Migliori Amici

I am selfishly extremely thankful for the downpours yesterday which caused my nearest and dearest friends to cut their camping trip short and come home for the weekend.  I opted out of the camping trip because my parents are celebrating my brilliant little brother's graduation in Chicago (top of his class, phi beta kappa) and I am a single mother of three (dogs) for the weekend.  The thought of being stuck in a tent on a beach with them was not my idea of fun.  Erika made delicious pizza dough, we each did our own toppings, and the gang was back together again (minus Jillian, who we miss(ed) very much).  Apologies for the cell phone-quality.

Erika's beautiful homemade pizza dough

Lauren analyzing the anchovies

How many smart girls does it take to get the pizza onto the cutting board?

Christina and Lauren showing off their masterpiece

Lia and Kristen's (winning) pizza on the left

Aditi and Erika's deep dish

Digesting

Love

They are going to kill me.

Best friends

Pysanky

Today Erika taught her mom, my mom, my friend Lauren's mom (Lauren, we miss you!), and me how to make Pysanky.  Erika learned how to make the Pysanky at the Ukranian Museum and she was psyched to give us all an arts and crafts lesson.  Pysanky are traditional Ukranian Easter eggs.  They are made by melting beeswax and using a special stylus to "draw" with the melted wax on the egg shell.  You are essentially drawing the negative of what the egg is going to look like, since the wax is what eventually comes off, revealing your design.  So the idea is that you draw a bit, and then dip it in special liquid dye, and then draw a little bit more.  You are covering more and more of the egg, so what's left when you're done is different colors that you covered with wax as you worked on the egg.  I would say that it took us about two hours, start to finish, to each make one egg.  The designs are very intricate and you are constantly melting the wax in your stylus over a candle.  At the end, you burn all the wax off the egg to reveal a gorgeous pattern.  If you're interested in making your own Pysanky, the supplies can be purchased in NYC at a store called Surma in the East Village.  It was really fun and even though my mom and I are not artistically gifted, we created beautiful eggs and had fun doing it. 



Marilyn, Mia, Mom, and Erika hard at work



Erika's first Pysanka



Erika, Marilyn, Mom, and Me Pysankying



Pysanka

Burning off the wax to reveal the colors underneath

One of Mia's beautiful Pysanka

 Happy Easter!

  

Hello Blackbird Hello Starling

 Winter's Over Be My Darling!

Rocco figuring out how to carry a 4ft stick

Erika, Pauly, and Rocco

Some lovin'

Some more lovin'

My sweet Paulywog

It's a beautiful day in NYC

Fast friends

Let Us Recap

According the the little countdown on Sophie's page, she just turned 9 months old!  I can't believe it for two reasons.  1) She is so small!  At 45 pounds, she is currently nestled comfortably in my lap.  Shouldn't she have turned into that gigantic bruiser dog we all expected when she was a baby?  2) She is so immature!  She doesn't know nearly as much as most dogs her age, something we worked really hard on for the past 2 weeks.  Socially, she thinks she's a little puppy and had no problem taking on a mastiff AND a husky (at the same time!) at the dog park this week.  Only a crazy puppy with delusions of grandeur would engage 6 times her body weight in a wrestling match. 

For the past two weeks, my dog focus has been all Sophie all the time.  Poor Pauly has been entrusted to my parents and brother, and I haven't even seen him in a whole week!  I miss that easy-going, lazy old man.  I have enjoyed my 2 straight weeks with Sophie because I usually share responsibility for her with my parents.  She is in NYC with me and Pauly on Mondays and Tuesdays, and then on Long Island with my parents for the rest of the week.  I think it is confusing for her to live in two different homes and to answer to three different people.  She has really responded well to consistency and having one handler.  It has also given me an opportunity to bond with her, something I never really did because there was always her Pauly or competing humans around.  She learned a lot in the past 2 weeks.  She's walking with a looser leash, not jumping on people when they pet her, not running up to every single dog on the street, and trusting me more in "scary" situations like stairs or heights.  I'm proud of her, but there's still a lot more work to be done before she's ready to go in for formal training in 3 months. 

