Oh, sweet potato! We can actually go to Paris and not have to live out of the trash cans in Charles de Gaulle (I apparently had this post-apocalyptic vision of them strapping us of all our worldly belongings and leaving us in the badly lit side of the airport). It took us 5 hours of standing around, chatting up foreigners and just sitting in silence and despair, but we made it! Not only are we allowed to leave the country (and come back), but now Ben can do anything an Italian can. I am frankly hoping he’ll take up sitting (or preferably standing) at the bar downstairs, spewing in the loudest voice all of his most inane opinions about anything/everything.

Tomorrow I have yet another interview. Carla is a hot commodity, it turns out. Soon enough I will have to hire (myself as) a receptionist to screen all of my incoming calls from adoring fans and eager employers. I feel the need for an agent coming. Also coming: my diva demands.

I think we can all agree on the fact I’m not just backwards, but wrapped on myself-tied in a knot-upside down backwards. Today my form of weird has to do, as underlined by the post title, with anxiety.

We went to the place where bureaucracy happens for immigrants. We waited forever as, one after the other, the "priority" cases skipped a very neatly and very long line. There’s priority and then there’s flat out laugh in my face/kick me in the gums priority! It was ridiculous. Anyway *breathes heavily in paper bag and pops valiums*, it finally got to be our turn and, as per usual, that’s when I give my best. All of the waiting and thinking has made me come up with 15 questions, 12 of which require very lengthy answers. Fortunately, the fingerprinting is S L O W and all my questions are answered. The one answer I did not expect has to do with our imminent trip to Paris. Apparently, not having a permesso di soggiorno means Ben is not allowed to travel. That’s when my jaw dropped a little, but all considered, not that much. I personally don’t care and I dare them to stop me from enjoying my romantic Parisian getaway once I step on French soil. However, I can’t take a bus without a ticket, imagine taking a plane without knowing if Ben might be deported or not. The guy was extremely nice. EXTREMELY and to the point he said to come back tomorrow with our plane tickets and he’ll see what he can do (which better be anything we need him to do!). A normal person would’ve had the following reaction to these events, I assume: normal-anxious-very anxious-relieved. My reaction has been: normal-normal-amused-normal and, now that I’m home and obsessing about it, ANXIOUS. If it was up to me, I’d wear my pajamas and take the longest nap. Unfortunately I have some of Ben’s work to do (WE CHEAT!) and then I have my interview at 5. And tomorrow we show up at 8:30, in hopes a miracle happens.

During our eternal waiting, I started the heel of my sock and bickered with Ben incessantly. It usually happens when I’m in a particularly good mood. Lately we’ve been doing it a lot (probably a result of me being stuck at home ALL day with nothing much else to distract me) and it bothers me. Apparently I’m very mean to him and pick on him a lot. I remember complaining about the same thing once and him getting offended because I can’t take a joke. Men! It’s funny how my fear of confrontation disappears when I’m in a marital spat. I suddenly turn into the worst of bullies. I think it has to do with frustration and the fact we’re constantly around each other. I know those are my main reasons for getting upset. Fortunately his awesome grossly outweighs the little annoying things. Sadly, sometimes the little annoying things are all that I can see

And that’s why my New Year resolution was made, because at some point, I need to stop being 12 and realize that life isn’t all black and white and that the nuances are 98% of the fun.

And just when you thought I’d only use 4 letter words…

Yesterday I scootered my way to the center and participated in the 2nd Knit Cafè. Whereas the first had been on the awkward side (especially at first), I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Names and faces are still a blur to me, thanks to my blindness that somehow affects my ability to remember names. Let me tell you, I play the worst Memory games. I finished Roberto’s scarf and made some progress on a sock (which has the most beautiful colorway -which is not a word? Paint me confused). There were profound conversations, which have been sadly lacking from my life for far too long, and I wish those could’ve lasted much longer. However, knitting is a fickle hobby and as soon as someone dangles a new yarn in front of my nose, I run to it like an avid kitten. What a beautiful metaphor.

