Mélange de Légumes Vapeur

Giulio and I rolled into April with a quick trip to Florida to escape from the brutality of winters in Milan and to recharge with some sun, sea, and the well-fashioned American  ideal of CONVENIENCE. Returning to 'Mericuh on this particular occasion gave prominence to how much I have habituated to the Italian way of life. The first supermarket I entered left me transiently paralyzed, overwhelmed both by magnitude and the wellspring of possibilities. Aisle after aisle, option upon option. Fifty shades of ketchup. I didn't have to weigh my own vegetables nor bag my own groceries. And the clerk was embarrassingly friendly. 

We settled-in quite nicely with the aid of multiple mojitos, fresh fish, and key lime pie à la sea. We even had a cabana boy at one point, something I previously reckoned only existed in rap music videos.

But in an unfortunately ephemeral flash of yoga-meets Cuba-meets bedazzled bustier, we were back in Milan, back to work, and back to bagging our own bananas (which instantly felt like a major inconvenience).

The first weekend upon our return wasn't so bad; we managed to squeeze in a quick trip to the mountains and cap off the ski season in style. It was warm, the slopes were empty, and the snow was starting to melt, making for a slippery and supremely fun weekend: 

But then it was back to Milan AGAIN, back to work, and back to grumbling about the hassles of existing in a world without cabana boys.

Exam season picked up and I found myself in the unfortunately familiar situation of being hunched over my books and tempted by the possibility of gauging out my eyeballs with my mechanical pencil. I get quite deranged and unpleasant during these periods, bless Giulio for always trying to find small ways to sneak a little laughter into my days:

Meanwhile, my University came and went with some political issues. I won't bother elaborating, but people were so pissed that they toilet-papered the nave's double helix (paradox, I know). It brought back memories of me being an eleven year-old in the backseat of a police car when I almost got arrested for toilet-papering my neighbor's house in the middle of the night. (It was a bang-up job that would have put this scene to shame): 

Anyway.

Then we decided to renovate our kitchen: 

Yikes.

We were practically refugees in our own home. displaced. eating on floors (or at best the sofa). dragging around heavy objects.  inhaling a coal mine's worth of carcinogens. We had some moments that could have catalyzed some serious intra-relationship trauma, but I'm pleased to say we managed to keep the humor at heart and so, our relationship, intact.

We found ourselves in scenes like this one, dragging a duvet-cushioned, ancient two-ton dishwasher down three flights of stairs at 1am:

(I could not resist a fit of pants-wetting delirious laughter when Giulio angrily looked up at me from this precise position, sweating and hyperemic, and said, "It's like fucking Stonehenge".)

Anything that could have ended up absorbing into the upholstery of our sofa, did.

Spilled tea.

Pickles, etc.

Our kitchen had to be evacuated for five days which also meant evacuating our living room for five days. (Nice.)

This meant a new latitude for family dinners!

By the fourth day of our roach-eye view, I succeeded in accomplishing the untold- tipping my threshold of pizza consumption.  

And so, I was cornered into partaking in a veritable no-no:

the prodigious TV Dinner.

Not that I've ever been crazy about a frozen meal, but my now obviously inordinate distaste for pre-made and potentially forever-stored food, really underlines the impact of having lived for two years in a country ripe with food snobs. I suppose I'm pleased to realize that I'm still fresh enough an individual to be malleable.  

Things are all-in-all well these days. The kitchen renovation is finished and  so are the Légumes Vapeur. The poop has been wiped off my keyboard and put in my hands (with a maiden voyage into the peristaltic sea of gastroenterology). And alas, bagging our own bananas presents as once again, perfectly quotidian. 

La Scatola

There are few things more fabulous than hard copy mail. 

An envelope in the letterbox is as equally ace as a whole chocolate cake, one fork, and a bottle of full-bodied red á la pajamas. 

So imagine my disposition the other evening when my doorman rang saying there was a FOUR-FOOT package downstairs with my name on it!!! I immediately slipped into my furry mules, flew down then back up the steps of my building, wrapped my chubby fingers around the most accessible sharp object I could score, and tore into the fleshy cardboard with the same primal fervor I recall having 4am Christmas day, 1989.

To highlight just how enormous this box was, I kindly instructed my friend to take a dip inside:

(I would say she obliged, but she's so inspired as an individual that my request instead  manifested as a potent source of pleasure.)

So anyway, the external box was enormous. And inside the enormous box lay another, smaller, medium-sized box...

and then a smaller one...

and still a smaller one...

I may be more greedy than I am an environmentalist, but who really cares when the outcome is the same- an exponentially decayed enthusiasm with each progressively more modest parcel.

Whatever.


I finally reached the penultimate and eventually the ultimate scatola, and this is what I found:

A tiny, glass pastry holder; the same height and width of any quotidian ruler. 


How's that for anticlimax?

I shouldn't be complaining because I actually really like this thingy. In fact, I was the one who purchased it. But because I had ordered it over THREE MONTHS AGO, and because it arrived in a box suitable for a PIANO, I felt in this moment, entirely mislead. 

I guess I will conclude this impressively boring story by saying that the Italian Post is no more transparent than Italian bureaucracy, that they are both unapologetically slow, and that by convention, they mutually dictate the use of excessive amounts of paper that ultimately ends up in someone's trash.

