look, mom!

LISTEN UP MY HOST FAMILY IS AWAY ON VACATION AT AN EGYPTIAN BEACH RESORT HA HA I HAVE AN ENTIRE APARTMENT TO MYSELF THIS IS WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE A GROWN UP

I’ve never really had a room larger than 5 square feet all to myself any night ever, so I’ve been taking full advantage of this probably-very-expensive space, doing things I never dreamed I would be doing until after my second divorce, when I finally resort teaching improv to rehab patients.  As it turns out, I’m pretty good at keeping my shit together when it doesn’t matter.  I wash my dishes directly after meals, wipe down the countertops just because, shut the curtains at night, lock the front doors…  I’m so adult that at this very moment I’m doing my laundry, specifically my linens and towels. LINENS AND TOWELS.  

Without the 3-5 pairs of judgmental Italian eyes around to stare at me cook eggs that “strange way” (scrambled, I scramble my eggs), I’ve been using this time to relax and *~~*~*be myself~***~*.   This means spending hours lying on the couch with my bare feet resting on a tower of couch pillows and watching a series of Justin Bieber music videos on full volume. Here are some gems I found in the comment section of “As Long As You Love Me”:

As noted in my previous post, these past few weeks have been really hard on me.  I’ve been somewhat of a sad monkey man, and haven’t really felt the desire to do much other than lie in bed, read Yelp reviews of McDonalds, and downvote comments from mustard-loving racists.  However, I was running out of things to talk about to my mom over Skype (our conversations were turning into forty minute opportunities for me to describe scenes from my favorite movies line-by-line), so on Sunday I forced myself out of the house to see Rome’s largest park, Villa Doria Pamphili.  I left around noon, not bothering to look up any specific directions, only to shove my well-worn map of the city in my pocket and test my sense of direction.  Obviously I got very lost on the way there and back, because that entire part of town on the map was covered by an advertisement for "Ciao Roma Open Tour Hop on and Hop Off Tour!"and my "sense of direction" is really just an unusual talent I have for finding the nearest 24 hour bakery.  

Though I eventually found my way to Pamphili through a series of lucky left turns, getting home wasn't nearly as successful.  You should know that Pamphili is huge, so the fact that it took me an hour to find an exit that didn't lead into a misty detergent-scented alley is only moderately pathetic.  I didn't have a watch, so I'm going to guess that somewhere between eight and thirty hours passed after escaping from the park before I found myself collapsed on the sidewalk, leaning limp-limbed against a Monday-Saturday bus stop in a neighborhood called "La Pisana".  Even then, as I threw off my shoes and emptied my backpack of it's contents onto the sidewalk, I knew that I was overreacting, but I was hungry and sweating through my t-shirt in places I still don't understand.  I had no cell phone and no cash- a cruel and absolutely effective way to keep myself from spending money. 

After I was through feeling sorry for myself, I wiped some snot on the bench beside me and continued to walk nowhere in particular.  I wandered into a little no-name park where there appeared to be one of those “You Are Here” maps by some volleyball courts, but I soon discovered that it was nothing more than a blank white sign covered in graffiti that read "the pills will control you".  Just when I was about to take shelter within the bushes and come to terms with my new identity as a homeless teen expat atheist with General Anxiety Disorder, a police car slowly entered the park’s gates, moving along the center path on patrol. 

I quickly patted myself down, making sure I wasn't carrying anything illegal like drug-dusted firearms or a human finger wrapped in pornography, and then ran up to the driver’s window and asked the officer if he spoke English.  When he told me didn’t, I looked him straight in the face and immediately started crying, somehow never managing to break eye contact - the poor cop was terrified.  I handed him my map and made a series of “Where am I?” shoulder shrugs, then pointed to Piazzale Flaminio, which was already circled in pen, to indicate that’s where I needed to go, home.

Officer Rossi ended up giving me a ride home, because when he tried to give me directions to the nearest bus stop I just cried harder, and started using my map as a kleenex.  I rode 35 minutes to Piazzale Flaminio in the back seat of a cop car, winking at passerbys and blowing flirty kisses to neighboring vehicles.  I figured the dried mascara tracks on my cheeks gave me an edge.  He dropped me off directly in front of my apartment, taking only my first name, birthdate, and “California” for his records.  I mean I guess I'm in the clear.

I was beyond relieved to see the apartment, but within one minute of stepping through the front door I managed to set off the home security system, sounding alarms across the entire 5th floor of my building for five musical minutes.  The keypad denied every one of the codes that Margherita had given me, and none of the sidewalk people on their cigarette breaks responded to my desperate calls for help out the window.  Since Sunday, the housekeeper and I together have activated the alarm three more times - so we've agreed to take our chances and shut the system down for a few days.