I think I found a trigger to one chunk of my nightmares: social situations. My social gland gets tickled and my brain short circuits and backfires. And so I had another one of those nightmares that make me feel like I might be the only one coming to my funeral. Which is not a good thought to have on a Sunday, or any other day. This kind of negativity is not me. And then I chuckled. Anyway…

In other news, I am developing a mild case of road rage. The mildness is only because I don’t drive that much. Somehow, even though I was born and raised and stuck in endless chaos in this city, I am still deeply offended by traffic. And I kid not. I feel offended and personally touched when I have to wait for another idiot who doesn’t realize the light is green ("A ROMA C’AVEMO SOLO ‘STI 3 COLORI!!!" - as heard by me once, at a streetlight, a Roman talking to someone in a non-Roman car "OOOH! IN ROME WE ONLY HAVE THESE 3 COLORS!!!") or that slowing down an entire street because you don’t know where you’re going/can’t find a parking spot is not cool. My fiercest enemies are people on other scooters (the ones that look so ridiculously big and slanted, particularly) and in Smart cars. I might have to knit me a vest with a HUGE "No Entry" sign, a la Crusades. I won’t fight in the name of god (he’s never fought for me, after all, and I’m one for equal opportunities…), but in the name of road etiquette. I shall bear a whistle in my right hand and a street code in my left (that’ll make my driving sort of hard and unbalanced, but it won’t stop me). And if all that fails, I’ll still stick to my strict policy of insulting ANYONE who gets in my way.

That should also be the one lesson I pass along to my children (should they ever happen): when in doubt, yell obscenities at the top of your voice. And the legacy lives on…

It has happened again! Life has kicked my ass with some unexpected poetry. That’s why you should always hold on to see tomorrow, because one day it’s a lost bus driver and the next is something else.

On Tuesday night, Ben crashed our microwave dish. It made a HUGE bang and it shattered in enough pieces that not even the superest of super glues could have mended it. + somehow supergluing something that is then shot with microwaves doesn’t sound like the best of ideas. Anyway, we embarked on a journey of self-discovery and dish-searching. We found it and it lists at a whopping €42. My microwave is at least 15 years old (if I had more fingers I could probably figure out an exact estimate), but it fits its niche perfectly and it is so much bigger than all the pansy microwaves nowadays. All this to justify the fact we did, in fact, invest that much on it. When it was time to pay, I handed the guy a €50. He asked me if I had €2. I am one of those people that is usually weighed down by all the coins. I collect them as if they were in high demand, only to use them all at once. I’m that person that when her bill comes to €X.94 decides she’ll go that extra mile and empty her coin purse. Such an occurrence had happened the previous evening and I only had 23 cents to my name. As I dug around my bag, however, I found chocolate coins totaling €2. I handed them to the guy with a big smile and I got back a €10 bill! Now, THAT makes my day.

If life could only deliver me a delicious job.

I had a very busy morning (mostly spent trying to track down "Barefoot in the park") and a lazy hazy afternoon, which included a viewing of the above mentioned movie and a nap. Unfortunately, my nap included my usual array of nightmares. I remember reading that between 3-4 years old is when you start having nightmares, I’m between 3-2 and 3-3 years old, does that apply? My routine of watching The Office before going to bed is working to a point. A lobotomy, I suspect, might help a lot more.

I got my package from Sheila B today. She sent me a bunch of delicious spinning supplies. I tried for half an hour to figure it out, but soon gave up. I am waiting for Ben Master Jam to help me. Maybe all the videos will make sense to him. Or maybe he’ll end up stabbing me in the heart (out of sheer frustration) and vanquishing the curse.

I have half-designed what I’d like my website to look like, but now lack the software to make it come to life. Hopefully between working, cooking and playing some intensive WoW, I can convince Mr Benjammin to look for it. God, I am sounding like a woman from the middle ages. My ass? Why sir, I am not certain I can find it myself, please be patient while I go call my husband and have him show it to me. Disgusting!