Upswinging

I think my last post summarized quite well the state of desperation I had found myself in recent months. But just to substantiate the sentiment, I'll share an image of what may have been the most festive thing I laid eyes on since December:

I'm pleased to share that after all those exams and all that herpes, things appear to be on the upswing.  Life began taking a turn for the better in late February when Giulio got confused about the date of our anniversary and came bearing a TOWER of orchids. I  really didn't have the heart to tell him he was in fact six months in advance:

Not long after, I received a hand-delivered care package which (among other nuggets of joy) included FOUR BOXES of chocolate and a bottle of really real deal tequila. I don't mind my  own transparency- consider the secret to unlocking my heart officially out:

The following weekend, Giulio and I capitalized on an expiring Smartbox - a "welcome to Italy" gift from our overly generous family friends. The Smartbox comes in all different flavors; our particular deal provided refuge at Castello dal Pozzo on Lake Maggiore for the weekend. Aside from the stunning architecture, gardens, and vistas positioned perfectly over the water, the package also included a liberal wine flight featuring regional Piemontese delights, naturally distinguishing itself as the unmissable highlight of our weekend:

AND THEN WE WENT TO ROME!! We left immediately following my cardiology exam late last week, bursting through the hallways of the university in slow motion, recklessly tossing papers up into the sky to the tune of Alice Cooper's School's  Out (which I insist was not  exclusively limited to the contents of my own mind). I can't remember the last time I felt so serene. 

We booked our tickets to Italy's capital months ago, initially with an impetus driven only by the Rome leg of Mumford and Son's most recent tour. But as a matter of very fortunate happenstance, this past weekend also coincided with the new Pope's first mass, the Rome marathon, and the ever important Ireland vs Italy rugby match which Italy happened to win for the first time in history. This was all of course amplified by the fact that it was St. Patty's Day weekend, so all very loud and great fun. 

Although we didn't make it to the stadium for the rugby match, we incidentally stumbled upon Ireland doing their pre-game séance in the park. You couldnt possibly imagine a set of calves so imperative:

We spent most of our days strolling around the city and marveling at any average street corner, each exceedingly more charming than the last. Rome is so obscenely beautiful that in some recondite way, you almost sense yourself being punished:

The worst complaint I could manage to file was that the city wasn't flawlessly unsullied by graffiti. But even still, a Roman's tagging takes a decidedly more jovial approach than the Milanese:

"HO SCORATO IO!" ..........("I FARTED")

And of course, our tried and trusted, sweetly sentimental Mummy and Sons delivered as supremely as they did the first day we were acquainted, which also happens to be the first day I laid eyes on Giulio (and for which it is still, not our anniversary.)

Brane Damidge

I'm quite certain you didn't notice I've been missing for two months. 

But in the event you did, (and weren't rejoicing in this AWOL status of mine), I apologize. I've been a very busy girl. So I decided to put together a little photo montage to recapitulate the highlights of my glamorous life in Milan during recent weeks:

Don't worry, I'm not begging for sympathy because (I'm a positive person!!!!!!!) and amidst this insufferable final exam season, I have actually managed lots of extracurricular activities to keep myself balanced during my studies: 

• breaking my favorite mug (featured in first photo)
• acquiring a new lime green highlighter (not featured)
• acquiring a vitamin D deficiency (self diagnosed)
• changing into a new pair of study pajamas/changing my underwear
• brushing my teeth a couple times
• shaving my legs
• Leaving the house on three separate occasions: 

1. To take my public oral immunology exam 

2. To get a checkup at the hospital because microbiology turned me into a hypochondriac

3. 

nevermind, i guess it was only twice.

Just wondering, have you ever been so stressed that when the lead from your mechanical pencil broke from writing too hard, you started crying?

no? 

ok.

me neither.

Then the New Year came and so I decided to distract myself with a little bit of therapeutic list-making.  I found that focusing on some of the positive ways I could change my life made me feel quite tranquil and more motivated than ever to be a better person in 2013:

Here's an update on my resolutions since I wrote this list six weeks ago:

1. no comment

2. I've gained three

3. no comment

4. I popped a pimple ten minutes after I wrote this so, yeah

5. HA!

In other news, I noticed that our Brita was growing a tree from the inside, so I ordered some replacement filters. What arrived put me into undivided panic:

What the hell is this?!

"DO NOT OPEN". Ummm.. ok? I decided to take my chances and open them anyway, and other than them being the WRONG BLEEDING SIZE, nothing inimical has happened so far. But I'm not retiring my skeptical armament just yet.

And finally as the cherry on top, an old friend from my childhood popped by out of nowhere to say hello after twenty years of dormancy- Herpes Simplex 1 on my eye!!! Obviously this was far and away the highlight of the holiday season. I always love reconnecting with old friends.

Looking forward to springing into spring 2013... good things on the horizon.

Miss you,

Liv

Seasons Greetings, Deuce

About this time last year, Giulio and I released our inaugural holiday greeting card. (I guess I say "released" because we were too miserly to have it either mass-printed or stamped.) Nevertheless, we pledged to make it our tradition to create a new greeting card of a similar nature every December, each time set against the most recent place we traveled. 

Unfortunately we totally dropped the ball on our tradition and forgot all about it.

In effort to reconcile our negligence, I begged my homeslice Megan Kalmoe to work her photoshop magic and scotch-tape our nasty selves into various cities in Turkey.

With that, it is my pleasure to present you with the most trivial reflection of her artistic genius, as well as to wish you:

PEACE & JOY

From our cold, black hearts to yours.

Love, Giulio & Liv

Which one is your favorite?