Here's to hoping Roman robbers are are also enjoying the Egyptian sun,

Kay

P.S. Congrats on the new mattress mom wow sounds great

i need to do laundry

playing 'hide and go seek'....

 world's unhappiest clown

Note: these photos were taken a while ago and have little to do with the rest of this post

HEY THERE WOW

Because I’m low on funds and I hate myself, I picked up an extra job babysitting/teaching English to another two year old named Marianna.  She loves butterflies, play-doh, and hugging your legs in public.  Unlike Edoardo, who spitefully throws spoons at my face and cries at the sound of my voice in the morning, Marianna and I were fast friends.  She wears stripes with polka dots, insists we build only pink puzzles and corrects her mother when she stacks her dolls in the wrong order.  A world-class diva.  Within fifteen minutes of meeting each other we were holding hands.  She only spoke two words in the three hours I was with her the other day, “si” and “yaya”, a creative interpretation of her own name, but I know that if she had a proper vocabulary she would have been badmouthing Kristen Stewart and giving me advice about dating in my early twenties.  I’ve already asked her to be part of my wedding.

I admit that I may be looking upon Marianna through rose-colored diamond-studded glasses, but it’s Edoardo’s fault.  The kid is a nightmare.  I obviously adore him, I mean he’s got curly hair and giggles every time he says “grandpa”, but he’s been nothing short of a horror this week.  My friend Peter recently showed me the website http://reasonsmysoniscrying.tumblr.com/, so consider the following a tribute.  Yesterday Edoardo cried for the following reasons:

He woke up
I wouldn’t let him go to school without shoes on

Papa said goodbye
The bus was too crowded so he couldn’t see the doors open and close

He had to wash his hands because he insisted on touching every street sign on the way home
He couldn't find mom

He couldn’t fall asleep in 0 seconds

He woke up again
He still could not find mom

I wouldn’t let him keep his shit in his pants
He wasn't allowed to eat his body lotion

I made him use soap in the shower
The television froze

His fish wasn’t pasta

Twice this week he screamed himself to sleep, tossing every item out of his crib until he collapsed from tear-induced exhaustion.  Both times I sat there in the dark throughout the entire fit, completely helpless.  I’ve never felt such a deep and sincere sadness while twinkle twinkle little star played softly out of a baby blue bear’s ass. 

Now that I’m working roughly 50 hours a week, nearly all of my free time is spent on the computer.  I’m absolutely ashamed of myself, but I just don’t have the energy to explore much more than the gelato shop near my apartment. I’ve never been fatter, or more educated on illegal movie downloading.  If you haven’t seen the documentary Dear Zachary, you should.  To be fair, my excessive internet-ing has been due in part to my being sick.  You can thank flu-ridden Edoardo for sneezing into my mouth, laughing, and then coughing in my eyes.  Though I’m feeling better today, I’m still suffering from slimy coughs and tasteless cereal.

For the sake of my sanity, I went out a couple nights ago with a few lovely au pairs I had never met before.  At this point going to bars with strangers is my only form of social interaction (aside from whenever I accidentally clip people's feet with Edoardo's stroller), which is fine with me, because I’ve found that 9/10 times I’ll end up conversing with somebody who’s definitely cooler than me. They’re usually philanthropists, optimistic cancer survivors and iPhone App creators.  We wandered our way into a sticky nameless bar, and after two hours of genuinely fun conversation, we realized that we had yet to speak of anything other than the children we look after.  We were a collection of 20-year-old expats in lipstick that had nothing better to talk about than their kids.  Like four comfortable-in-their-own-body moms treating themselves to Sunday brunch.  The same moms that drive us mad gabbing about “the cute way Johnny pronounces ‘yellow’” and how tragic it was that “Cindy didn’t make the All-Star soccer team this year”.  These women took the time to curl their hair and put on sweaters without Mac and Cheese stains because goddammit they deserve it.  After a long look in the mirror, I've come to realize that all I need is a car with too many miles on it and an obsession with crime scene investigation shows and I'm my mother.

I knew this would happen.

Love,
Kay

P.S.  The Colosseum is okay.  I couldn’t understand anything my tour guide said, so I don't know how, why, or when it was built and what it was actually used for, but I plan on figuring all that out on the Google.  He may as well have been Charlie Brown’s schoolteacher teaching us about Poptart construction I learned nothing.  The Palatine guide, however, renewed my faith in overpriced “Tourist Special Offer For You!” packages.  He was an Australian silver fox, one of those obviously-passionate-about-his-job types, squatting under bushes and pointing his finger in the distance.  Waltzing around those ruins was one of the greatest hours of my life, and although he enunciated every word, I still walked away with no new knowledge, because I spent the entire tour imagining how happy the two of us would be together far away from Rome, sipping coconut milk in string bikinis on Bora Bora beaches.  So.  Happy.