I have also decided to draw my own furniture and will be working on my idea for a desk tomorrow. I found this wood shop that cuts things for you and that is exciting beyond belief! I also need some huge clear plastic drawery thing to store my yarn in, instead of these tubs. Some of the tubs will probably have to stay, since I have so much stuff, but some have to go. Speaking of yarn, I have finally settled on the most simplistic design for Roberto’s scarf, since I have decided to learn how to knit the continental way. It will take me 9 times as long, but I am loving the challenge.

I’m sure it’s a rare phenomenon, I’m sure I have it in spades. I’ll be sitting on (or swallowed by) my couch and all of a sudden the nausea comes in waves and, like a dog in a car, I suddenly need the wind in my face, my tongue flapping in the breeze. Fortunately there are windows around the house and I’m always just a turn of the knob away. I think my brain is slowly leaking out and causing me all these inconveniences. My nightmares are back and they have hit a degree of cruelty that is pretty much at beating-baby-seal-with-club level. I’m actually amused at the different layers of cruelty I seem to bestow upon myself. There’s an in-your-face one, a slightly more subtle one and then the flat out passive aggressive underlying one. My favorite dream is the one in which I go to my favorite restaurant (where I’ve been trying to go for months now, actually) with 3 friends*. The lady that owns the restaurant, who used to be my friend and quite a large woman, is now a snooty skinny bitch. After the first course I excuse myself and go to a room nearby, where I lay in bed and then fall asleep. I wake up to find out the meal’s over and done with and when I ask my friends why they didn’t wake me up, they quite flatly reply they didn’t even notice I was gone. You see all these levels of hatred? Must be all those years of thinking myself the coolest, they’ve come back to kick me in the ass. And sadly, my resolution of enjoying things more has kind of failed from the start. I am holding onto all this resentment and not enjoying the right now as much as I should. I saw Angela tonight and I just sit there and stew. I resent not being her best friend anymore. I resent just being a friend. That’s not what I’m looking for, I had that in Ohio and I didn’t care much for it. And so instead of working on it, I just revert even more into myself. And what have we learned from my dreams? That’s the one place I should be running from as far as possible. It’s the dark house in the middle of the forest, when your car has broken down and you’re a pretty girl with tight clothes and too much faith in humankind. You will get brutally killed. And probably in the first 5 minutes of the movie.

At least the sushi was good.

Do ya? And do you know why them bells are ringing? (every time I write them my pinky feels obliged to hit that delete key as hard as it can. It’s the curse of the literati.) I finished it! The alpaca mammoth is now officially a sweater. With hood and all. I was up until way past 3am to finish it. It was like a rave for the yarn fanatic, - the crazy dance moves. There certainly were drugs (Allegra D!) and I did indulge myself in a whistle or two. The downside of being done with the sweater is that I now feel completely purposeless. This sweater has been attached to my lap every waking moment of the past 3 days. It played World of Warcraft with me. It watched Veronica Mars from my lap and sighed in disappointment when she dumped Logan. It went around Rome in my scooter. And was always within reach. I’m attached to it as, I imagine, one would be attached to a third nipple. Also horrified. I have a bunch of unfinished projects that await me, but we all know it won’t be the same.

I am still looking for a job and failing miserably. I might have to take up street walking if only to get out of the house. We have come up with a "Rome enjoyment" plan, but it’s been raining steadily for the past 3 days and it literally puts a damper on things and it makes it hard to run amok in the scooter. This Saturday we might make an excursion to the countryside to go check out a knit café.I will be cat sitting for Roberta too. So much to do, so little catnip.

