What I Will Never Understand (And What I Know For Sure)

This isn't an entry, so much as a list.  I thought of this list the other day, during a lunch break from my new job as assistant/line coach/acting teacher at the Children's Associated Summer Theater, the theater I grew up in, the first theater I was ever part of.  I never thought I'd come back on the other side of the table, to teach to the children I once felt a kinship with.  But here we are.  It just goes to show you that life is never what you think.

So on this, the last day of June, 2010, I present to you...

What I Will Never Understand
1. Twilight.   But then, you all can read my expanded thoughts on that series here.
2. How people can wear pajama pants to a casino.  I can understand wearing them to pick up groceries, to drop mail off, even to pick your kids up at a bus stop.  But when you're in a public forum containing restaurants by sports figures and Bobby Flay, do us all a favor and wear pants with a zipper.  Preferably pants that fit.  Speaking of pants that fit...
3. I will never understand people who wear their pants three sizes too small.  Is it a vanity thing, or do you just prefer to feel like an exploding sausage casing?  It makes my stomach hurt just looking at these people.
4. The Arizona Immigration ruling.  Say what you want, I try not to get into politics on this blog.  But you can't tell me this isn't racist, or legal.
5. Prop 8.  Or rather, Prop H8te.
6. The Holocaust.  How could one man cause the murders of 6 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Catholics, and underground Resistors? I hope he is slowly simmering on a spit in the deepest depths of hellfire.
7. The appeal of Paris Hilton, Megan Fox, Heidi Montag, Spencer Pratt, the entire cast of Jersey Shore (particularly Snooki...she's a midget-sized STD), and Entourage.  Aside from Ari Gold, that is.  He's hilarious.
8. Yellowface in Hollywood cinema, particularly in The Last Airbender.  It's disgusting.
9. People who never learned how to spell correctly online (I literally can't understand you).  If you punctuate your sentences with abbreviations that I need to decode with a Little Orphan Annie Secret Signal, you've gone too far.
10.  The KFC Double-Down.  My brother swears it's delicious.  I get angina just looking at pictures of this thing.  Don't even get me started on the new Grilled Cheese Burger Supreme Thing Of Gross from Friendly's.  My eyes.  My heart.  My arteries.  My life.
11. People who seem oblivious to their unhealthy habits and are unwilling to change.
12. Yoga haters.  I think they're just afraid of it.
13. People who thought there were too many endings in Return of the King.  ALL OF THEM WERE NEEDED, THANKS.  FRODO LIVES.
14. When inherently messed-up people try to fix other people.  Fix yourself first.
15. Camel Toe.  Just NO.  Doesn't that hurt?!
16. High heeled sneakers.  Unless you're competing in the Tranny Olympics.
17. The Tea Party.
18. People who bounce from relationship to relationship without stopping to consider what is causing their relationships to fail in the first place.

What I Know For Sure.
1. My family is the most important thing to me.
2. If you gave me the choice between sitting on the porch, reading a good book or magazine, with a cup of iced coffee, or out at a bar, I'm going to pick the book.  I'll pick the book/magazine over most activities.
3. My body is beautiful, but not nearly as radiant as my soul.
4. I was born to make people smile, in whatever capacity I can.
5. Dessert after dinner is mandatory.
6. Fearing what you don't understand is unhealthy.  Embrace it and walk towards it with curiosity and joy.
7. Abusing food is not nearly as fun as enjoying food.
8. Happiness can only be obtained when you truly value what you have to give.
9. Love doesn't hurt.  Love feels good.
10. When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. - Maya Angelou
11. If you see someone you feel is attractive, find them attractive on their own merits, not in comparison with your own supposed failings.
12. Golf is interminably boring to me, and I will never find it exciting no matter how many hours of it my father forces me to watch.
13. When the beach waters are rolling hard on the shore, I will always think of Ariel washing up on the beach with Prince Eric.
14. I might never fully conquer 'crow pose'.  And that's all right.
15. There's no better cure for a hangover than a glass of water and a multivitamin before bed.
16. C.A.S.T. is the greatest summer community theater in Connecticut, and I am so honored and thrilled to work there (and this year marks my 20th anniversary of the first production I ever did with them, and it's the same show we're doing this year).
17. Everyone should be with a partner who appreciates them and loves them for exactly what they are, and does not attempt to change them.
18. Meditation and incorporation of my pagan beliefs have helped calm me tremendously in times of extreme stress.  Celebrating the Sabbats has given me such joy throughout this entire year, and I'm so grateful I found this new way to express my faith.

