Little ungrateful ho! I am actually uberly hyper about it. I got that job I was so pining after. I will be an Office Assistant in a news agency. I am positively giddy about it. It took quite a while and the process was long and complicated, but I signed some stuff on Thursday and will be starting on Monday so, despite the words never been actually spoken out, I think I have the job. I will definitely be expecting a pay check!

Lately things have not sucked, which is a state of being that I have to get used to. Albeit warily. I think part of the trick is that I’m finally being drug out. Out of this house, out of my pity party, out of myself. This is all very exciting and gives me back glimpses of fun, exciting Carla. Oh Carla of the past, some days I miss you so! It’s funny how CotP comes out in spurts. I have lost my brazen-ness. And yet, sometimes, there it is. I need to nurture it back to health. I love the casual encounters and lasting friendships that careless part of me made happen. So welcome back!

As every Sunday, I am headed over to my mom’s. It’s one of those beautiful Sunday days, so we’ll be knitting it in style on her balcony. I have managed to guilt Ben into coming along and I love it. It’s so fun to have my 2 favorite people in the world in the same place, at once. 

(Oh relax! I am just talking about our new fridge.)

My apartment was completely (and quite tastefully) remodeled 15 years ago. So all of our appliances are teenagers. However, as teenagers go, some of them have been acting up and one of them in particular has quite flatly, and inequivocably, given us the middle finger. Our fridge froze (instead of… fridged?) our stuff for 4 months and then, when we let it know we didn’t appreciate that, it just stopped being cold altogether. From one day to the next. Our stuff went from questionable to decidedly deadly. And so I turned to my best friend for help: the internet.

I shop on the internet (as PayPal can verify) ALL the time and I’ve had some pretty good luck. I still brag about our 22" monitor steal. I bought a dryer on the internet. I just bought 2 a/c units on there. And I bought a fridge. It’s quite a spartan fridge. We really don’t have very high standards. Except, we’d like for it to work. Call us crazy. The dude who delivered said he’d install it (it’s a mounted unit) for €40, considering I was quoted €70 from another dude, I let him do it. He told us to wait 2 hours before turning it on (something about the gases needing to settle). We waited. And after we waited and turned it on, we shopped and bought all the cold foods we had been missing. There was milk and lunch meat and fresh pasta and hot dogs. And while we shopped, our fridge sat silently. And when we came back, it wasn’t cold. We reasoned that it would probably take a while for it to get cold. We figured pressuring it by opening the door every 12 seconds would only be detrimental (although it didn’t stop us from doing just that). Ever the optimists, we loaded it up with all of our delicious food and enjoyed our Friday evening. Saturday came and the fridge, despite being all lit and welcoming, still wasn’t cold. We started facing the horrible truth: it wasn’t working. The repair people wouldn’t be open until Monday, so we started frantically eating all that we could stick in our mouths and pined over the shambles of our unfrozen goods.

And yet, it has been so long since we have had the luxury of refrigeration, that we just took it in stride* and kept up our eating-out habits. I set the alarm this morning so I could call the repair people as soon as humanly possible. They are coming out tomorrow, between the hours of 8.30 and 1.30. Since this is Italy, I figured we’d have to pay the technician to come over, but it’s apparently free for the first 6 months. Best news I’ve heard all day!  

I am meeting Fru, for some unknown emergency, at 3.30 and I still haven’t had lunch or worn pants. 

* There is a scene in one of my favorite movies, "Clue", in which this group of people, faced with the 4th murder of the evening, simply look at the body, step over it and leave the room, seemingly bored. I find it so fitting to some specific times in my life, I laugh just at the thought of it. 

Oy vey! One day you’re all "waaah, I’m so bored, give me a job!" and the next you’re already outsourcing. Classic. Life has been exciting around here. And busy. We now have a pretty active (and wildly exciting) social life, we have been on TV and have spent the first month in Rome living on our own meager means. Yippee!

Tonight we’re headed to Gogol Bordello. Roberta and her bf and Cara are all going. It’s going to be so much fun. + the nonsense shouting I’ll masquerade as singing will be very welcome. I am so happy lately. It’s like all the things that I had envisioned would happen upon my return, have finally happened. And I am trying to keep all my resentment to a bare minimum, but sometimes it just leaks out. I still manage to maintain my incontrollable rage. There’s no way we’re getting rid of that, I’m afraid. 

And as for what transpired in the recent elections… I have called myself out of it all (of it-al-y). I am planning a move to Sweden and may the left-wing gods be on my side. I am beyond appalled. I am disgusted and angry and grrrrrr and bleah and I want to spit at people. And that’s all I’m saying. I have unsubscribed from my newspaper and will live the rest of this legislature in ignorant bliss. Fuck them! FUCK THEM ALL! — ok, now I’m going to stop caring

My teaching job is still going, I get ulcers every other day and am so grossly underpaid it makes me weep. I am still holding out for that dreamy part-time job and hoping that all the stars align just right and good things happen. At that point, I’ll pick and choose a couple students and resign from the rest. €10/hour is too little for the amount of work I have to do. However, teaching can be fun and quite lucrative, so I will keep it up. I will just ditch my pimp and go solo. I am glad I started backed up by a school. I needed to build up some confidence with the teaching. It ain’t easy! And so now I have to print out business cards and start promoting myself. Lots of people have offered help, but I am so lazy I have been putting it all off. One more lesson with the devil-kid and that’ll be the last push I need to get my ass in gear. Devil-kid is REALLY bad. He’ll start asking me when I’m leaving before I even plop my ass down on the chair. He won’t listen, he won’t do his homework. He can’t read. He doesn’t understand what he reads. But he insists he wants to go to an American school. There is a test to get in. He would’ve stood a chance if it wasn’t an oral test. He cannot speak. All his phrases begin with "he". and have an inappropriate amount of "a" in them. He sounds like what an American would sound like when making fun of an Italo-American. Except he doesn’t have any vocabulary or grasp of English. "What is the simple past of can?" "Can’t?" And I know it might reflect bad on me that this kid doesn’t know English. But I don’t care. I just sit and listen and while I’m trying not to strangle him, I make mental notes of all the stupid things he said so I can then include them in this blog.