I don’t have a whole lot of one thing today, so this post will be an antipasti, meaning a variety of different bites, grouped together on a small platter. (Also, I don’t want to co-opt Karyn’s ADHD Wednesday.)
Mob Wife Week
Mob Wife Week is a lot less fun when all the other participants are in LA, mob wifing it up together, eating their antipasti and drinking their grappa in their furs, while listening to Frank Sinatra. I know it’s an aesthetic, but anything Italian is more of a group thing because they are an extraordinarily social people. Growing up in an extended Italian family, the one thing I can tell you is that I was always the quietest one there, largely because I was the youngest and could never get a word in edgewise. Anyway, solo is zero fun.
This is why I love my odd Italian YMCA camp country club so much. While it affords me the ability to sit quietly by the pool and read five days a week when no one else is there, on the weekend, it’s nothing but great food and conversation. Growing up, despite plentiful liquor at family events, no one ever got out of hand because there was so much food to balance it all out. It was always about the food. There’s only so much wine you can drink when you’ve got a pound of sausage and peppers, half a loaf of bread, and four cannoli in your system.
Anyway, aesthetic. I’ve only left the house once this week. I wore my giant faux fur vest, which made me feel very cute, despite the fact it also makes me look like a silverback gorilla. I went out in all black, with a new sweater that has a real Beverly Goldberg/1980s vibe to it, and my skirted leggings with Gucci sneakers. I put on all my jewelry. My thing is, if I’m going out, I only wear one “fuck you” item. (This is the byproduct of having lived in Lake Forest for so long.) I’ll either wear my jewelry OR my designer sneakers OR carry my fancy bag OR wear my Chanel sunglasses. But everything everywhere all at once? That’s a no for me. Way too flashy. Yet I felt very fancy in all my finery and Fletch assured me that I didn’t look like an asshole. He would totally be truthful, too.
Here I am in the car in my mob wife outfit, prior to my hair appointment. (I had to remove the fur vest while I drove because it made me sweaty.)
I should have had the colorist really play up the white streak at my part, but Mob Wife Week is over soon, and my next appointment isn’t for seven weeks.
Also, here is how big my hair gets when I don’t use products to keep it under control. (This is about half the volume I had in the 1980s.) My hair has been waiting for this.
I had planned on posting my weekday meat sauce recipe here, but it doesn’t translate to paper because I hate to measure. How much fresh basil and Italian parsley is “like, maybe a handful?” I don’t know. How much garlic is “smash up as many as you have?” I will say that for any recipe that calls for 1-2 cloves of garlic—written by people who hate flavor—I will do five to ten times that amount. Also, my weekday sauce is for cheaters because I supplement it with Aldi’s Kale Pesto jarred sauce and the idea of slipping kale into the gravy just killed a bunch of nonnas.
My Mob Wife Week summary is that I like the look and I love so much about the Italian lifestyle but it’s no fun when I’m alone and trying to finish three different deadlines. Also, at the hairdresser, they check your coat. When the clerk asked me which one was mine, I said, “Silverback gorilla,” and he knew exactly what I meant. Argh.
It Begins
So… my six-month struggle to finally get on weight loss drugs has ended. If you don’t know the story, my doctor prescribed everything over the summer and my pharmacy would never get them. I thought I would be significantly smaller by Gina’s wedding, but no. My new weight class will be forever preserved in her pictures. Argh.
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