The family that yells together stays together….or something like that.
We’re Italian, right? We’re loud, always in each other’s business, and force feed people until they explode. It’s what we do best. There are many advantages to having a large Italian family in one town. Someone is always around if you need help or a babysitter, family BBQ’s are far more exciting, the mob usually leaves us alone, and the gossip can spread much faster this way. However, there is one disadvantage; the decibel level when we get together can be exceedingly high. Listen Lady, I’m not talking a loud whisper in a crowded restaurant loud. I’m talking a jackhammer or a jet taking off loud. I’m talking ears bleeding, leaving with a migraine, sometimes you have to walk out of the room and say OMG, I JUST WANT SILENCE loud. According to some researcher whom presumably did not ride the short bus to school, this decibel level can cause serious hearing damage.
Huh…and we WONDER why both my grandparents are going deaf. Their children keep trying to get them to get hearing aids. HELLO. ANYBODY HOME? They like being deaf. After 80 years of tirades I’d want some silence too.
Anyways…back to the yelling. Towards the beginning of this year my 83 year old Aunt had a nasty fall down the stairs and broke her ankle in 3 places. She’s better now, but it was a long road to recovery as it required surgery with a plate, numerous screws, and physical therapy. There was nobody home when my aunt fell, but luckily she was on the phone and was able to yell for help. Then the masses showed up. First my grandparents appeared, then my mother, my other aunt, and of course some EMT’s all arrived to try to assist.
By this point, my aunt’s ankle has begun to swell and bruise. Not completely unusual for such an injury. The EMT’s begin to assess her injury and my grandfather, whose only intent is to help, tries to ask my Aunt a question. Harmful….No? Not to the average person. Listen Lady, this signals the beginning of the end; it commences the argument that qualifies our family for a hit reality show.
Grandpa tries to help Aunt Mary:
Grandpa: “Mary, let me help you.”
But Aunt Mary yells at Grandpa:
Aunt Mary: “I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP”
So Grandma yells at Aunt Mary for yelling at Grandpa:
Grandma: “He’s only trying to help you Mary, you don’t need to yell at him.”
So Aunt Debbi yells at Grandma for yelling at Aunt Mary for yelling at Grandpa:
Aunt Debbi: “MOM. LET IT GO, LEAVE AUNT MARY ALONE.”
So my Mom yells at Aunt Debbi for yelling at Grandma for yelling at Aunt Mary for yelling at Grandpa:
Mom: “DEB, DON’T YELL AT MOM. SHE HAS EVERY RIGHT TO DEFEND DAD.”
MY HEAD JUST EXPLODED. Imagine being the EMT right now. I’m telling you, SITCOM. We’d dominate the ratings.
What’s that smell?
My brother lives out of town and occasionally he comes home for the weekend to visit. Typically he gets in late Friday night, we chillax on Saturday, and before he leaves on Sunday we go out to breakfast at a local diner. The same diner we always have breakfast at. A little Greek joint where the food is great, the prices cheap, and kids try and stack the coffee creamers (myself included- I’m stellar at it now).
He was recently here for one of his visits and it had been quite awhile since we had seen him so it was nice to catch up. Sunday morning we met up with my parents and brother for the typical deportation breakfast. Let’s set the scene….
It’s 10 am, and my kid has been up and fed for 2 hours. You think the process of digestion would have begun for her. We squish the kid between us so that we can be on either side of her. Ya know….for safety reasons. Don’t be confused…this is not for her safety. It’s for your safety. Listen Lady, I’m concerned with the safety of the poor, unsuspecting patrons at this diner, because when she wings her plate wildly out of control like ‘Odd Jobs’ hat in a James Bond Flick or tries to stab someone with a fork, we can at the very least, contain the collateral damage.
The waitress walks over with our 6 plates of food and is just setting them down as we hear gurgle….. cough….. burp….. and then the explosion comes spewing out of Cardin’s mouth like Mount St. Helens. I would like to take this time to remind you that we have been seated, ordered, and were waiting for our food for a good 20 minutes before all this took place. At the exact moment of food delivery my sweet, precious angel decided to spew all her food in a fit of glory at this diner. The look I received from the waitress was undeniably one of pity and sorrow as I cupped my hands under Cardin’s mouth to catch the offending disaster.
Internet. Oh Internet, to save your stomach contents I’ll leave the gory details out, but a new outfit, and one roll of paper towel, and twenty minutes later, we were all cleaned up and ready to eat our piping COLD breakfast. Awesome.
Somewhere in the middle of my Chocolate Chip pancakes (yes, I still eat chocolate chip pancakes, what of it?) I could not get over the vomit smell. Everything was clean, and my hands had been burned of all existing flesh, the dirty clothes had been put away into a plastic bag and were sealed….why was my nose so offended? It hit me as I looked down at my t-shirt, some of the residual catastrophe had landed on my shoulder and for the remainder of deportation breakfast I ate cold Chocolate Chip pancakes laced with the smell of vomit. I’m living the life of a gangsta.