*~***famOus~*~*

Hi

A couple of days ago I was featured on Bwog, Columbia University's "preeminent campus blog" (stolen from their website, how else do you explain an online gladiatorial game?).  I gave a little interview, feel free to give it a read.  Aside from the "privilege" war that ensued in the comment section by anonymous idiots, I'm happy with the outcome.  Here's the link:

http://bwog.com/2013/04/10/peoplehop-kaylin-mahoney/

Love and hugs,

Kay

i didn't try the chocolate so don't ask

In honor of Jesus and his magic dead person powers, I took a trip to Switzerland over the long Easter weekend to visit my friend Kimmy who studies in Lugano.  I thought it would be nice to see a familiar face after suffering what feels like years of avoiding eye contact with storekeepers and flipping through my phrasebook for the right word.  If you're ever considering taking a weekend trip to Lugano from Rome, don't.  Lugano is beautiful (duh, it's the Swiss Alps), but it's near impossible to travel there in less than ten hours.  My trip home consisted of four buses, one of which I nearly missed but didn't because I chased after it like a lovesick Ryan Gosling as it pulled away from the curb at four in the morning, manically waving my arms in the rear view mirror, running and pounding on the luggage compartment and spitting hair out of my mouth.  I was then forced to catch my breath and take a spontaneous but necessary $100 taxi, a flight with violent turbulence, and a tuna-can packed subway ride.  I also dropped and shattered my host mother's iPhone 4 while digging out my passport in the airport terminal but I'm trying not to think about it gay rights are totally cool let's all get married tomorrow who's with me?

Because I'm an unlucky little booger, my bus was stopped at the Swiss-Italy border, which apparently never happens, and I was pleasantly harassed by a blonde policeman for an uncomfortable fifteen minutes.  This shouldn't have been an issue, because as an American citizen with a passport, I have up until 90 days to legally travel the European Union without being considered a sneaky immigrant.  However, when I first arrived to Italy, nobody stamped my passport.  After stepping off the plane I kept expecting to be shooed off to some sort of scary office with strong men and black hats that fit weird, but instead i just followed my fellow plane-people to the baggage claim and left.

Now there are two sides to this shitty coin.  Because nobody ever stamped my passport, there is no legal record of me ever arriving in the European Union, which means that my "90 days of travel" can technically be forever as long as I lie about when I arrived to whoever checks my passport.  So with flawed logic, I can potentially stay here until the day I die.  However, it's also a huge pain the ass to explain to each and every person that cares why my passport isn't stamped, and there is no real guarantee that I'll be let into any country I like without proper documentation.  Also I may have some trouble coming home.  I don't know, maybe I'd do well in prison.  I could cut off all my hair with a fork, smoke stolen cigarettes while squinting and get myself a bitch.

Aside from waking up one morning and immediately racing out the door in my socks to shit in a damp tree-bush so that I wouldn't disturb Kimmy's roommate as she showered in their only bathroom, which I now realize was much too considerate, the trip went really well.  The people in Lugano are happy.  They make their own bread and spend sunny days at parks with castles.  It's one of those places that inspires you to be a better person, you know, to stop shitting in tree-bushes and call your mom once in a while.

On my last day, I took a solo four-hour hike up Monte San Salvatore with no water.  If it weren't for the small dirty patches of snow every half hour I would have tragically collapsed due to dehydration, and been carried down the mountain by a muscle man with ocean eyes OH THE SHAME...  I used my survivor skills acquired from eleven years of girl scouting (thank you, thank you, i'm not a hero), to brush off the top layer of tree debris and scoop out some clean (let's just pretend) snow, which I greedily tossed into my panting mouth by the handful.  I went above and beyond to make sure that no passerby's saw me do this, holding each clump of snow behind my back while "enjoying the view" for two to three minutes before slurping the evidence from my palms.  Despite my best efforts, I'm pretty sure an all-too-confident Japanese father and son super-hiker-duo saw me desperately smash my head face-first into a pile of ice in a particularly weak moment of the climb as they raced around the corner with their rubber capped sticks and pedometers.  After all, my self-invented ice-face smash was not without a warrior call and my crouched position on the side of the trail as they passed by reflected that of a guilt-ridden pug after peeing in the house, ass curled under hunched shoulders and eyes wide.  Oh god.

At least I showered today,
Kay