Why you should never go through old drafts of blog posts…

You know what’s fun? Annoying people. They rank right up there next to Leonardo DiCraprio as my favorite things on the planet. Except, not. I’m trying not to let this one person ruin my life/summer, but it’s not really working. So I shall now attempt to make you become as annoyed as I am, because that’s just how I roll. Ehem. As of a few days ago, the days are now getting shorter. Soon we’ll be back to the sun never rising at all (apparently I live at the north pole or something…). Also, the season premieres of Downton Abbey and Psych aren’t until this fall. And June 22nd marked the 4 year and 6 month anniversary of Heath Ledger dying. Ok that’s more depressing than annoying. I love that guy.

So because I am obviously annoyed, I wasn’t going to blog about anything today because grumpiness doesn’t make for very entertaining blog posts. But then I was going through post drafts I had saved on WordPress and found this from October 17th of last year:

I went on a date yesterday. Yes, my first date. Ever. Who was the lucky gentleman? His name was Craig and we met at the Apple store while he was trying to fix my Mac. It was a bit of a blind date, actually. And it all happened so fast… I mean one minute he’s looking at my computer, the next moment we’re an item, and then I’m pretty sure when he said “Seriously, there’s nothing wrong with your battery,” I know he meant “Will you marry me?” But he forgot to propose and I’m pretty sure he didn’t even know my name. But we were meant to be. I mean, he’s a Mac dork and he has blue eyes. Check.

It would have been the best day ever if I didn’t have to sit through a 3 hour football game. My church decided

And then it stops. So, my question to you is what do you think happened next? What did my church decide? Did it decide that Craig and I should live happily ever after? Are we goin’ find Craig, so you can run and tell that, homeboy? Was Craig actually Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Awkward? Why are the only things I talk about Newsies, Christian Bale, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Do I need to get a hobby/life? What’s your favorite food? Why are you still reading this?

Oh, and I’m sorry for making you annoyed. As a token of my appreciation, if you answer my questions or continue the story of When Picco Met Craig, you can look at the picture of my new sunflowers.

Yeah, I’m really boring today. Sorry?

Wake me up when September ends

It’s a Friday night and I’m sitting by myself. Doing nothing interesting at all. Actually, I’m babysitting while my parents are out at dinner, having 10 times the social life I could ever wish to have. To make things even better, it’s been overcast and cold the past few days. And do you know when you have to deal with someone, and afterwards you want to go douse a hornet nest in gasoline and set it on fire? Yeah, I’ve put up with a few of those people lately. So what do I do when there’s a general theme of blah surrounding everything? Make food. Problem solved. Instant happiness.

I still haven’t gotten to use up the pita bread I made a few days ago. I was going to make gyros today, but that plan obviously fell through. But seriously, what are you supposed to do with 9 pieces of pita bread?! No chickpeas, so hummus was out of the question. What to do, what to do? So after a bit of googling I stumbled upon a grilled apple and brie sandwich. Delicious? Disgusting? Filled with magical dwarfs?! I’ll give you a hint: there were no dwarfs. Sad, I know.

This sandwich could really go either way. If you like brie, then you could hypothetically like this. But if you don’t like brie, don’t even bother, you uncultured person. Only joking. I refuse to eat mushrooms. We all have our weird food phobias.

Three basic ingredients. Bread, apple and brie. That would be a cool band name…bread apple and brie. BAB. Once I learn how to play guitar, I’m forming a band. Coming to a city near you.

But anyway, to make this I cut up about a quarter of an apple and took off the skin, so I wouldn’t choke and die on my sandwich. How pathetic is that? I can see it now on my gravestone. Piccola Italiana. Age 16. Died choking on an apple. Epic life fail.

Cut up some brie. Om nom nom. I have a bit of a weakness for brie, which is funny because I really hate cheese. True story. Brie, goat cheese and mozzarella are about the only cheeses I can tolerate. Moral of the story? For Christmas, please don’t get me any cheese. I prefer Converse.