Check that off my Bucket List
My parents have been hemming and hawing over redoing their kitchen floor for about 5 years now. They have a lovely shade of yellowish vinyl floor that is pulling away from the wall and turning up at the seams. My mom is a full bred Italian Stallion (kinda like I’m auctioning a horse; do I hear a $1000) so a good portion of the day is spent in the kitchen doing cooking. And by good portion, I mean at least 18 plus hours a day. Believe me, I can show you mark that remains on my left ass cheek from her wooden spoons. 
They decided to finally pony up the money and put in a nice tile floor over the existing vinyl. In honor of this glorious floor conversion, I thought it was only appropriate that I get to make my final mark on the floor. There are certain things you should experience in life; jumping out of a plane, a hangover so bad you vow never to drink again, finally being able to color on your mom’s floor without her yelling at you. And we are not just talking crayons or colored pencils here. We are going heavy duty, top of the line, pulling out the big guns; PERMANENT MARKER…….it smells so good.
Don’t lie to yourself, if you had the chance you would have jumped on this bandwagon faster than I can say Team Edward or Team Jacob. When else would have such creative freedom. And not just freedom, but PERMANENT freedom; to write whatever your heart desires and there could be no consequence to it. This and squeezing out an entire tube of toothpaste into the sink are top goals for me. Mostly just for shits and giggles. I figure, if I at least use a coupon to buy the toothpaste then I’m not really wasting that much money. LISTEN LADY, I could so philosophize with the best of them.
The best part of this story is that, the next day, when the contractors came to begin installing the backer board and tile, they used my drawings as guides to determine how much of the floor that had completed. Who says I’m not helpful? What. What.
Triumphant Return or Complete Failure?
The past 6 months of sabbatical have been fantastic. I have spent my time studying the mating rituals of the bearded pigs in Borneo. It was fascinating, but now it’s time to get back to the real world. 
Ok… there was no trip to Borneo, but I have at least piqued your interest in the mating rituals of the bearded pigs, right? Potbelly Style!! Side note, you know Ke$ha is SO talking about these bearded pigs at the end of “your love is my drug”.
The end of winter was far from a stellar time and my schedule provided no time for blogging. Believe me; I heard the wrath of my audience. You shouted and threw fruit, probably grown on Mother F%^#$%# Farmville, for the abrupt stop in my wit. You attempted to convince me to blog again and again. You started campaigns and picketed in front of my house. I think someone might have even left a dead animal as a sacrifice to the blogging God. Maybe I’m exaggerating now. Though it seems I hit a nerve with many when I stopped typing the funny.
Listen Lady, the honest truth to why I’m back… my family has found a structure that is more suitable to all parties, employment is more stable, and I have an ASSLOAD worth of stories that I have not shared with you. So, just when all the crazy has finally settled down in my life, I decide to go ahead rip the Band-Aid off. One quick pull. Why not? What’s more fun than bringing all of you along for the ride too?
Early onset…
Sooooooo….a couple weekends ago we did the whole YAY LET’S CELEBRATE THE DAY YOU CAME FLYING OUT OF YOUR MOM’S VAGINA INTO THIS HARD, COLD REALITY WHERE YOU WORK TOO MUCH AND SLEEP TOO LITTLE. Sounds like a blast. Since my birthday was on a Sunday, I was determined to get all the housework and stupid errands done before that so I could really just relax and enjoy the day and not have to rush around on my birthday.
This meant that Saturday morning we were up and out the door by 9 am. Happiness spread over my husband’s face when I woke him for this venture.
Stop number one was to our local walmart and as we were purveying the holiday aisles, I might have lightly tapped an end cap display of scotch paper cutters with the cart. And by slightly tapped I mean rammed full speed with the cart as I had totally misjudged the angle of the turn. Like Danica Patrick on the Indy 500 speedway rammed. I hit this
end cap hard enough that the ENTIRE display fell over in the store. And not only did it just fall over, the endcap display fell into my cart. All 46 scotch paper cutters went flying into my cart and dancing along the floor.
Fast forward to the part where Brett was shaking his head in disbelief that I had literally just run into this end cap. In the throes of laughter and piecing this cardboard display back together, I collected as many paper cutters as I could find and left a nice pile for a fancy walmart worker to find and reshelf. LISTEN LADY, THEY GET PAID FOR A REASON. Throughout the remainder of the store I kept finding hidden paper cutters that were appearing in my cart. I think I found 10 extra paper cutters amongst my other items. So I did the only natural thing. I left them in random places in the store as we continued on our travels. Don’t think of it as out of place. THINK OF IT AS A TREASURE HUNT!!!!
Stop number two was to Target and this equally as disastrous. As the black Friday sales were still running for the weekend I wanted to pick up a few things for my daughter and we wandered over to the Christmas aisle. MISTAKE. There was this fake snowman and since Christmas decorations excite Cardin to know end and by no end, I mean hyperventilate, scream with excitement, and shake your groove thang, I picked up the snowman to show her. Except the snowman then fell apart into 10 pieces in my hand crumbling away as though my soul had been broken. In my quick attempt to shove frosty’s arm back in place I managed to have him crumble even more. CRAP. Brett was totally shaking his head at this point. I quickly gathered up all extremities before his head went rolling down the aisle and some tween started kicking it around. We left the ruined frosty and went home so that I could sit on the couch for the remainder of the day and not touch anything else.
All this and I hadn’t even aged yet…….EPIC FAIL.