These are stinky times in the household. Our hot water broke on Saturday and, despite a brief invasion at my mom’s house armed with a towel and a bar of soap, we have been lacking in the shower department. Sure, we wash bits and pieces when we can muster the nerve to freeze our above mentioned bits and pieces, but that isn’t the same thing. My hair, for example, could rival a Mr Scarecrow’s hair from the Wizard of Oz and win. And people would call it an unfair competition. Bookies would only pay me 2 to 1. All this is about to change. My handyman par excellence, Amedeo, is finally back in our lives. The man will do anything. And make you pay for it. Talent doesn’t come cheap and he knows it. I have a fondness for this man. He changed my locks back when I kicked out 2 of the nightmare flatmates. And that bonds you. He’s currently scouring the streets of Rome, looking for the one piece that will bring this apartment to its former shine.

In the meanwhile, I sit here and browse the internet looking for answers. I found a snag in my sweater pattern and spent the best part of yesterday posting alarming posts on Ravelry. I love the website, love the community and LOVE the fact the author of said pattern gave his 2 cents on this dilemma too. Come on, now! And so I am working on the final stretch of this project: the hood. I am very worried about this allergy of mine. I am hoping for a miracle cure. I love this sweater and it will keep me so warm on my excursions, but at what price. (and it’s funny to say, but my throat actually closes up at the mere mention of *spells it out so as to fool throat* a l p a c a) Anyway, off I go to knit and wheeze.

You know the saying the shoemaker’s son is always the one with no shoes? Well, you would if you were Italian…

I was told that this Joomla! blog software would be da bomb. Not just that, but easy and configurable to my heart’s desire. Turns out, it is anything but. Unfortunately, my shoemaker who is in truth a web designer co-inhabitant of the abode and sharer of the marriage bed is too busy a man to waste time on my blog. Therefore, I have taken it upon myself to reinvent this blog. The first step would be hiring a professional biographer who would make my afternoons at home, scratching my butt, seem happening and interesting. But I need a job to support that kind of writing, so that will have to wait.

So, for the time being, imagine me silently protesting your cause of choice and interpret this absence not as laziness, but as a conscious effort to make the world a better place.

I am not sure if it’s of relief or eh-ness. The in-laws leave tomorrow and their absence will be noticeable, for better and for worse. I like the constant excuse to go out and someone to do stuff with, however I hate having to entertain and share my drinks. They’ve been very well behaved and not as disapproving as they can be. There’s that whole Courtney issue, but they’ve not been too aggravating with that either. I can’t help but tense up at the mere mention of her name, she’s not -that- bad, but it’s the whole dynamic that makes me cringe. Must learn to accept for Ben’s sake.

I have done much knitting during “movie nights”. Movie nights for Ben’s family usually entail his mom falling asleep/wondering off and missing half the plot, that’s when his dad takes it upon himself to explain the whole movie (that is if he doesn’t wander in mid-movie and demand to know the whole plot in extreme detail himself), often including the ending if he has seen it. It’s fun. Where fun is the opposite of fun. We watched Marie Antoinette which was a bad movie. Not just bad, but bad bad. So bad it made me want to rip my flesh off and throw it at the screen numerous times. The only word that comes to mind is vacuous, in all of its dictionary.com definitions.

I got lots of organizing done too, thanks to Ben’s mom’s sewing abilities. She made me dp and circular needles holders and they’re magnificent. My sweater is proceeding quite warmly. It’s such a pity I’m allergic to alpaca and I usually end up all wheezy after I knit it. Thank god I’m making the sweater for myself, or I’d think me smart. I might wear VERY frilly collars just so as to separate my airways from the offending sweater more. I am hosting a stitch and bitch much meeting on the 12th in our apartment. I cannot wait. We’re very close to having an acceptable living room too, so it shouldn’t be too much work. Or I’ll distribute blindfolds at the door and resolve the problem the smart way. Blind knitting, it’ll be a success.

I have become interested in spinning my own yarn and have encountered very friendly, very helpful people in my efforts to gain more information. I cannot wait to start and be part of such a fun community.