Prattle Inc.

Roadtrip Courtesy of AtomicTumor

The first blog I ever read was Amalah.com. I didn't have young children, have no idea how I stumbled upon Amy's page, don't know her in real life (IRL), had no interest in blogs or the blogoshphere but something about the way she writes instantly hooked me. I read her every day for a couple of weeks and even perused the (now gone) sister site at CafeMom where she noted happenings from around the blogging world. Occasionally, I would click links and soon I was immersed in this whole parallel universe - the internet world where total strangers can sometimes instantly feel like friends that you have known forever.

Within a week or two of my newly acclaimed addiction to Amalah (Oh, those were the days! My daily blog reads are close to out of control, now.) I read her sad report that GAC had died. I clicked and came upon the real-time tragedy that was ensconcing the AtomicTumor family/blog-village. GAC, AT's young wife, had died. I read back through a few of AT's posts and saw how just a couple of weeks prior there was a brief, minuscule mention that it appeared that GAC had the flu and wouldn't be trick-or-treating with her little boys that Halloween night. I was shocked and saddened beyond comprehension to see that a healthy, young, vibrant lady blogger who was fine just a couple of weeks earlier had come down with a mystery illness that quickly took her life. 

AT's writing was so poignant and raw. He was in shock, grieving, questioning, sometimes angry, reminiscently grateful for the time he and his children had with GAC, but always, always just plain old honest and true. And it was placed out there for all the world to see. Granted, I was new to the blogosphere, but this? This was my introduction to the fact that blogs are different than any other print medium I'd ever been exposed to. Often a piece of writing is spit-shined and polished, depersonalized and timeless, held on an editor's desk for months until just the right moment for publication. Through AT at AtomicTumor I realized that Blogs are real people's real lives. Oh, sure we all do some spit-shining and polishing not fully divulging every little detail of life, but for the most part a Blog let's you inside of someone else's little corner of the world. You learn the author's nuances, personality, likes and dislikes. You feel his pain, rejoice in his successes and live vicariously as a neighbor, or friend, watching and being involved in their day to day happenings.

The community that was fostered by that site still blows me away. I read many blogs now, a lot of the A-listers, etc., but I can attest that absolutely none of them seem to have the same personal slant and feeling of friendship and bonding that was instantly manifested at AtomicTumor. IBack when I was known as "VA Bluebelle" the shoutbox (an IM type widget placed on a blog's front page where you could converse in real time pre-Twitter) became the water cooler for a number of people to hang around, standing beside AT during his long, long nights as a new widower and single dad just trying to make it through another day. We would laugh, joke and debate together and on really fun nights would just drunk-talk the night away. Community - it was so there.

AT's life has moved on. He's remarried to a lovely lady and his boys and he are in good hands. AtomicTumor and the shoutbox are now defunct but it's legacy lives on by the many blogs it is responsible for spawning, Prattle Inc. included, and the friendships that were formed there. I count in my heart as "real friends" many of the folks I met at that site and still visit some of them (Sumgirl natch - she'll be back. Mark my words., Deserved Indulgence,and CameraShy) through daily blog reads and some email exchange.

Bratface and I are making our first trip ever to Tennessee later this week to meet at least one of my friends in person. It is too exciting to think that I will finally see, speak to and break bread with a pal that I've been so intimately engaged with by way of the written word for so long. I can't wait.

Thanks, AT. Without your blog I would still think that the Oak Ridge Boys were the only cool people in Tennessee.

Like Sand Through the Hourglass

Holy smokes, Batman! The woman who went directly from child to "with child" is almost child-free. Almost.

On Friday, the great milestone of my youngest son's HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION (gulp!) culminated in cocktails on the lanai with assorted members of the family, one straggler and an internally weepy mother. At the young, young, young dammit! age of 37 I now seriously have two adult children. Whoa.

Tee left his mark on the ceremony by being mentioned in the valedictorian's address to the class and also by his impeccable sense of style. He is a strange man-child, adores wearing the suit that we bought him last year and would wear it and the shiny, black shoes daily if he could. Funerals? He'll be there just so that he can sport the suit. Celebrations? "Say it's formal, Mom, say it. I love those shoes." My son was easily spotted in the crowd of graduates. He was wearing an oxford shirt and shorts but only his bare legs, black socks and shiny, black, square-toed dress shoes could be seen under the cap and gown.

