me: Oi ciao recion come ti sta?? Zio beco che merda!!6:37 PM Paolo: me: Paolo: where did you see those??? me: http://nonciclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Truzzo_veneziano 6:38 PM Chetasboro to nona zogava! Paolo: nonono wait a second this is campagnolo not real veneziano6:39 PM sorry…me: what’s zio beco? Paolo: 6:40 PM God cuckold makes no sense in english me: AWESOME! Paolo: but it’s a good one in veneziano not to be said on the streets though me: Oh, I am SO GOING TO USE IT! Paolo: you are going to get arrested.6:41 PM me: pah. I’ll just say you told me it meant “good morning”6:42 PM me: GESBORRO! Paolo: too many RRRs me: GESBORO, ZIO BECO! Paolo: 6:43 PM me: … maybe you should bring some bail money… just in case… Paolo: I leave you there, wtf me: Fine by me. It’s probably nicer than Jersey…6:44 PM Paolo: better than a Jersey jail…that’s for sure.6:45 PM me: …and without all the fist-pumping… Paolo: just fist fucking. big fists the venetians, you know!6:46 PM me: Oh. my. god. Go back to work.

UPDATE: Pnut made me come back and change all the D’s in this post to Z’s.  Apparently, it really is a big deal.  Sheesh.  Why make up a swear word if you can’t ever use it?  Bloody Italians.

I don’t particularly like babies.  I’m the woman who, when you bring your new baby to the office, quietly slips out for coffee because I find the oohing and aahing incredibly annoying.  Or, if that’s not possible, I hold your baby at arms length by the armpits, bounce it once or twice, say “uh… yeah, …nice… baby” and then hand it back as quick as possible.  I’ve always found babies rather boring - at least, other people’s babies.  They don’t talk, they don’t do much moving around.  They just lay there, gurgling and pooping.  Once the baby gets its legs under it and starts moving its mouth intelligibly, my interest knows no bounds.  Kids have great imaginations and I am always up for a game of ‘mixing magic potions’ or ’sardines’ or whatever else can be cooked up.  But until then… SNORE.

Also, I hate all those birth stories women love to tell.  The stories about water breaking, labor, stitches, incontinence, etc.  They make me think - are women totally INSANE?  Seriously -WHY- would somebody knowingly sign up for nine months of torture with the grand finale of getting to push a bowling ball out of their vagina?

Point: being pregnant was never something that excited or particularly interested me.  Before this year, if I had to describe my thoughts about it in three words they would be: OUCH, CRAZY, HELLS-NO!

But earlier this year, when I was pregnant, all that stuff just sort of melted away (except probably the terrified for my vagina part). It shocked me that I could be so nonchalant about it.  I’m sure it’s hormonal, but once you actually GET pregnant you don’t really use your brain to think about anything except about how much you love whoever it is in your belly and all the cool shit you’re going to do with them.  And your entire realm of physical existence revolves around the various crazy changes that are happening to your body, and what you can do to manage the madness.

I don’t know what my point is.  Losing a baby made us realize how much we would have loved to have one.  Yesterday morning I had a nice long pee on a pregnancy test for the third day in a row.  I know, ridiculous.  But waiting for actual period day is tough when you’re ‘trying’**.  My heart sank at the one stripe that showed up- and I found that feeling totally surreal.  Me?  Disappointed NOT to be pregnant?  Eight months ago I would have laughed in your face if you told me I’d be in this place.  Yet, here I am.

Since I’m being all open and whatnot, I should add that every week I think “this week I would have been x weeks pregnant, and in x weeks I’d be having the baby”.  And then sometimes I’ll go look in the pregnancy books to see how big that would be.  Also, I am really, supremely, cattily, nastily jealous of other pregnant women in my family (Pnuts sister-in law, some close family friends, a few others).  Mainly because everybody gets all excited about it, and then I think “FUCK YOU, people, my baby didn’t make it”.  One has nothing to do with the other, obviously, so it’s totally irrational, but what can I say- the feeling is there all the same.

I’m not sure all this perseverating is healthy, but that’s the point- I’m in bizarro world.

**My brother finds the word’trying’ both funny and disturbing; when pnut mentioned it: “Thanks… thanks for that.  It’s basically telling me that you’re having a bunch of unprotected sex my sister.  I really don’t need to know that about my sister.”   So obviously, it’s a popular word now.

To celebrate, Pnut and I headed to Findlay, Ohio (what, not your idea of a party town? pshaw.) to meet up with my dad’s side of the family.  Eight hours each way in the car, as usual, resulted in some very bizarre conversation.  Here are my favorites…

(On the way to Ohio)

topo: (singing) On top of spaghetti, all covered in cheese… I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed…  It rolled off the table and onto the floor, and then my poor meatball rolled out of the door…

pnut: Stop it topo!  Oh, please stop singing!  It makes me so sad!

topo: Uh, it’s not a sad song.

pnut: Yes it is, it’s a horrid and terrible sad song!  The saddest song ever!

topo: Uh, it’s about spaghetti and meatballs.

pnut: I know, but the poor kid doesn’t get to eat his meatball.

topo: Riiiiggghht.  That would make you sad, wouldn’t it?

