a mild & exotic zeitgeist

We have a Sinhalese housekeeper named Dennis who I adore. 

Actually, Dennis is kind of like a legend in my eyes (though I still have doubts whether "Dennis" is in fact his true name).

Dennis the Legend is even part of the reason why Giulio and I decided to go to Sri Lanka last year. He also knows I am obsessed with spicy food. One day I came home to find the house sparkling, and this precious gift:

Living Legend!!

I am obsessed with the imperative phrase: "TRY IT". 

(Although, I have yet to do so.)

I also love the "BYE". 

(And the fact that it's sweet and sour chicken in a can.) 

Moving on, this is a pretty typical conversation I have with one of my friends in Italy. Sometimes I worry we might be regressing in our mutual mental fortitude/time spent engaged in meaningful discourse, but then I just eat some carbohydrates and forget about it.

Lately I have been working around the house trying to break in my new high heels.

I was also recently the recipient of some particularly illuminating advice, which I would be negligent to not share with the rest of my small social community: 

My future in-laws (!!) just came back from Cuba bearing American embargoed flammable goods. Bless them. 

Giulio also made a new BFF with whom he now coordinates outfits as a mechanism of publicizing their mutual obsession with each other. I fear I may have been replaced by someone not only more handsome, but who also (finally) boasts a much more wholesome mustache than my own.

(To which I responded with several public necking sessions with my old high school sweetheart, the least gratuitous photo of which can be seen here.) 

The weather has been nice lately. 

Also, my Hungarian side of the family came to visit. 

They are mythical creatures, aren't they? Particularly my enchanting grandmother who I only now realized eats gelato with an enthusiasm I've never experienced for anything in my life, EVER. Just look at her face:

Grandma, This is for you. 

TRY IT.

(it's mild and exotic)

BYE.

The faces of my fiancé

We are on a mission to prove that two wrongs really do make a right.

Yes, it's true. Giulio and I are engaged. 

This past weekend, Giulio took me to one of his favorite family spots on the Italian Riviera to propose that I devote the rest of my life to washing his underwear we formalize our love story via holy matrimony. He distracted me with a shiny object in effort to manipulate the situation in his favor, and being the magpie that I evidently am, I surrendered. I have to admit that as a young girl, I never imagined myself engaged nor married... but now that I am, I am totally looking forward to eating bonbons on the sofa and working on really letting myself go!

Now enough about me because what I actually want to make the point to do is devote some cyberspace to celebrating the faces of my fiancé who's got enough charisma to last a lifetime.

Here is Giulio just after having devoured a Bistecca alla Fiorentina in Tuscany. It's a face quite similar to his usual look of disillusionment. 

Here he is in Sri Lanka moments before he began suffering from Shigellosis. What a sport!

Most men don't like cupcakes, but Giulio is avid for sweets and crappy television, just like me. It's important to share common interests, 'specially if you're gonnna get married.

Giulio looking dispossessed of the mustache he never had. (Except for the frothy kind.) 

Giulio fearing the outcome of the water hitting his hair, and being without a blowdryer and product.

Giulio's puerile behavior, a blight on a towel swan, and a moment that will ruin his future career in politics forever.  

Giulio with his best friend, who shares his passion for fine whiskey and apathy.

Giulio honing his kitchen skills with the same fervor he devotes to honing mine. (imperative)

Giulio pretending he's not absolutely terrified of bugs.

And finally, my favorite face of my fiancé, for all the intelligible reasons. 

I believe that I'm a lucky girl, though my social circle might contest I've been given exactly what I deserve- a man wearing a hat that advertises "quality semen".  

Confessional

Today the highlight of my day was using a tweezer to pull a dissevered earplug out from the depths of my boyfriend's ear. Half of it had broken off, leaving him frustrated to the point of apathy as he sat with hemispheric deafness until I could save him. It made me feel important.

As much as I love extractions, the ear plug debacle was the most celebrated part of my day because today was miserable. Today I cried. Today in the face of stress, I suffered a momentary lapse of judgement and cried big, ugly, Kim Kardashian-sized tears. 

genius image courtesy of http://plumkat.tumblr.com/

It really doesn't happen often that I "voluntarily" secrete bodily fluids, but I confess, the incredulity of feeling my own warm, salty secretions run down my cheeks made me cry even more. So first I sought the comfort of my boyfriend, and then spent a month's salary to use my cell phone to call my mom who is 6000 miles away. But it was worth it. 

I actually did have a few isolated anecdotes to share from the last two months- most of which pivoted around spending time in the mountains with friends. 

But nevermind that, because I'd rather emphasize how stressed and stifled and miserable I am.

School-wise, the last two months have been brutal, and the forecast predicts a progressive worsening until July, at which point gray skies may or may not clear up. I've been (bloggingly-speaking) absent because I've been working my ass off and suffering a consequential abandonment of my own creative spirit. I didn't have time to write, and have frankly been feeling more desperate than I have inspired. 

But as an enterprise to combat the creative void, I initiated a thirty-day Instagram challenge, aimed at capturing an image of something beautiful, interesting, funny, alluring, etc. each day for thirty days. It sort of worked, but mostly didn't. But at least I tried. You can see the photo montage here.

Presently I'm facing what is rumored to be the most punishing two months of medical school -Neuro. Every day in class you have to be superlatively prepared with notions fit for making you a neuro-scientist/ologist/surgeon, OR be prepared to be publicly humiliated by a professor intolerant of your ineptitude. Each day is outfitted with a cause for unrivaled anxiety, though I admit there's nothing like the threat of social indignity to incite one's motivation to read a textbook.

So unfortunately that's all I've really got for you. I just needed to vent, and I also needed to make a confession regarding my boyfriend's breakfast cereal. My dear Giulio, it is time I told you that the reason why there's never any chocolate chunks or hazelnuts in your "chocolate chunk hazelnut granola" is not because you are repeatedly made a sucker of false advertising, but because every afternoon when I come home from neuro, I pick out all the good stuff. It assuages my pain... Please forgive me.  

PS. Here is a really disgusting worm that came out of someone's poop.

Bye.