Back to the weepy Mom part...so I have only one child in school, and technically at home now. Have I mentioned, whoa? Just yesterday I was a single mom working, working, working, scrambling to get dinner on, homework done and wrestling dirty kids into bath then schlepping laundry and signing papers at midnight to turn right around and bribe, cajole, threaten three little ones out of bed and into their school clothes at o'dark thirty. Then I would haul them all to school with strict orders for "Everyone sit on your hands, right now, do it!" to alleviate the inevitable "He's touching me." "Am not." part of the morning. For a few years they rode the bus. I was always the youngest mom at the bus stop and ALWAYS mistaken for the older sister (that is still delicious when it happens, though it is rarer these days. Now I occasionally get "girlfriend". Whee! 37 ain't so bad, no sir.) on the first day. After a mere six hours, they'd come home in the afternoon or have the bus drop them off at my work and our little clan would be all up in each other's faces for the next eleventy-million hours. Every single day.

Since I gave birth to Jobie at sixteen and then grew two more children within the next seven years, I have sometimes felt that I would never, ever, ever be alone. There were always children, their friends, the neighbors, and/or relative's kids hanging on or around the porch, the house, me.

Now Jobie lives elsewhere. At 21 he comes by to visit a few times a week poking through the fridge and hauling laundry to do. Tee, rarely at home anymore anyway, is currently at the beach (faithfully calling me once daily to report that no one got busted the night prior) and next week will start working full time for the Company during the summer. He hopes to earn enough money to place deposits on an apartment by the end of the month with a couple of buddies who will also be attending community college in the fall.  Bratface and her menagerie of eight Besties have decided  that each of them will only come home this summer if she is allowed to have at least 6 of the others in tow. Needless to say they are touring the city. None of us parents are willing to take on seven to nine girls each and every day, and if you do the Math each girl has actually only spent a couple of nights in their own bed so far.

Thus far, summer has been great. Jefferson and I are in kind of a honeymoon phase, the first time in our lives that we are child-free. I have looked forward to this moment for 22 years. The house is clean! I am actually looking for clothes to wash to make up a full load! Making dinner for two is a dream. Without any kids in the house we run around naked all night and dance and sing and spill tequila on the pot plants.

Yesterday I called Bratface at her friend Em's house to ask when she would be coming home.

I was bored.

Coffee Italian Style

The final stop on Wedding Tour 2008 was at the Jersey shore. Four more days of camaraderie, drinking, dranking, drunken, this time a beach! and of course, some nuptials. It's been a long party, over the past three weddings I have injected ingested more alcohol into my system than that of any other time my entire life, including that little window that I barely remember from my young twenties. The tip of my liver can now be seen if you hold a flashlight to my mouth and look down my throat. That's how large and spongy it has grown.

Funny thing happened on the way to the shore. We went into a coffee bar and it was owned by Italians. Funny because only 3 days prior, we had been in Italy, where they drink a lot of espresso (but tons more wine Whee! cries Kel-Liver), and the Italians, both here and there, are now personally responsible for my new and improved coffee education.

Coffee Lesson from the New Jersey Italians: First off, the Jersey coffee shop owned by Italians did NOT even bat an eye when I asked for an iced latte and for this I was so grateful (see: Coffee Lessons from Italians in Italy). The best and most glorious thing about my iced latte though, aside from the fact that I was hung over, had slept through breakfast, it was noon, 100 degrees in the shade and I really, really wanted it, was that the ice cubes were made of frozen espresso.  I kissed Mama Rosa square on the lips. WHY didn't someone think of this before? I hate, hate, hate it when the ice starts to melt and my coffee/milk combo gets all watery. When the frozen espresso melts - you get MORE ESPRESSO! And it's cold! Double your flavor and your money. If you have an at-home espresso machine (you've heard about mine, right? It's my BFF) Go. Now. Fill up an ice-tray with espresso for your 5 p.m. iced latte on the lanai*.

*Sidenote/Tangent: Have I ever told you that I once read that Katherine Hepburn had a standing appointment at 5 p.m. every afternoon with a cigarette and glass of chardonnay on the lanai? Have I ever told you that since then Jefferson and I now emulate this with iced coffee every evening in the summer on the back deck? Because I am so Kate Hepburn-ish. Like that time the wide-wide leg, stovepipe pants came out earlier this year I ran right out and bought a pair because she always looked so swanky in them and as you can tell, if someone told me that Kate ate iron ore with fried mice turds every morning at 3 I'd be all over that, too. Unfortunately, yet again I was reminded that trying on clothing in the actual store before the actual purchase is always a good thing. Now I'm stuck with another pair of brand new pants that I'll never wear or be bothered to take back as having it appear as though one's legs are the same width as one's giant ass is not so very attractive on certain people. 