The last thing I know for sure?

Love is everywhere.  If you look for it.

if you look for it...and can find it...

ally

liar liar pants on fire

In which I address a growing, annoying trend.

Original Video - More videos at TinyPic

I hope all of you have a great Saturday.  Unfortunately, I threw my back out yesterday at work (maybe it was all the lies that got heaped in my arms?), but I have no where to go today so I plan to spend my day laying outside with a cup of coffee and reading.  I hear the new Elle is a killer.

Enjoy the sun!

words mean nothing unless your heart is in them.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy.

(and Happy Future Father's Day to my brother in law, Todd, who will be an amazing Dad in his own right!)

i think about you in the summertime

With the holiday of Midsummer approaching on Monday, it seemed only right that I use this blog entry to talk about the most epic of all seasons (although autumn runs a close, close second).


Summertime.

As children, that is a holy word.  It's what we all fantasized about in the dead of winter, when we fought off sleep during another boring science lecture.  No offense to those who adore Punnett squares, I am simply not an Einstein and never will be when it comes to genetics and mitosis.  In fact, a sidenote: my sixth grade science teacher, a lovely man by the name of Mr. Zaccarro, called my mom to tell her I was reading a book underneath my desk during his class but he didn't feel it was right to punish me because "It's just so great someone in this class loves reading that much." And I wonder why people who knew me in middle school thought I was weird.

For me, summertime means three things: Sand, sun, and swimming.  My mom calls me a fish.  When I was about five, we joined a small country club.  It was a great place to golf, if you care about that sort of thing.  I was more into it for the pool.  And what a pool it was.  A giant body of crystalline chlorine, with a squared-off deep end and a diving board that took me three years to work up the amount of courage to jump off of.  I would climb the steps, inch closer and closer to the end, scream, and run off like there was a shark waiting to bite my legs off the second I hit water.  Of course the instant I managed to get over my fear and push off from the board, that's all I wanted to do, all day long, until my legs gave out from underneath me.

Another perk this place had? A snack bar.  Their chicken tenders and banana smoothies were my lunch many a day in my youth.

Some games I loved to play with my summertime pool friends were as follows:

Sharks and Minnows.  I was always the shark because I was slow and couldn't catch anyone, so the game would continue until I was exhausted and couldn't go on.
Marco Polo.  I was actually very good at this game, because I was a silent swimmer so the blind one never knew where I was.  Sneaky!
Categories.  This is a game for the diving board.  As you run and push off, someone on the side of the pool yells a category, like "Comedy movie!" If you manage to scream out "BILLY MADISON!" before you hit the water, you survive to play another round.  If you can only get out "BILLY MA-" you're out. And some people would be jerks and yell out "Type of tree!" Which would make the jumper look at them with an expression of "Are you serious?" before splashdown ultimately robbed them of another go.

Sometimes we would have cookouts at the pool, complete with games like lap races with tons of clothing on to slow us down (which I'm surprised isn't outlawed, since it really doesn't help kids, um, not drown).  We'd even have a DJ sometimes.

There were, of course, those days where we'd come to the pool and the alarm would sound, telling us to get out and head for shelter as a storm was on the way.  Those were some of my favorite days.  We'd all crowd into the snack bar, play cards, and eat.

A lot of my summer memories revolve around the making and eating of food.  Dad working the grill for steaks, Mom making us scrambled eggs and English muffins for dinner, things deep-fried in lard.  Eating Saltines dipped in peanut butter at my best friend's house, while debating who was the hottest member of 98 Degrees (CLEARLY Jeff).