(On the way back from Ohio)

topo: (singing) … spagheeeeeeeeettttiiiii….

Pnut: nooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

topo: (singing quietly) …cheeeeeese…..

Pnut: Poor, poor little meatball!

topo: Babe, I think maybe the guy gets to eat the meatball at the end.  Just because it fell on the floor doesn’t mean he didn’t eat it… maybe he picks it up off the floor and just pops it in his mouth.

Pnut: I hope so!  That’s what I would do!

topo: I know.

And then I felt really bad for making my husband so sad, so I looked up the end of the song online.  And it made Pnut’s entire day that indeed, the kid gets to eat his tasty if slightly mushy meatball… PLUS he gets a meatball tree in his back yard.

Anyone want to take a roadtrip with us?  Lyrics to the song can be found here.

R: Not if you’re French!*

* R is French, so he can say that.

Learning comes hard:  bass guitars aren’t the only bass with scales.  Our fillets produced a chorus of crunching noises of questionable taste.

Avoidance is best: we had salad.

Conversation n°1: The Travel Snobs

topo: Gawr, more drunk obnoxious Americans.  How hard is it to treat people with respect in their own country?  I am so ashamed.

Pnut: I think the crazy one is actually Canadian.

topo: Canadians are just Americans without guns.

Pnut: You have to admit, they’re more fun than British on holiday.

topo: Americans are just loud Brits without tea.  We are never doing an all-inclusive again.

Pnut: Have you seen my flippy-floppies, muthafucka?*

[*note: this is the consequence of introducing an Italian to Lonely Island]

Conversation n°2: Pacific Topo

topo: (underwater screaming, sounds of swallowing water, thrashing noises to the surface) OH MY GOD!  OH MY GOD!  Did you SEE THAT FISH?  It was right by my face!  RIGHT BY MY FACE!

Pnut: topo, settle down.  It’s not interested in you.

topo: But it could TOTALLY have BITTEN ME!

Pnut: It doesn’t have teeth.

topo: Well, I don’t want it rubbing its fishy gums all over me either.  And I swallowed half the Pacific!

Pnut: Put your mask back on, I’ll hold your hand.

topo: Like that’s going to keep the sharks away.

–(five minutes later)–

topo: (muffled by snorkel mask) BARRACUDAAAAA!!!!  BARRACUDAAAAA!!

Pnut: Nobody can hear you screaming underwater, you know.

topo: (mask removed) AND I GOT STUNG BY A JELLYFISH!  Oh my god!  It hurts! It hurts!  OW!  I just got stung by another!  OW!  AND ANOTHER!  OW!…

Pnut: Are you SURE you were a swimmer?

topo: WE PRACTICED IN A POOL!

Yup, that was us in Mexico.  Pnut did convince me to try scuba in the end, and I loved it.

I took the job at the climbing gym.  And apart from the young despot manager who enjoys making menial tasks seem monumental (”You know what you could do with these last few minutes?  You could just take this plant and move it over there, then slide the pamphlets on over”), I adore it.  I love teaching kids, and teaching them to climb is a bonus.  I’ll happily scrub floors and toddle plants from one end of your desk to the other if I get to spend the majority of my time with a group of kids, teaching them to love the sport and be safe.

Pnut and I, for the first time, have taken an extensive break from climbing ourselves.  It’s been about six months.  And we don’t really miss it too much.  Probably because we have been spending so much time getting our little plot of land into order.  Raking, planting flowers, making stone walls, and clearing firewood.  It has only rained about four times this spring.  In Brussels, we’d be happy if it only rained four times a day.  And we’ve been fishing every weekend.

Did I mention that my mom is cancer-free?  Yes, she is.  She has one fancy prosthetic boob and zero cancer.

DYFS of New Jersey has been to our home twice now, and our paperwork for foster kids is well underway.  We are thrilled and terrified in turns.

Tomorrow, we are going to Mexico for our honeymoon.  Tickets are booked, and we shall sit by the ocean and drink Margaritas and maybe learn to scuba dive.

The hardest thing about sitting down and writing something these days is that things are going well.  Not because I don’t want to share that with you, but because things are going well and I am walking on eggshells, holding my breath, waiting for the bad.  Because it’s been so long since I have been able to breathe, so long since I didn’t feel like an elephant was sitting on my chest, that I have forgotten how to talk.  Sometimes, I am afraid that I have forgotten how to be happy.  Each new breath of nothing-bad-happened-yet both exhilerates and scares me.  I wonder what’s coming next.  I had my first mammogram last week, could that be it?  Every time the phone rings, I shiver.  I wait for it to go to voicemail, so I can have those few extra breaths before I have to face something new.  And I know that this is life.  I know that the good cannot last.  And I am trying, trying to remember how to be happy, trying to remember how to breathe.