This upset her greatly that, as my personal tour guide, I was remiss in mentioning these worth-mentioning sights.
Here's the proof:
Friday 30 May 2008
Wait Wait Wait
My sister reminded my I forgot to mention that in Rome we also saw the Trevi Fountain.....My favorite part of the city.....as well as the Collisium (spelling?)
This upset her greatly that, as my personal tour guide, I was remiss in mentioning these worth-mentioning sights.
Here's the proof:
This upset her greatly that, as my personal tour guide, I was remiss in mentioning these worth-mentioning sights.
Here's the proof:
Thursday 29 May 2008
That Fam
My wonderful, beautiful, talented, and not-at-all-cranky sister FINALLY welcomed me to the 21st century today by teaching me how to add pictures. Prepare yourself for Anne's blog - version 2.0
Why Haiku?
I'll tell you why Haiku to all of you out there rolling your eyes and thinking that it's not real poetry. Also, Haiku comes in way more handy when you have two kids and only three minutes to take a shower while you make the grocery list and come up with some creative lines.
It's a challenge. Be abstract with limited syllables while still making some semblence of sense. That being said, most of my haiku is probably shit, but I'm going to keep at it and when I'm dead, someone will find my shitty haiku fifty years later and call it a masterpiece.
I'm willing to wait that long.
Anyway, I'll give you a taste, but not too much...I'm waiting for my ship to come in, man
...your outline remains
where dewy mists meet mountains
you face the waters
measure displacement
find the statistic for tears
only sixty years
It's a challenge. Be abstract with limited syllables while still making some semblence of sense. That being said, most of my haiku is probably shit, but I'm going to keep at it and when I'm dead, someone will find my shitty haiku fifty years later and call it a masterpiece.
I'm willing to wait that long.
Anyway, I'll give you a taste, but not too much...I'm waiting for my ship to come in, man
...your outline remains
where dewy mists meet mountains
you face the waters
measure displacement
find the statistic for tears
only sixty years
The Return
So, we're back from Florence and Rome...how do I feel about this? I like making lists. That will be my plan of attack for the majority of this post:
Rome:
1. Ruins and Forum: excellent. Thank god that wall is there around them, because I tripped and almost took a header into the centuries old rock pit.
2. St. Peter's Sqaure: also excellent. Something you should see while still alive. No sightings of the pope. Not that I'm upset about missing out on meeting a ex-hitler youth.
Those were the main things we saw in Rome. Bought a Rosary and accosted a priest on the street and demanded that he bless them. I don't pray the rosary, but my grandmother did and I figured I might need them someday...like on my deathbed.
We mainly wondered around Florence and came upon wonderous things one at a time...like you do in Europe. Everything belonged once to the Medici. More of a laid back feeling. People sooooooooo friendly. Especially when you run over their feet with a hummer of a stroller and they apologize like it's their fault. In Zurich, if you do this you better be wearing your sneakers b/c you might be getting some swiss spit on you.
Climbed the stairs of the Domo and now I can say I saw ALL of Florence.
Ok, now what it's like to travel with small children:
I would say any child under the age of one is cake. The three year old is a completely different ball of wax. I have an entire collection of photos of just Cate throwing a tantrum.
All in all, it was a great trip. A trip that that had to be taken. Another notch in the belt of a would be world traveller. And another piercing.
Oh, one more thing Italy: 2 words: Street Cleaners.
Rome:
1. Ruins and Forum: excellent. Thank god that wall is there around them, because I tripped and almost took a header into the centuries old rock pit.
2. St. Peter's Sqaure: also excellent. Something you should see while still alive. No sightings of the pope. Not that I'm upset about missing out on meeting a ex-hitler youth.
Those were the main things we saw in Rome. Bought a Rosary and accosted a priest on the street and demanded that he bless them. I don't pray the rosary, but my grandmother did and I figured I might need them someday...like on my deathbed.
We mainly wondered around Florence and came upon wonderous things one at a time...like you do in Europe. Everything belonged once to the Medici. More of a laid back feeling. People sooooooooo friendly. Especially when you run over their feet with a hummer of a stroller and they apologize like it's their fault. In Zurich, if you do this you better be wearing your sneakers b/c you might be getting some swiss spit on you.
Climbed the stairs of the Domo and now I can say I saw ALL of Florence.