This summer has been odd.  It's the first one in a while where I've been actively working and very busy the entire time.  Oh sure, I had a job last summer, but it wasn't a job I liked very much (I have yet to get the smell of barbecued pork out of one of my shirts).  Now, summer means something very different than it did when I was a kid.  It's always sad to go to work on a blazingly hot, sunny day and think to myself "I have to spend this gorgeous day inside? Blasphemy!"

Not that I am damning the fact that I have a job-in this economy, I'm grateful to earn a paycheck.

Another thing from my childhood summers that meant a lot to me was summer stock.  I was a member of the Children's Associated Summer Theater company for ten wonderful, dizzying, glorious years.  They were truly the ten best summers of my life.  Go to rehearsal for three hours in the morning, swim all day at the pool, go home, have dinner, sleep, wake up, repeat ad nauseam.  Even when I left for New York last summer, I felt a twinge in my gut at leaving my beloved building on Summit Street.  Well, this summer, I'll be back in that building.  But this time, as a teacher, not the student.  We have truly come full circle.

Another part of my summer  not to be forgotten? The Jersey Shore, where I am right now.  I am sunburned, but I have seen the sun.  There is still sand in my hair, but I had it between my toes all day yesterday.  And I would go swimming if I wasn't absolutely certain I would turn into a popsicle the instant I stepped in; I put a toe in yesterday and hit a note I don't think I've been able to sing since puberty.

Another thing I love about summertime? The music.  Like Christmas, there's something about summer that demands a whole new playlist.  Here are some of my recommendations for songs you should only play when the sun's out and the top is down.

"Summertime" Kenny Chesney, from The Road and the Radio
"Summertime" New Kids On The Block, from The Block
"Dusk and Summer" Dashboard Confessional, from Dusk and Summer
"Summerboy" Lady GaGa, from The Fame
"Summer Nights" Rascal Flatts, from Unstoppable
"Born to Run" Bruce Springsteen, from Born To Run
"Thunder Road" Bruce Springsteen, from Born To Run
"Jersey Girl" Bruce Springsteen (performed live, in Jersey)
"Summer Wind" Frank Sinatra
"Boys of Summer" Don Henley, from Building A Perfect Beast
"The End of the Innocence" Don Henley, from The End of the Innocence(yes, I know, this is a weird choice.  But whenever I made the drive with my mom to the country club for swimming, this song would pop up on the radio, making it tied with summer for the rest of my life).
"California Gurls" Katy Perry

What are some of your favorite summertime songs?

Trophy Nights and Cheating Teams. Ah, Sunday.

If ever there were two wildly different topics to cover on a blog, these would be the two, I believe.

Last night, Rebecca Lobo was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville (I still think it's crazy the thing is in Knoxville, but I digress).  It's only a matter of time, I believe, before she gets herself on the Springfield shortlist.  It's hard to believe that I've known Becca for almost twenty (!!) years.  She and Pam were in the first graduating class I ever got emotional over.  The classes before, I was too young to comprehend it, and I wasn't as close to them.  But when Pam and Becca graduated, I was 9.  I was old enough to understand-they weren't coming back next season.  It was heartbreaking.  It really devastated me the next year, when Jen and JJ left.  But Pam and Becca were the first to really upset me with their graduation.

When Rebecca was playing for UCONN, she was a classy, tenacious, athlete whose polite manner off the court was in no way indicative of her ferocity on it.  That's what I loved about those players we had in the mid-90s: they were so sweet and caring out of uniform, but the minute they put on the Husky blues, they would probably do everything short of murdering someone if it meant winning the game.  When we won it all in 1995, I remember the big hug Rebecca gave me.  She was sweaty, exhausted, and thrilled.  

I felt awful for Rebecca that her career in the WNBA was cut so short with the knee injuries; after a nearly flawless career at UCONN health-wise, she should have gotten a couple more years of playing time in the pros.  But she has transitioned beautifully into a commentator and blogger for ESPN, and her Tweets about the game and her family are both profound and hysterical.  It helps that her husband, Steve Rushin, is an accomplished author and Tweeter himself.  Go buy his book, The Pint Man, out in stores now. (There's the plug, Becca!)

