Since Last Week

Where do I start? I got home from the hospital with Sophie last week on Thursday night and left at 4:30 on Friday morning for my first trip to New York City in about eight years, I think. I got a killer deal on two flights -- took Oliver along because he's just a kick-ass kid with a full-time job, finishing high school early and on to University of Arizona in the fall! Here we are bleary-eyed in the plane just before take-off.

We arrived in Newark and were picked up at the airport by my cousin Paula's husband Jim. We spent Friday night with them and their dear daughter Faith, and the next morning they drove us up to my cousin Philip's house so we could finally join all the other cousins and aunts and uncles for the annual Pittule Day celebration. Pittule is a Calabrian specialty -- basically, fried dough that is either sprinkled with sugar or stuffed with anchovies. Both are pictured above.

Here's me taking a stint at the fryer with my cousin Mary:

Here's a few more pictures from the afternoon:

My mom, 80 years old, Aunt Dorothy, 90 years old and Aunt Mary, 87 years old

My cousins Frances and Mary

The whole Famiglia

Matriarchs and Patriarch

Me and my cousin Philip

That's a lot of beautiful family, and I'm grateful for every single one of them and for the opportunity to get together with them, talk and bond and eat delicious food. I'm so glad that Oliver got to experience it as well.

I should end this post here, but you must know that I also went into the city and stayed with two of my oldest friends, Jane and Phil, in their beautiful home on the Upper West Side. They lit candles for the first night of Hanukkah. I also got to see my very oldest friend -- not biologically but from my junior high years and onward -- Audrey.

Friends for 42 years!

On Sunday morning I took a Lyft uptown to visit Sandra, a woman and fellow caregiver whom I've been close friends with for at least six years -- yet have never met. I could have wept when I finally did get to hug her -- and her son and husband. For any of you social media naysayers, I reiterate that these online friendships have proved to be some of the most deep and profound of my life in every single way.

Speaking of profound connections, I also had the pleasure and nearly unspeakable joy of finally getting to meet Rosemarie. I held on to her for an extra beat as well, just so grateful to find this person as beautiful and graceful in real life as she's been to me online.

I think I'll save the rest of my New York City photos for another post. We flew home on Monday night and on Tuesday I started feeling chills and a general lousiness that ballooned into some kind of horrible flu-like thing -- no fever or congestion but damn, I feel like crap. I haven't been sick in so many years, I guess I was due for something or another, so I'm not complaining.

See ya'll later.

Gratitude Schmatitude

I sent the above photo to a friend this morning in a half-hearted attempt to feel gratitude. Gratitude schmatitude. I'm sad that I'm not in New York with my family, eating fried dough and melanzane. It's raining buckets here, and we had to dash into the valley to pick up our Christmas tree at Henry's school. Even though I had a sighting of the incredibly handsome Gilles Marini, the actor who sustained me during my Brothers and Sisters binge (a father at the school), and a passel of wonderful young men tied the Christmas tree to our roof in the pouring rain, and Oliver dressed in full Dodgers regalia (see above), I'm testy. Ms. Moon said it all, actually, over on her blog, particularly when she quoted a movie character's imprecation. I don't want to steal her thunder, though, so I won't type it here. Go visit her blog and you'll see what I mean.

When Oliver was a really little guy and the world got on his nerves, he'd say, I hate everyone and everything! That's a bit of what I'm feeling. Don't take it personally, though, and I won't take it seriously.

Pittule Day

photo by Jennifer Werndorf (one of my best friends)

I was supposed to be landing at Newark airport tonight, be on my way to my cousin's house to spend the night. In the morning we were headed up to Rockland County in New York, just over the Hudson from the city, where all my Italian relatives were meeting for the annual Pittule Day. I haven't been in fifteen years, since I moved to Los Angeles in 1997, and I was so looking forward to seeing aunts and uncles and cousins and cousins' children and even cousins' children's children. My parents will be there and so will my two sisters. Pittule Day is an Aquino family tradition where the elder women make enormous bowls of a yeast dough that rises and rises until it's almost tipping out of the container. Then pieces of the dough are grabbed and shaped into small balls and dropped into hot oil. They float there, frying, while the women and more enlightened men prod them in their oil bath until they turn a golden brown and are removed and placed on paper towels and are then topped with powdered sugar. Hundreds of these little delicacies are fried and eaten about as fast as they come out of the pot, until someone declares that it's time for the savory ones. The same-sized pieces of dough are pinched off, and a small chunk of anchovy is pushed into the center before they're dropped into the oil and cooked until golden brown as well. There are about sixty people at the gathering and food, probably, for six hundred. Trays of melanzane, homemade soppressata, cheeses, breads, pasta and meats, figs and peppers, oranges and whole walnuts, ready to be cracked.

Anywho.

I bought a ticket about a month ago for a very cheap price and was going for two nights, a quick trip with a stack of New Yorkers, my ducks at home in a row, and an ugly, old L.L. Bean coat pulled out of the back of the closet (I don't own a coat!) . I even wore socks! About a half hour after I arrived at the airport, when I was just opening my first New Yorker and eating my first Twizzler, I learned that our flight was delayed due to weather on the east coast, and because I was already arriving very late and the rumor was worse storms beginning Sunday, when I absolutely needed to make a flight home to Los Angeles, I decided to cancel my flight. Snow, sleet, ice and rain kept me away.

I'm sad to have missed the weekend and seeing people whom I haven't seen in years. I was also looking forward to all that reading on the plane, to ripping off the address labels of my New Yorkers as I finished them and tucking them into the pouch on the back of the seat in front of me.

Anywho.

I'm here in Los Angeles where it's gloriously beautiful and very cold for us. It's going down to the high thirties tonight, but the air is crystal clear, the clouds fluffy, the moon a perfect crescent. We won't get snow or ice or sleet, and that's just fine. I'll be picking out a Christmas tree tomorrow when my dear relatives are picking dough balls out of hot oil and licking their sugary fingers. I'll miss them.