Ok, now what it's like to travel with small children:
I would say any child under the age of one is cake. The three year old is a completely different ball of wax. I have an entire collection of photos of just Cate throwing a tantrum.
All in all, it was a great trip. A trip that that had to be taken. Another notch in the belt of a would be world traveller. And another piercing.
Oh, one more thing Italy: 2 words: Street Cleaners.
Wednesday 21 May 2008
I'm tired of being Italian, It's exhausting
That being said, we leave for Rome in a few hours. I am pretty much the only one, except for few others, that have never been to the "homeland" as my family insists on calling it. Nevermind, that I have other homelands: Ireland and Germany and God knows where else. And I' not even ITALIAN. My grandmother was Sicilian by way of Northern Africa and France. My grandfather never considered her a true Italian. Seems to me, I have many homelands.
So, to the point and the reason why I have avoided Italy to this point: I already feel as though I have been in Italy my entire life minus the art and random groping by Italian men. My mother's parents lived with us. Let me explain what this means. Close your eyes and picture this: an old lady hunched over something in a pot on the stove that smells like nothing I can compare it to. Nothing ever went to waste. There were fights at the dinner table between my mom, her aunts, and my grandmother over who got to eat the ass of the chicken, known to us as the "pope's nose". If there was nothing for salad, no worries: grandma was in the backyard picking dandilions to make up for the missing greens. I have plowed serious gardens, made sausage when my grandmother's hands didn't work as well any more, all done at an age where if the authorities were alerted, the old woman would have been taken away in the paddy wagon for breaking child labor laws.
Dinner time went something like this: grandfather sitting across from my little sister without blinking in case she should start choking on something. No talking...unless it was politics. Otherwise, quiet, because grandpa's little sister once almost choked to death while eating supper. (love you pop pop rip, i loved all our checker games and golf lessons..nice try)
No one dared touch there plate until my grandfather and father were served first. If you reached for a serving spoon before that you got a crooked old man finger in your face stating the first line of grace "In the name of the FATHER". Spoon was dropped promptly. And this absolutely had to be explained to friends who were visiting at meal time. After every meal, if there were left overs, my grandmother would proclaim" Joe Schieve will eat it" (my father ,who she insisted on always using his last name). And should he protest, he would be dealing with not only an old Sicilian woman but a also a Leo.. My father has lost a good amount of weight since her death. He looks quite trim if you don't ask my mother.
If a friend or young man were to come pick me up and beeped the horn for me to come out, I was instruucted that I was not a dog and that I do not respond to horns or whistles. This had the potential to get quite awkward as the friend waited in the car beeping and I waited in the house unable to communicate my grandfather's decree to them.
Now onto the Uncles. Three of them. My mother was the only girl of four. Every Sunday was family dinner. Cousins...aunts...uncles....and me trying to find a place to disappear. The passion of conversation, the yelling, the bullying of drunken older men....not my style. I dreaded Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and every Sunday. Being the shy black sheep, I was prime meat for anyone in a drunken stupor to pick on which usually came around dessert. I suppose this gave my mother a break since she was the one usually bullied, and so she let them say whatever they would to me. And a little girl never talks back to her elder Italian relatives. Trust me...I tried. Probably why my mother swore at a young age that she would never marry Italian, and so she didn't. And how grateful am I for the father she chose.
All this and a lot more I can't remember or choose not to, are the reasons why I stayed away from the homeland. As far as I was concerned, I was trapped in Italy my whole life.
So, I guess tomorrow I face one of my fears. Going to a place inside me that I've been trying to scrape out for a long time....trying to suck that part of my dna out from my veins. Maybe I'm afraid I'll remember all the love ,too ,that came with my grandparents when they moved in with us. I'll be reminded of the distance I purposefully put between myself and numerous relatives. One thing is certain, I wil be reminded of my grandmother and her faith in God, and falling asleep at the end of her bed at night, of her beautiful singing, and her nickname for me: Bella. I will be reminded of childhood. Something I suppose all of us want to forget bits and pieces of.