Stick the bread in a buttered skillet and add the cheese and apples. The whole kitchen/place of food preparation will stink like brie and bread. No worries. It’ll taste wayyyy better than it smells.

Then place on a plate and eat.

I was taking a risk with this. Mainly because I was supposed to be doing school when I was making this, thus treading on thin ice with my mother…*ehem*…BUT also because brie and apples on a sandwich? Ohhh, how daring am I? But it turned out well. Not something I’d eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight snack but I’d definitely eat it again.

But my question to you lovelys, what’s the weirdest food you’ve eaten? This definitely isn’t the weirdest food I’ve ever eaten. The weirdest thing I’ve ever eaten was probably escargot. In case you cared.

Gahhh, I’ve just spent almost an hour on this dumb post. Best. Friday night. Ever. I hope you’ve all had a more exciting Friday than me. Although it’s not hard to top…

When life gives you lemons, throw them back and demand meatballs

Happy Wednesday. Yay. There. That was the most upbeat part of this post.

Simply put, today, September 7th, 2011 AD, was the beginning of the end. And you know it was a bad day when this morning, predicting how today was going to turn out, I had to use the family heirloom Whoopee mug for hot chocolate.

Sarcastic cups. Hot chocolate when it’s still warm outside. Yup. Bad day ahead.

Today was the day that, after a summer of whimsy and frolicking through meadows (hmmm, I wish), I had to go back to my weekly homeschool group. The homeschool group (or co-op, as we call it) is basically a place where parents send their kids to take classes they would have a hard time teaching, and along the way, help them get socialized. 6 long hours of sheer fun. *cough* SARCASM *cough* Ok, I’m actually making it sound worse than it actually is. Thankfully, I’m really good friends with all of the junior and senior girls. All 4 of them… But, for socially awkward home-learned dorks like yours truly, to go from hardly seeing anyone all week to suddenly plunging headfirst into a bunch of equally awkward teenagers isn’t exactly my cup of tea. Or cup of Dr. Pepper. I’ve heard it both ways.

So to try to boost my spirits, last night I made my ultimate comfort food. Meatballs.

I’ve made meatballs a few times before and every time I make them they’re drier than a Brit’s sense of humor. Nothing against British people. I love those guys. But that’s besides the point. Point is I was going into this recipe hoping they’d turn out ok. Did they? Errr….sure?

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of pasta. Or veggies. Or fruit. Or a lot of stuff. But meat? BRING IT ON. Add meat to any dish and I’m happy. Add meat to any meat dish and I’m even happier. I was actually going to put bacon in these meatballs, but my arteries protested. So pasta by itself isn’t my favorite, but adding meatballs made everything ok.

Pair meatballs with garlic bread made from hotdog buns and you’ve got a meal. And the icing on the cake is when your mother exclaims “Garlic bread from hotdog buns?! How resourceful!” I enjoy using the awkward phrases my family says against them ;)

We all know meatballs are the food I turn to when I’m in a bad mood. What’s your comfort food?

To end this on a happy note, the good news is that I’m still sane. Barely. Although this whole spending-hours-away-from-home thing is totally cramping my hermit style.

Scary ladies ruin my day

I would have made dinner yesterday and blogged about it but frankly, I felt like all my teeth were going to fall out and was in no mood to eat. Why, you ask? Because I had a dumb orthodontist appointment. Nothing against my orthodontist, because I absolutely adore him (and his scarily straight teeth that come along with being a tooth doctor). And all of his assistants are amazing. Well, almost all. There’s one of them that I’m pretty sure positive hates me. Not sure what I did to her, other than make her totally jealous of my awesomeness. But she hurts me :( Boohoo. Whenever my sister and I go to have our braces tightened, we have bets to see which of us is going to get stuck with the lady I’m going to call…scary lady…since I’m so uncreative. As always, I got the privilege of having her work on my teeth yesterday.