Now that I'm grown, we have a different relationship.  She'll come up to us during dead spots in games and we'll have a chat, and joke around.  At one point during our stay in Ohio, she came up to our dinner table and whispered to me, "I am still so under CD's control...I don't want her to see me because she'll yell at me for dressing too casual!" And when she found out my sister was expecting, she ran up to her in San Antonio and they swapped pregnancy stories.

Rebecca, no one is more deserving of the title "Hall of Famer" than you.  You are a wonderful, funny, brilliant person, and I only hope this puts you firmly in the history books as one of women's basketball's greatest all-around stars.

And, let's face it, I wouldn't have half my Twitter followers if it weren't for Rebecca's consistent "Follow Friday" recommendations.  So, thanks for that, too!

And now for the bad part of my post.  It has to do with sports, so I must address it.

I'll call this section of my post 'Cheating', or 'USC, You've Got Some Splaining to Do.'

Let's face it; cheating is a dirty thrill.  We all do it.  People cheat on tests and their loved ones.  We cheat in business and in pleasure.  Abby Sunderland cheated death this weekend (I honestly thought she had capsized and thank every god in the pantheon she didn't).  And let's face it, most of the time, people don't get caught.

I have always been taught by my family that cheating is a dirty, dirty thing to do.  One should make their own way, rather than profiting off others.  If there is one thing my father has been accused of that makes me the angriest, it's any accusations of cheating.  I dare you to find a cleaner program.  Yes, there was one little snafu with a certain orange school in the south.  But we were exonerated.  There was no cheating involved.

Well, apparently USC decided just simple cheating was not enough.  They had to become the grand poobahs of dirty dealings.  And boy, did they get caught.

I don't understand why people cheat in sports.  It's like they don't think they'll get caught, or they think they're too special and there's no way they'll get caught.  It's like those dirtbags on Maury who deny they're the child's father until the paternity tests come out, and then it's all mea culpa from then on.

It is the rare thing that pisses me off more in sports than the revealing of cheats.  Actually, it pisses me off even more when bribery and payment come into the equation.  The fact that USC has to relinquish its National Championship as well as forgo several bowls, not to mention Reggie Bush might have to give up his Heisman Trophy from that year...it's enough to make my eyes and ears bleed.

It's not just USC that's had problems over the past years.  Indiana has dwindled from a national powerhouse to a struggling name thanks to one too many illegal phone calls.  John Calipari goes from school to school, taking high-ranking recruits and revoked championships with him.  And now, we at UCONN are dealing with the fall-out of violations in the men's program.

And then there's Lane Kiffin.  Oh, Lane.  What are you doing? With the limos and the 13 year old recruits and the calling out of Urban Meyer.  Pete Carroll was right to get out of USC when he did, although now he's in hot water anyway because he was the coach during the time these violations took place.

Did they think they couldn't win if they didn't cheat? You're from the University of Southern California, for cryin' out loud. Winning is in your nature.  Work a little harder next time.  I promise you, the wins will come.  Take it from someone who knows what they're talking about: work hard, and reap those benefits.  Don't make a name for yourself in swindling the hopes and dreams of die-hard Trojans.

Of course, it's not just basketball.  Baseball will never be the same for me.  Neither will track and field, or even women's gymnastics (those Chinese gymnasts were twelve, I tell you! TWELVE!).  We live in a society where it's not about whether you win or lose.  It's about winning, by any means necessary.

Winning isn't everything.  Not when it costs a little piece of your soul.

But enough of my ranting and raving.  I plan to soak up some long-absent sun this weekend by joining my family at our shore house before I start my summer job of teaching kids at a local children's theater.  I've been looking forward to this job for months.  When I left NYC last year, I thought to myself "You are going to teach at C.A.S.T." and my heart swelled with joy.