Coffee Lesson from Italians in Italy A.K.A. How To Really Piss Off a Roman:
Rome, our first day in Italy. The flight landed at 11 a.m. Italy time, 5 a.m. to our east coast U.S. bodies.  Then the major clusterfuck at the airport regarding our ATM card getting rejected for three full hours began. No money, no food, tired. Seriously grouchy - all of us. Finally the hours ticked by and the bank in the U.S. opened. I call to complain that the bank was NOTIFIED of our trip, dammit! and we desperately wanted to leave the airport, and the children were starving and we were penniless in Rome and HOW THE HELL COULD THIS BE HAPPENING? That's when Brad, the very nice bankteller who did not hang up on me at the end of the call as I rightly deserved, asked me if I'd had the cash withdrawal maximum upped to figure in the conversion rates. Sure, I knew about the $300 limit, I was only trying to take out 250, but, conversion rates? Did he say conversion? Heh-heh. Oopsy! Sorry, family. Muh-wah! Love ya!  <---- Did I tell them the truth about how I kept trying to take out 250 EUROS, which is $389 U.S. dollars? For THREE HOURS? Of course I told them. That fucking bank! They're always screwing things up. wink wink

Finally, at around 4p.m. the kids were settled in the hotel in Rome. Jefferson and I were in desperate need of an espresso. We found an empty coffee bar and sidled up. The young lady who worked there and her guy were enjoying their solitude. They were forehead to forehead, holding hands and looking deeply into each other's eyes. When she looked up to see us enter her entire demeanor changed; obviously we were intruding. Jefferson whipped out his very best Italian (not!) and ordered a cappuccino. Jefferson's pitiful Italian spoken loudly and slowly (because all people who speak another language are retarded and deaf, right?) did nothing to endear us to her. The look of disgust from the barista was physically painful.  She slammed the spoon, jerked to machine levers and shoved the tiny (no sizes in Italy - little shots for everything) cup at him¹.

I then ordered a latte². At first she just looked at me like I was crazy, then fire, real live flames, shot from her eyes when she asked me in Italian if I wanted it hot. When I tried to ask for "iced"³ her eyes rolled out of her head and shot across the room when she replied "No ice". I shrugged and said ok while attempting to be invisible. It was apparent that we were stupid. And bothering her. Jefferson started walking to the door to sit outside. She flew around from the espresso machine and yelled at us that we couldn't take the ceramic mugs outside. If we were going to drink outside, we should have asked first, she said. Then she handed me my steaming, hot glass of MILK**!  I took it over to the bar and Jefferson and I looked at it a minute, took a sip and then just as the barista returned to sit down with Boyfriend, I went back up to the bar and ordered an espresso to go with my milk**. I was smart enough to never look her in the eye and to quickly dodge  the flames this time.   

Jefferson and I mixed the milk into my espresso, slurped it up quickly and got the hell out of there. We thought we'd just interrupted young love and that our sad, touristy attempt at Italian was the cause of the brunt of the barista's annoyance but no...we also found out later that:

¹ Cappuccino is a breakfast drink in Italy. Apparently there is absolutely no deviation to this rule. J could have ordered an espresso, a macchiato, even an Americana at 4 in the afternoon and been just fine but it is a special show of ignorance to order cappuccino. We didn't get that memo.

² Latte is Italian for milk. Creamy, white, cow's milk. Which I ordered a warm glass of at 4p.m. on a hot, sunny afternoon. D'oh! What I was looking for is called cafe latte in Italy, you've got to ask for the coffee. The next barista, who spoke English, gave me that memo.

³ Ice seems to be a luxury in Italy and is not always available, even in restaurants.

Coffee, I had no idea how much there was to learn. (Espresso ice cubes! Brilliant, I tell ya.)

Teaser

Popped home this morning at 1 a.m. Dirty laundry owns my ass. Emails and call backs and business crap, too. Kids back to school with jet-leg, just in time to start exams.

Kelliqua, the very bad blogger, did have internet access while in Italy but puh-lease - Rome, Pisa, Lucca, San Gimignano, Siena, Sovicille, Torri, Florence. A wedding where the hairstylist/makeup artist was flown in from Milan. Lived in a luxurious compound built over a thousand years ago with 24 relatives. Experienced Rome at night - twice!  Ate, ate and ate some more. Drink, drank, drunk. Walked, walked, walked. Marveled at the beauty that is everywhere, in every form. "Owned" an Alpha Romeo for a week (my husband licked that car clean thrice daily - with his tongue) and drove over 800 miles of Tuscan countryside. So many things to squeeze into what felt like 40 seconds.
I FUCKING LOVED ITALY! 
Oh, and I took over 800 pictures. Y'all are so doomed.


           

         

         

        

*Typepad has changed some things around. I don't know why the thumbnails won't embiggen.