Italy: Part Four Point Five

The amount of time you have in a place is usually the amount of time you need. Over our final dinner in Rome, which, by the way, could not get more Italian (see photo), we reflected on what we might change.

Checkered tablecloth, vino, red sauce, bottled water.

Because earlier that afternoon we had made our way off the beaten track to find a pizza place only locals went to and enjoyed the feel of real city--not tourist explosion--I wished we had done something similar in Florence. On our way back into the city hub we passed Romans buying shoes off sidewalk tables, and I ate a rose gelato.

The best mushroom pizza ever.

My other regrets were a contemporary art museum in Venice (I had plumb forgot on our one short day) and not noticing our hotel in Rome was adjacent to an excellent-looking bakery until we were walking to dinner and it was closed. Three minor regrets? Overall, we killed it.

Hotel breakfast.

The Vatican was expensive, but now I've seen the Sistine Chapel. It looks like the pictures though. Not sure if that makes it more or less important to see. We also accidentally planned our visit for Wednesday morning mass. No wonder there were so many people milling around the piazza! I've now seen the pope.

Pope, yo.

Borghese Gallery was the best way to spend our last afternoon. If you don't know, the Borghese is all about making connections from various aesthetics and time periods to conformed ideas. While Renaissance art isn't necessarily my jam, the nectar of inference is. Fitting for a big trip. When we return to where we're from, our biggest baggage are the connections we carry.

Me as an extra in a Wes Anderson film set in Borghese Gardens.

We woke up at 6 to offer plenty of time for an 11 AM flight, but once we were ready we were alerted via email the flight had been bumped two hours later. "You know what this means," said Bisque. And of course he meant that regret bakery would be open! We bought a tiny apple pastry, a napoleon, and a ricotta fluff. Coupled with the light Italian breakfast we always had at hotels and the copious orange juice I drank on the plane, it was a sugary trip back to Arizona. I was ready.

Ciao, Italia!

It's easier to be Puff, but it's harder to be Sean.

Judgement Days

Having a really hard time lately be nonjudgemental. Everything is bothering me from the piece of trash someone let fly out of their car window to General Mills for marketing their sugar terrorism.

I've been leeching onto the priority of removing my own beams, but the judgement sticks itself to me like window clings of tiny cartoon coffees at Dunkin Donuts. Mmmm...donuts.

Everyone's a screw-up in some way. It's basically inevitable. So, we must eschew judgment because there will ALWAYS be opportunities to judge. If you're judgmental, the world ends up looking like a dump pile. Because NEWSFLASH, all your judging does zilch besides make it easier to keep judging.

We all know this. But, here are the real questions:
1. If the judgement is right, is it ever pushy? If you're wrong, have you forfeited your right not to be pushed? Is actually the only right we own the entitlement to push and push back?

2. Where does it COME from? What makes me feel like its a good idea to be judgmental? I think we all act from standpoints of good--sometimes we just don't recognize our motive and our actions don't match. It feels like I'm trying to accomplish something good with judgement, but I'm obviously not. Why does it feel so natural to judge others if we're not meant to do it/if it's unhealthy/if it's not WWJD? You know? I sincerely do not know.

Yatchface with a cookie when we were roommates in 2010.

I'm starting with the man in the mirror.

I'm asking him to change his ways.

Fatty!

Friday night Oreo Cookie Pie with vanilla ice cream. Yup, just like it sounds. Fill a pie tin with chocolate chip cookie dough, layer with double stuff oreos, add more cookie dough to the top. Bake for 25 minutes. Scoop vanilla ice cream on top. Chomp it. Wake up at 4:55 AM body buzzing with sugar.

Stress Bakin' (Not to Be Confused with "Stress Bacon"--Which You Could Say Is All Bacon, Since Pigs Are Smart and Aware They Are about to Be Cut Open)

Pumpkin cupcake. Strawberry cupcake. October 2011.

There's basically nothing in the world I want to do less than work on my new play. Also, the proportion of desserts I crave DIRECTLY relates to the amount of work I don't want to do. What's that? I have to rewrite my entire play? Oh, but I also want to eat cookie dough and watch Woody Allen's Interiors? Well, I mean, I can't malnourish myself! Come on, people! Cut to the tub of cookie dough empty on the floor next to my bed, where I am curled up into a ball after watching Diane Keaton's mother drown. TGIF!

Do you know girls (let's get gender specific, because I've never known a man with this habit) who show up to class or work or meetings during crunch times with cupcakes and act all frazzled and say, "Oh, I was just so stressed, I baked all this!" and everyone makes jokes like, "Gosh, Cherryl, you should be stressed more often! I mean, amirite?!" I don't buy it, Cherryl. I don't buy even one of your alleged stress-baked brownies. ZERO PURCHASING OF YOUR FALSE STRESS CONFECTION.

Because I get stressed and bake too...but I would never bring stress cake to class, BECAUSE I EAT IT ALL. That's the point. Here's my theory: Cherryl, you want to appear likable, so you baked for your peers, and you don't want to appear like you want to appear likable, so you go with this flimsy thing women have been tossing around for years about stress sugar.

I actually have a really strong opinion about this:
I don't ever care what someone's true or false motivations for giving me free treats is. Feminine implications, obesity in America, the overdramatic attitudes of students in today's world? Important ideas to consider. But, more importantly, did someone just show up and give me a 7-layer bar for no reason?! Keep on bakin', girlfrans.

Sugar, she's so fine. For a small price she blows my mind.