Find something you love, and remain tremendously interested in it.  Without having to resort to tricks...

ally

it hurts to be sixteen

When I was sixteen, it was a very bad year.

"How could that be?" I can hear my friends wonder, those who didn't know me then, who didn't know that Ally.  "Your dad's team went undefeated, they were pounding people into the dirt! What an amazing year."

Well, it was a great year for him.  But he wasn't an overweight teen with a mullet.

I suffered from a number of teenage plagues-acne, bad hair, worse clothes (really, Ally? four inch platform flipflops with every single outfit?), isolation, loneliness.  Growing up in a fishbowl, everyone knew me and everyone knew what I was supposed to turn out as; another product of the Auriemma athlete machine, as it were. My sister, then a freshman at UCONN, had graduated a three-sport athlete from MHS...although if you ask me, golf is barely a sport, but I digress.  Then there was my brother.  If he could've been a three sport athlete all through highschool and college, he would have.  But back then he was thirteen, with an insane pitch and deadly three-point shot, one that he perfected while getting his ass kicked in Horse by a certain Italian/Spanish chick from California who happened to shoot the ball a little bit better than he did.  I was supposed to follow in those footsteps, and complete the trilogy of talent.  We'd be like the new Avengers.  Only hairy.

There was just one glitch in this grand master plan. I sucked.

I kind of quit sports freshman year, after it came down to either playing basketball or doing the musical at another highschool.  No-brainer. All I wanted to do was sing, dance, read, write, rinse/repeat.  Oh, and eat.  I was good at eating.  Particularly pints of Ben and Jerry's.  And the highlight of my sixteen-year-old year was when Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring came out.  I bemoaned my blonde hair, wishing it carried an onyx wave like Liv Tyler's.  I was an utter nerd.

(Okay, still am.)

Boys didn't exist to me, or rather I didn't exist to boys.  Sixteen year old guys don't tend to pin their romantic hopes on fat girls with mullets (shut up, I was going for the Mandy Moore pixie look and got stuck with a mullet).  I hid myself away at highschool, which was all-girls, so my chances of snagging a boyfriend were limited to awkward inter-school mixers and the occasional hot guest speaker.  Dances of course were brutal.  I kept to the walls like a daddy-long-leg, observing and never joining in unless it was to bust a move, awkwardly, with my friends.

Yes, I had friends.  Very good friends.  My one redeeming factor of the entire year was the friendships I made amongst the day students at my day/boarding school.  In them, I found a unique brand of freakery that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

My grades plummeted, simply because I didn't care about school much.  I was screamed at by both my parents for a good hour after my final exams were posted, but at that point I was too numb.  I didn't want to deal with the world, with growing up.  With living on the same spiritual plane as the rest of humanity.  I just wanted my fantasies.  In them, I was skinny, tall, with a haircut that wouldn't put me in any 80s cover band, and had a man in my life who loved me. 

Sometimes, in the deep watchers of the night, I still think like that.  But then I banish those thoughts way back into that part of hell where the Fred Phelps family first spawned.

A very good thing that came out of that sinkhole known as the sixteenth year of my existence? I started to blog for the first time.  Granted, it was full of goth musings and really bad poetry, and boy whining on the level of Bella Swan. But I wrote it all down nonetheless.  Then, I began to write stories based on films and books I had read.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen...I wrote fanfic.  From that humble Mary Sue beginning came a humongous wealth of my own creative output, and now I'm hoping to send some chapters off to a publisher/agent at the urging of my parents.

A few nights ago, after the name-calling and tongue-lashings on my last post, I got a comment from a sixteen year old girl who said I talked to her when we had our games in Norfolk back in March.  I remember a girl coming up to me and feeling saddened we hadn't gotten a chance to talk a bit more.  Amongst the wonderful things in her comment, she mentioned that because of me, she had a woman to look up to. 

She thanked me.  Me.  If you had told me at sixteen that nine years later a girl would consider me a role model, I would have laughed.  Then I would have cried.  How impossible.

