Don't get your panties in a twist, I just got a bit disoriented. I'm back now. Or, part two of life at home with my mom.

I can do this two ways (gosh that sounds like a menu item at a chinese restaurant).

I can share every gory detail of my life while staying at my mother's house for a week. OR I can just hit the high points and move along. But then what the hell would I write about for the next week while I attempt to nap and adjust to the time change with the assistance of pharmaceuticals. Plus you like all the juicy tidbits, I know you do.

Lets start with my current state of mind. I am all hopped up on caffeine and dialed down with sleeping pills, and I am so twitchy and short-tempered that my husband is probably already wondering when I am going to get the hell out of here again. Jetlag takes on a whole new meaning post-menopause, when you already can't sleep and wake up at random times throughout the night for no reason at all. When a time difference and extended travel is added to (subtracted from ?) the menopausal life equation, it gets ugly.

Because jetlag is SO kicking my ass, we're going to embrace the details, but I can only do one little bit at a time, because I don't want you to miss out on a minute of the fun, and because I need to pace myself.

First, the Dante Society.

Oh baby.

This is, for all intents and purposes, a big bunch of Italians who grew up together, and get together socially as a group from time to time. I love everything about it. They meet at the Calabrese Club and other locations about town, and do lots of community events. The week that I was there was the week of the cooking demonstration, which I believe was held in conjunction with the celebration of Columbus Day - which is, for the record, Very Serious Business Around These Parts. Dude, Columbus was Italian and you would think he was every families long-lost uncle the way they celebrate him bumping into America.

So anyway, cooking demonstration. I was really excited to be able to go. Meat Sauce and Cannoli. Good stuff. Basic italian cooking. Skills One Should Have. Maybe I'd learn a secret or two about the perfect sauce. Which is like the perfect storm, but with tomato paste.

And the chef who was running the demonstration put cream in his meat sauce.

God that sounds so dirty and I swear I didn't mean it like that. But there it is. Cream. In his meat sauce.
Listen......that shit is just not right. Not right at all. Not even a little bit right. No. Just no. I think he lost half the room when he did that.

So then they went on to making the cannoli filling. And I have to be honest, as soon as the other chef said "cream cheese" I just stopped listening. And so did pretty much everyone else. Just like that, they had lost the other half of the room. People were clucking and tsking and turning up their hearing aids and shouting "WHAT did she just say ?" It would have been funny, if I didn't feel so bad for these nice chefs who so clearly had misjudged their audience.

Here's the thing: I know there are variations. Everyone has their own way of doing things.

But you do not go to the CALABRESE CLUB and make a presentation in front of the DANTE SOCIETY and put CREAM in your meat sauce (giggling, can't help it) and CREAM CHEESE in your cannoli. Because these people will KILL YOU.

I'm kidding. They totally didn't kill anyone that I know of, and I have an airtight alibi just in case anyone goes missing. I AM italian, after all, and I know the value of a good alibi. And I did feel badly about my reaction to these nice chefs and their creative recipes. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe, you know, I should be more open minded. It's GOOD to try new things, right ? I mean, let's not stick our head in the sand and refuse new experiences. Right ?  Abso-fucking-lutely.

So we went to their restaurant two nights later and I can honestly say........that I have never thrown up so much in my life from a meal. It was epic. We had dinner, we went home, I was feeling a little strange, I went to bed, and by 2am I was trying to figure out whether I could stop throwing up long enough to sit on the toilet and deal with some other things that needed to be attended to urgently.  It was one of those moments where you realize that you cannot die (even though you want to) because you CANNOT BE DISCOVERED LIKE THIS. And by "like this" I mean sitting naked on the wastebasket Just In Case while you puke in the toilet.

I was so SO sick, and I was trying so SO hard not to wake anyone up even though (let's be honest) I really would have loved some ginger ale to sip and maybe a heating pad or something. It was bad.

And so ended my experience with "trying new things". I like my old things. But not too old, because apparently you can get sick from that.

On that note I am off to bed. I will be back soon with more tales of High Adventure. In the meantime "keep fucking that chicken" and stay classy ! Just like me, and this post.