In other news, I believe my birthday festivities have finally come to an end.  Mind you, my actual birthday was almost 3 months ago.  My best friend, Erika, seriously prolonged the festivities.  2 months after my birthday, she made me this amazing chocolate raspberry (my fave) cake.

Yes, this tasted as good as it looks.

For my birthday present, she got me tickets to see the Propeller all male Shakespeare troop perform A Comedy of Errors at BAM.  Let me just say, the show was phenomenal.  It was the perfect combination of staying true to Shakespeare and the language while being accessible to a broad audience.  Complete with a sombrero and soccer jersey clad chorus, a naked man running across stage with a sparkler in his arse, and Shakespeare's witty and crass humor.  It was SO.MUCH.FUN.  And before the theatre, she made Aditi, Jay, and I a feast!

Salad, baguette, and fresh tricolor fettucine from Little Italy with sundried tomato and mushroom cream sauce

Slaving away in my kitchen

Jay visited for a few hours and fell asleep on the kitchen floor with Sophie

Yum!

I know this post is super long, but it's probably the only one you're getting for awhile.  Between now and Thursday, Pauly and I have pet therapy scheduled at the hospital, I have to go to Connecticut for an all day job interview, I am going to see the Daily Show, and I need to stay on top of my classes.  I also think I'm getting sick.

"What?  You were writing a super long blog post and I am bored with all my toys and missing my brother.  I see no problem with flipping the water bowl and running around the apartment with it."

I need to go clean up.

Truthiness, Foodiness, and Sleepyness

Looking pissed because I'm making them take this picture

To celebrate my dear friend Kristen's birthday, I got tickets for all of us to go to a taping of the Colbert Report last night.  It was so much fun!  I've never been to a taping before and I was excited but also worried that it would be really tedious and long with lots of retakes and delays.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Colbert does almost no retakes and being in the audience is like seeing exactly what's on tv, only funnier and more fun.  The studio was smaller than it seems on tv, but not as small as I'd anticipated based on my one in-studio experience touring TRL as a pre-teen.  Colbert did a Q&A session before the show began and he is actually a charming, kind man when he's "out of character".  When it comes time to get into Colbert Report Stephen, he does crazy face exercises and molds himself in the sarcastic, funny, asshole comedian we know and love.  His face stretches reminded me a bit of Jim Carey in The Mask for some odd reason.

The White Ticket

Some of us got the best seats in the house because the security guard thought Christina was a hotty and gave us a special "white ticket" to sit up front. I knew it was worth feeling ugly to keep her around!  Good thing she doesn't read my blog, she'd be mortified to see this published.

After Colbert was over, we walked a few blocks to Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner Center where we indulged in delicious Thomas Keller delicacies.  So tasty and a perfect ending to a Monday night celebration. 

Kristen's favorite dessert, birthday style

This morning, at the crack of dawn (ok, not really, but 7:30 is super early!), I took the dog I mentioned in my previous post to the airport where he was being picked up by the girl who raised him.  She was supposed to arrive at midnight last night, but the flights got canceled (which was a relief for me not to have to go pick her up at LGA after the birthday festivities).  I was surprised by two things: 1. She didn't cry and 2. I did.  Seeing them greet each other actually brought tears to my eyes because it was both so happy and so bittersweet (I hate that word and now I've used it twice.  I'd like to request a synonym please.) because we know they only have a short time left together. 

Alas, I am exhausted.  How exhausted?  Well, for the first time in our 7-year relationship, I actually completely forgot to call Jay last night.  I didn't even realize until he called this morning to make sure I was still alive.  I will use today to get my life back on track (and come up with a topic for my epi paper and go to a meeting at school and walk Pauly and Sophie and clean my apartment and go to sleep at 8pm).

Sophie is exhausted too