AJ, my girl, I am so humbled and so overjoyed that my little corner of the web has become an inspiration to you.  I started out this blog to share my story and hope that I might just make people laugh, think, or give them an escape from their day.  I didn't ever think I'd be a role model for a girl at the age when I felt most lost.  So I hope you'll indulge me with this little note, just between us.  Girl talk, if you will.

AJ, you are probably smack dab in the middle of the most transformative year of a young woman's life.  Stuff's going to happen that you won't understand, but incredible things will occur too.  And if there's any advice I could give to you, it's the advice I'd give myself at that age:

1. Do something completely ridiculous every single day.  It could be dancing by yourself in your room, singing loudly in the car (if you have your license, or just do it in the passenger seat and annoy the hell out of your mom), or pulling faces in the mirror. 
2. Make friends.  Lots of them.  Not just fringe 'hi in the hallway' friends.  Real, honest friends that would shed blood for you if it came down to it-although, let's hope that's not the case. 
3. Put yourself in the position to make those friends.  Be social, be active, be alive and present in the world around you.  If it gets hard, don't hide away.  Try your best to fight it.
4. If it gets hard and you can't fight it, then embrace it.  You have every right to be confused about something, or feel like things are overwhelming.  Don't let it swallow you up, but observe and face it.
5. Boys are crazy, stupid, wonderful beings.  They'll be a great part of your life but don't let them BECOME your life.  Boys like Edward Cullen do not exist. Although I personally think he's an abusive stalker, so maybe that's a good thing? And don't think because a boy didn't call, the world is ending.  He's clearly an idiot.  That Taylor Swift knew what she was talking about when she sang "It's too late for you and your white horse to come around." Leave him in the dust!
6. Say yes to everything you know you won't go to jail for.
7. Say no to the stupid girls and boys at your school who are using their post-adolescent confusions as an excuse to dive headlong into unhealthy choices.  Dumb decisions can take so many lives.
8. If you don't have a boy to go to the prom with, take your best girlfriend and call it a date.  I did exactly that with my best friend of twelve years, Connie (monthly shoutout!).  We pranced around a boat for three hours and had a grand old time with nary a man in sight.
9. Don't be what people expect you to be.  Be who you want to be.
10. That haircut might seem like a great idea, but you might want to get a second or third opinion before hitting the salon.  This is me trying to protect you from my horrifying hair mistakes.

In closing, AJ, I'd like to pass on to you the words of Jim Valvano, the great NC State men's basketball coach and founder of the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research.  Jimmy V gave an acceptance speech at the 1993 ESPY Awards that remains one of the greatest public speeches by any sports individual.  One thing I've taken from that speech is Jimmy's urging of all of us to laugh, think, and cry every single day.  "If you can laugh, think, and cry all in one day, that's a heck of a day."


You commented on my post to thank me.  I should be thanking you.  For in the midst of a bleaker blog day, you were a definite light.  Bless you and good luck...

ally

Who's this Heimlich Maneuver man, anyway?

If the title of this post is a little odd, it's because my mother said it.  I hope you all had an amazing Mother's Day, filled with love and respect and adoration of your mommies.  I had only one thing on my mind when I was picking out a present for Miss Kathy, and it consists of three words: Friday. Night. Lights.  The woman is obsessed.  I came in from a night with friends last Friday to find Mom sitting in front of the TV, face glazed over, eyes penetrating the screen like a death laser from Neptune.  Clearly, no conversation would get through to this woman.  She was lost in the moment.  And by moment, naturally I mean Tim Riggins.  Dad thinks it's insane that my mother is in love with this show, because, in his words "He could be with your Mom, since he's like a 40 year old playing a highschool student!" For the record: Taylor Kitsch is 28.  Also for the record: Taylor Kitsch is my husband, so Mom should just step off if she knows what's good for her.  That includes my sister, Jenna.  I'm watching you both.

