I have met better friends than I have ever had here (as well as better food). As many times as I've wished I could be far, far away from the city itself, I have never wanted to leave these friends. It has been nearly 6 years we've been here, and never once have I mentioned the 3 year rule, because we've stumbled on something great, if accidentally. A "small" city (compared to NYC) with amazing people, great food, and unparalleled music.
   So if anyone has bothered to read this boring post with no pictures, thanks. This blog will hopefully be mostly about silly, funny things. It will also touch on the other important things in my life, such as my husband, cat, dog, knitting, and of course, food.