So, to the point and the reason why I have avoided Italy to this point: I already feel as though I have been in Italy my entire life minus the art and random groping by Italian men. My mother's parents lived with us. Let me explain what this means. Close your eyes and picture this: an old lady hunched over something in a pot on the stove that smells like nothing I can compare it to. Nothing ever went to waste. There were fights at the dinner table between my mom, her aunts, and my grandmother over who got to eat the ass of the chicken, known to us as the "pope's nose". If there was nothing for salad, no worries: grandma was in the backyard picking dandilions to make up for the missing greens. I have plowed serious gardens, made sausage when my grandmother's hands didn't work as well any more, all done at an age where if the authorities were alerted, the old woman would have been taken away in the paddy wagon for breaking child labor laws.
Dinner time went something like this: grandfather sitting across from my little sister without blinking in case she should start choking on something. No talking...unless it was politics. Otherwise, quiet, because grandpa's little sister once almost choked to death while eating supper. (love you pop pop rip, i loved all our checker games and golf lessons..nice try)
No one dared touch there plate until my grandfather and father were served first. If you reached for a serving spoon before that you got a crooked old man finger in your face stating the first line of grace "In the name of the FATHER". Spoon was dropped promptly. And this absolutely had to be explained to friends who were visiting at meal time. After every meal, if there were left overs, my grandmother would proclaim" Joe Schieve will eat it" (my father ,who she insisted on always using his last name). And should he protest, he would be dealing with not only an old Sicilian woman but a also a Leo.. My father has lost a good amount of weight since her death. He looks quite trim if you don't ask my mother.
If a friend or young man were to come pick me up and beeped the horn for me to come out, I was instruucted that I was not a dog and that I do not respond to horns or whistles. This had the potential to get quite awkward as the friend waited in the car beeping and I waited in the house unable to communicate my grandfather's decree to them.
Now onto the Uncles. Three of them. My mother was the only girl of four. Every Sunday was family dinner. Cousins...aunts...uncles....and me trying to find a place to disappear. The passion of conversation, the yelling, the bullying of drunken older men....not my style. I dreaded Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and every Sunday. Being the shy black sheep, I was prime meat for anyone in a drunken stupor to pick on which usually came around dessert. I suppose this gave my mother a break since she was the one usually bullied, and so she let them say whatever they would to me. And a little girl never talks back to her elder Italian relatives. Trust me...I tried. Probably why my mother swore at a young age that she would never marry Italian, and so she didn't. And how grateful am I for the father she chose.
All this and a lot more I can't remember or choose not to, are the reasons why I stayed away from the homeland. As far as I was concerned, I was trapped in Italy my whole life.
So, I guess tomorrow I face one of my fears. Going to a place inside me that I've been trying to scrape out for a long time....trying to suck that part of my dna out from my veins. Maybe I'm afraid I'll remember all the love ,too ,that came with my grandparents when they moved in with us. I'll be reminded of the distance I purposefully put between myself and numerous relatives. One thing is certain, I wil be reminded of my grandmother and her faith in God, and falling asleep at the end of her bed at night, of her beautiful singing, and her nickname for me: Bella. I will be reminded of childhood. Something I suppose all of us want to forget bits and pieces of.
Friday 16 May 2008
Ya ya Returns to Zurich and Cake gets Thrown Everywhere
This is Cate waiting for her ya ya (aunt Allyson) to come back to Switzerland. She really hates the sign...but her mom is making her hold it anyway. Ya ya finally made it, mommy was the one left holding the sign, but everyone was happy to see each other.
Now onto the reality of coming back to inhabit the same space with children after you've been gone for a few months:
Ally came to playgroup today to help me lug a hummer of a stroller with a combined wieght of fifty pounds. Then onto shopping. All I have been craving for two days is this cake I found here...I have no idea what it is called...but the icing is green and it's filled with custard, which is all I really require in life. We're at the market, THE cake is in my hands, and before I know it, cate has picked up a stupid chocolate cake of her own and heaved it to the floor. Ally now has cake all over her pants and feet and of course, every swiss person in the Migros has witnessed the entire melee. So, I ended up buying half a freakin messed up chocolate cake instead of my custard one.
I guess it's been an ok day. That cake better taste damn good. And Cate isn't getting any! jk Pretty soon it will be 5 and I will have a glass of wine in my hand, sitting on my swiss balcony, nibbling on pizza, and my custard cake will be just a memory. Till next week, sweet cake, till next week. Here's to hoping the cake comes out of ya ya's pants.
