Rat Droppings

Happy New Year, if you're into that sort of thing. 

Reflecting on the last rotation around the sun, I'd say 2014 was pretty good. The echo of the impeccably timed carnival-esque emcee at the local bingo night in Sestri Levante failed to sully the moment my curly-haired q-tip formally proposed we go steady forever. I saw my first full-term pregnant woman smoking a pipe on the beach in Ibiza. I turned 30- a fact actualized by the automated transition of gmail advertisements from the best clubs in Amsterdam to $100 off your next tummy tuck. There was linear growth. I learned how NOT to use Uber - it's an app, not telepathy, and one must not stand on the curb at 3am sozzled in west hollywood prepared to enter the first vehicle that stops unsystematically, promising to fulfill you of your request for taquitos. The pinnacle of 2014 wasn't slamming vodka sodas at the same intimate afterparty as Leonardo DiCaprio, but shouting "Auguri!" at a New Year's Eve party in the basement of a pastry shop in Milan while eating lentils off a plastic plate and smoking something dubious under a shroud of a hundred panettones that had been glued to the ceiling.

Another major life event was ticked off the list when I had my first encounter with THE EX while out Christmas shopping with my man (her ex). Believe it or not, in my fantasy of how this moment would eventually transpire, I imagined showering her with kindness because from the anecdotes I had heard over the years, I sort of came to like her. So there we were, finally face to face, my opportunity to throw some warmth into her universe, when my internal google-translate went on the fritz and instead of saying "buon natale" I said "happy birthday" with a goofy smile that in the context of such a cunty salutation could have only come across as draconian sarcasm.  

Giulio came back to visit after spending the autumn working in the United States, evidenced by the fact that he was received off the plane wearing tapered maroon sweatpants, new balances, and a giant yellow northface backpack.  I don't judge because I personally have passed 80% of my life wrapped in spandex, I just never expected the man who posesses a paradigm banning pajamas after 8am to trade in his Church's for his tennies. That, and he has also begun confusing the expression "24/7" with "7/11" saying stuff like "the Chipotle by my house is open 7/11."  

Over the holidays my dad popped over the English Channel for a quick visit. The two most remarkable things that happened were introducing him to Giulio's extended family, and watching him have a mini freakout when he mistook a grain of black rice on my sofa for rat poop.  

I know January 1 is meant to mark the day everyone puts their life in the paper shredder and starts over or whatever, but I spent the day doing exactly what I always do- eating an entire box of cookies and procrastinating. So after all the chocolate-covered peppermint Joe Joe's were exhausted, I decided it was the appropriate moment to de-ice my freezer- an activity hastened by my active involvement chipping away at it with a wooden spatula. I followed this up by gathering all the loose snow, placing it in the sink, then watching it melt. And you know what? The year hasn't gotten any better from there:

NONE of the socks from the clean laundry make a pair.