Scary lady started off the 1/2 hour of pain with her usual stare-into-your-soul glare. Then, she took off my rubber bands, making sure to scrape all my teeth with the rubber band taker-offer tool. I’m pretty tolerant with most medical procedures. I can have my blood drawn, get an IV, shots etc. No problem. But getting stuff worked on in my mouth makes me have a panic attack/feel nauseated/want to start punching people. And scraping my teeth is the absolute worst. Just thought I’d throw that in there so you know exactly how uncomfortable I was yesterday. Anyway, after the scraping of the teeth, we moved on to the putting on of the wire, which she made sure to poke me with plenty of times.

After that it was time to put on more wires to bind my teeth together. She kept messing up the wire and had cut it with the pliers, which then resulted in the wire exploding and bits of metal flooding my mouth with their metallicy taste, resulting in more discomfort on my end. Oh and while she was doing all of this, she was breathing in my face. Did she have a mask? Yes. Was she wearing it? Of course not.

After that she asked in her I’m-so-cute high pitched girly voice that really bothers me “What color rubberbands.” It wasn’t even phrased as a question. It was more of a answer now so you can get out my face statement. So I took my time choosing the colors ;) Buahhhahaha. “How about just silver..ehh wait…red….err…no….green and…wait, is that glow in the dark?! No way! What kind of toxic chemicals do they put in that to make it glow in the dark? That has to cause cancer. Oh, back to rubber bands. How about…hmmm…green aaaannnndddd….orange. No! Clear! NO WHITE! GREEN AND WHITE!” True story, minus my thoughts on cancer causing rubber bands. I kept those to myself. While she was putting on the rubber bands, she made sure to drop the tools in my mouth, like she always does.

We finished up the pain-fest with her instructing me how to put rubber bands on my back teeth to pull some teeth down. Whenever she talks, it’s like she’s dumbing things down for me. “This is a rubber band.” No joke, that’s what she said. “I know you’re all like ohmygosh, I hate rubber bands they’re so annoying, but you’d better wear them or I’ll be able to tell and your teeth won’t look good.” She then went on to show my how to put them on, pointing out my every mistake and when I messed up saying “Don’t worry, you won’t be this bad at it once you do it enough.” She was making me (as a friend of mine likes to say) flustered. My face was turning red and I was 1 inch away from not controlling my Italian temper anymore. Finally, I could go and she followed me to the waiting room talking about who knows what (It might have been important, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen). I kept turning my back to her to get her to stop talking, but she wouldn’t. I finally just said “BYE SCARY LADY!” and left.

So that was my day yesterday in a very large nutshell. How was your day???

Dinner tonight was eh. Good, but nothing worth talking about. Pasta with ground beef and onions (blech), salad, a Dr Pepper to make me feel better, and coffee ice cream for dessert. Nothing special.

And now I’m going to bed, after I down the entire bottle of Aleve and chuck the empty bottle at scary lady. Nah, I’m only joking! :) I’ll have to wait another 6-8 weeks to chuck it at her…

Who wants night breakfast?!

I made an incredibly fancy dish tonight, I call it Prima Colazione Della Notte. That loosely translates into English as Breakfast of the Night. Yeah, I made breakfast.*here come the excuses about why I didn’t make a real dinner* I was busy today. And, err…did stuff…like school and…worked on my social skills with other fellow homeschoolers. And read more about Louis Braille. And made a dress. Yes, you read that correctly. Me. Sewing. Being productive. Am I the only one shocked by that? And also my mom wanted something simple and easy.

I started off this elegant meal tonight with Eggo waffles, then followed it by extra delicious scrambled eggs and finished up it up with Jimmy Dean Pure Pork Sausage.

Jealous?

But 12 waffles, 9 eggs and 14 sausages later, my family still could have eaten more. We eat a lot.

Luckily, I didn’t bleed to death like I usually do at dog training class. And some little kid even told his mom that he wanted a dog like mine! *sniff* I must be doing something right! I was happy. And my social skills practice earlier today paid off and I actually talked to someone at class!!!! I’m popular and a good cook? Can life get better? I submit that it can NOT!