The past three weeks have been stressful, but in the end it's all about family.  I will not go into the details because this blog should be about lighthearted things from now on (considering I'm meeting the President again next week, life could be so, so much worse), but my family has been dealing with a few things that aren't pretty and aren't very light.  We have come together on the other side, stronger and more committed to each other than ever.  As far as my own health issues go, all is well.  There is nothing so wrong a little lactose restriction can't fix.  :)

Another thing that is beyond value? Friendship.  After a particularly trying morning a few weeks ago, I reached out to my best friend, Connie (there's your monthly shoutout, Connie girl).  Without question and without hesitation, she came driving over to my house and we spent two hours hanging out and laughing.  My problems were still there, but the clouds weren't so dark.  It helps when your best friend lives three minutes away.  We've timed it.

Something I've been doing quite a bit of is reading.  Since I'm attending school in the fall, I need to bone up on my classic literature, or at least literature I should be familiar with.  I blazed through Watership Down in three days.  If you have not read that book, go out and buy it or borrow it from the library in your town right now.  It is heartrending and stunning.  I was not expecting to be so moved by a story that, when pared down, is basically The Odyssey with rabbits.  I tried to explain my now-powerful connection to rabbits with my family, but they looked at me as if I myself had turned into El-ahrairah after the Black Rabbit took away his ears and tail.  "They're RABBITS!" my sister shrieked at me after I expressed disbelief at her statement that, given a gun, she would shoot them (they're ripping up her lawn).  

My brother has commandeered the televisions now that he's home from school.  He got a bone shaved down in his foot, so he's been laid up and watching Criminal Minds on repeat (he ordered us to go out and get the DVDs, and of course we obliged for the cripple in our midst).  After watching several episodes, I must say that I'm a willing and loyal convert to the cult.  Is it gross? Sometimes.  Is it creepy as hell? Um, always.  But what keeps me watching are Reid and Garcia.  Reid, for his fascinating puzzled look and his way of always putting everything together before everyone else-and also, the way he goes off on a subject until the other person in the conversation literally has to walk away to get him to shut up, which is very much something I do.  And Garcia...I mean, come on.  She IS the show.  Prentice is awesome, but without Garcia the show would be just another police procedural, albeit with a little more viscera.  A good chunk of my time watching the show is spent wondering what Garcia's outfit/hair/hairclips are going to look like, and then the rest of the show is spent enjoying her banter/affection with Agent Morgan.  Wouldn't you want to banter with him? And do other things? If you say no, you're a filthy liar.

You may have noticed that I was absent from this blog for about a month.  I didn't do this on purpose.  Life simply gets busy and updating a blog takes time.  I also had to step away for a little bit after I got eviscerated on a message board (you know which one) for living through my parents, and my formspring got attacked by trolls who thought a) I had emotional issues and b) I was a spoiled waste of space.

The other day, I drove through a small neighborhood in my town, and happened upon the house I first lived in, before the team began to get big and before the craziness started.  I stared at the one story house.  In that house our pet cat, Chipsy, gave birth in a dresser drawer.  We lived next to a fire station where I got to sit in a truck, and a highlight of my afternoons was eating lemon cookies with the octogenarian who lived down the street.  His name, I believe, was Joe.  In that house, I slept on the floor on a mattress, because I kept crawling out of the crib.  We held block parties and barbecues.  We were a family, and we still are a family.

I feel sorry for families that are broken, that don't love each other like my family does.  To quote another Italian mother, we are as thick as thieves.  I have my own life.  But my family is a large, large part of my life.

This summer promises to be quite transformative, just as last summer was.  I'm making plans to move, start another job that should be close to my line of work, continue my college education, and maybe, just maybe, Semi-Veganista will stage a comeback when I have things more exciting to talk about than tofu. 

I plan to grow, and change, and consume life with every ounce of energy that I have.  And I've got the best team behind me to get it done...

ally

PS.  My other best friend, Gina, is a culinary whiz.  She's also dealing with a recent gluten intolerance diagnosis that has drastically changed her diet.  And thanks to my incessant prodding, she's started a blog to talk about it all.  Watch her journey (and her pastries!) on her new blog, Gluten Free Gina: Footloose and Gluten-Free.