Wednesday 14 May 2008
An Inconvenient Playground
So, by the way, I hate this new lay out. I hate all the lay out templates actually, but I will decide on one eventually.
Anyway, Here in Europe, I've noticed that kids still play on the playgrounds...everyday. And they are made of steel, and have pebbles and cement as the base and the chains on the swings on rusty, and there may even be a nail sticking out somewhere on the sliding board. And there you will find hordes of families gathered every afternoon, smoking, eating, playing in the dirt pits, swimming in the stagnat ponds, and you won't here a mother scream "no!, don't touch that!" or: "stop! you're getting filthy!"
The children swing so high they fall off and land in the stones and get back up again and swing some more without a terrified parent running over to see if heaven for bid there should be a bloody knee.
Reminded me of the parks at home in the states. The ones made of rubber and fiberglass with recycled tire chips to give a safe landing. The parks, that for the most part remain deserted, because parents are afraid of perverts and it's such a hassel to get the kids in the car in the car seats and drive there. Plus, who really wants to leave the house since the new wii came in the mail?
I love these parks. I love that my kids come home completely filled with dirt and sand and that their pants are wet from playing in the water fountain. I love shaking the pebbles out of their shoes when they come home and scrubbing under their finger nails b/c they were creating something in the mud. You can find these timeless tiny parks everywhere within walking distance of your home.
I'll really miss these simple little playgrounds full of kids doing all the things we would never let our own kids do back home.
Anyway, Here in Europe, I've noticed that kids still play on the playgrounds...everyday. And they are made of steel, and have pebbles and cement as the base and the chains on the swings on rusty, and there may even be a nail sticking out somewhere on the sliding board. And there you will find hordes of families gathered every afternoon, smoking, eating, playing in the dirt pits, swimming in the stagnat ponds, and you won't here a mother scream "no!, don't touch that!" or: "stop! you're getting filthy!"
The children swing so high they fall off and land in the stones and get back up again and swing some more without a terrified parent running over to see if heaven for bid there should be a bloody knee.
Reminded me of the parks at home in the states. The ones made of rubber and fiberglass with recycled tire chips to give a safe landing. The parks, that for the most part remain deserted, because parents are afraid of perverts and it's such a hassel to get the kids in the car in the car seats and drive there. Plus, who really wants to leave the house since the new wii came in the mail?
I love these parks. I love that my kids come home completely filled with dirt and sand and that their pants are wet from playing in the water fountain. I love shaking the pebbles out of their shoes when they come home and scrubbing under their finger nails b/c they were creating something in the mud. You can find these timeless tiny parks everywhere within walking distance of your home.
I'll really miss these simple little playgrounds full of kids doing all the things we would never let our own kids do back home.
Saturday 10 May 2008
Some things brought to my attention lately
Firstly, I totally fucked up this blog...so bear with the extra heading I can't fix it
Anyway:
Some things worth noting:
Women in addidas track suits with stiletto heels
Old ladies on scooters...not vespas, mind you...scooters
Running cows...cows in Jersey lay around and all they need is a remote control, I freaked out when I saw my first cow running across a field. I didn't know they had it in them.
Just a couple things i saw this week that have been on my mind.
Anyway:
Some things worth noting:
Women in addidas track suits with stiletto heels
Old ladies on scooters...not vespas, mind you...scooters
Running cows...cows in Jersey lay around and all they need is a remote control, I freaked out when I saw my first cow running across a field. I didn't know they had it in them.
Just a couple things i saw this week that have been on my mind.
Tuesday 6 May 2008
Why Dave Grohl?
To that question put to me by so many, I say :Why not Dave Grohl? Who else out there is keeping good old fashion rock and roll alive? I'm talking ROCK and ROLL, people...not emo, not experimental crap, not whinny, or gutteral screaming nonsense. I'm talking about a man, his guitar, his perfect pitch voice and endearing ability to make fun of himself and the whole machine he is a part of.
That's why...Dave Grohl. The fact that he's totally hot when he leans his body into the mike and his hair is all over the place might have something to do with it, too.
Rock on Dave, Rock on.
That's why...Dave Grohl. The fact that he's totally hot when he leans his body into the mike and his hair is all over the place might have something to do with it, too.
Rock on Dave, Rock on.
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