back up blog

Look. This is gross, and I know it, and I’m sorry I even told you already BUT do you know what? Once you get past the gross, it’s actually kinda funny. BUT yes, I am still single and no, I no longer question myself why that might be so. BUT I will continue to say poop and vagina on the daily. I'm kinda built that way.  There was a boy. Well, a man actually. DETAILS. We made plans. Drinks were to be had, conversation to be made, flirting to be undertaken. Totally normal. BUT. BUT. BUT. The day before our date I found out that Rome was staging another transport strike. The metro and bus was to run between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. only. I needed the bus to get home. It would take three days to walk. OH NO! I thought, when I found out, I’LL HAVE TO CANCEL. And my friend was all, JUST STAY AT HIS and I was like, WELL I KIND OF GUESSED IT WOULD GO THAT WAY BUT I CAN’T RELY ON IT and she was all YOU’VE FAILED IF YOU DON’T SCREW HIM and I was all IT’S A SCHOOL NIGHT and in the end I decided that ...

There was a moment yesterday day when I had the most pertinent realisation. I was in a classroom playing a verb game with an eight-year-old, whereby he yelled out doing words and I actioned them. As I jumped and I rolled and I lay and I sneezed, I suddenly grabbed on to my chest, took a deep breath and thought, wow. My tits are throbbing. Thing is, if you google 'Why are my boobs sore?' (You know. IN THEORY. I most certainly have not spent the past twenty minutes doing such a thing.) the answers are menopause, pregnancy, or chat room dialogue after chat room dialogue of many other women with the same problem who don't have any answers, they just need to talk about their feelings. Isn't that what blogging is for? After the lesson, even the slightest wobble or jiggle was troublesome, and as I navigated the steps between the two levels of the building where I work I had to hold the puppies just to ease the aching. Which is great when the attractive 28 year-old student who ...

The whole blogging everyday thing sort of fell by the wayside since I got paid. I'm not sorry. I drank my wages, and have spent the past three days in a gutter someplace rising only to indulge in more terrible behaviour that I can't write about here. Look. What I do with a llama and a fine-tooth comb is my business, OKAY INTERNET? What I can tell you is that any recent debauched experiences probably come from watching most of the most recent season of True Blood this week. To my roommate I was all like BUT ALL OF THAT VAMPIRE SEX MAKES ME TOTALLY HARD and he was like, UH-HUH and I was all, SO I MIGHT NEED YOU TO GIVE ME SOME ALONE TIME FOR LIKE, A MINUTE AND HALF WHEN I'M DONE and he was all EWWW LAURA YOU ARE SO GROSS and I just thought WHAT? I'M A WOMAN. I HAVE NEEDS. Also: if there was ever a sexier effin' opening credit song written in the whole entire universe then I must know it and I must know it right now. Related: I once told somebody I was seeing that I ...

My pregnant friend just text me: "This is random, but I have two packets of Gorgonzola that don't expire until December, do you want them? I'm not allowed to eat them and I hate wasting food." I mean really, what is the question? Blue cheese gnocchi for dinner, Internet! AND yesterday I got paid a whole day early. As much fun as making a euro last 7 days was YOU'D BEST BELIEVE I'M HEADING OUT THE DOOR EARLY TODAY because I've got me some chocolate brownies to buy. Today falls under the category of AMAZEBALLS and I'm not even dressed yet. I love it when that happens. Also: this whole food obsession thing is clearly getting ridiculous now. I think it is because my diet is the same EVERY SINGLE DAY, because I don't like to think too hard, because my creativity is mostly limited to the application of the word fuck as noun, adjective, verb, adverb, possessive adjective, agent noun, noun phrase... etcetera. And yes, that's a skill I list on LinkedI...

So of course the major thing on the list A Gazillion Reasons Why Rome Can Suck A Bag Of Dicks is that although all of the gnocchi and sauces and Nutella and arancini  OHMYGOD THE ARANCINI are all well and good, a girl struggles to find the necessary to make a simple jacket potato. Or treacle sponge and custard. Or fish pie. Or nachos with sour cream and refried beans and guacamole. I'm just going to go on ahead and change the name of this website to fatbitch.com (TIP: don't type that into your web browser at work.) When I lived in the States I didn't have this overwhelming desire to cross oceans and rivers and mountains and cities to return home for a weekend just to eat stuff I miss. And I absolutely did not write lists of Eating Stuff I Miss on the bus. But then again, I was probably too busy getting confused over the nickels and dimes and quarters. I'd pay for everything with bills and save the shrapnel for the self-service checkout at Walmart where periodically I...

Last night I threw an empty water bottle at my roommate's head. I'm not proud. Also: I just asked if he was still here, and he was all BITCH I PAYS HALF THE RENT, I IS GONNA TAKE MY TIME and I was all like uh-huh, but could you take your time QUICKER and he's like, do you know what? fuck you, and now he is cross at me for all the things. As I sit here at my desk in my cable-knit cardigan looking out over a Roman street, and he bugs me to check his shirt collar for a day at the law office, this must totally be what suburban married hell feels like. Memo to self: avoid suburban married hell. Also: Can we address the fact that I just asked him to take the rubbish with him on his way out and he replied that he wasn't allowed and I said HUH?And he told me that last time he tried to take out trash in the day our housemate stopped him because it isn't allowed in Rome to which I say REALLY. REALLY ROME. It might fester, they worry. BEST KEEP IT GOING ROTTEN IN MY APARTMENT ...

Dear the  Fit Grey-Haired Man I See in   la Feltrinelli  Most Days, Hey! Wassup? So urm , like , I was totally wondering if you were, you know , urm , checking me out the other day? Because it totes felt like you were. And you see, goshthisissoembarrassing , if you were, I just wanted to say that, well, HAHAHAHA! I’ve been checking you out too. Well. That and those warm croissants they serve up really do make my mouth water like that. Fat bitch. I wanted to tell you that I really like your hair. It kinda looks like you dye it grey on purpose. If you do then that’s really cool. If you don’t then I totes don’t mind- grey hair on younger men is attractive. Makes you look distinguished. You don’t look like, you know, OLD or anything. Because you must be like what, 34? 35? That’s a great age. Let me just tell you that I really like your age. And your shoes. Are they new? Last week when I was here that old couple who I spoke Italian to replied back to me in English. I could tel...

My pet name for Mama is FAT BITCH. It's funny because she is half my size, forever aware of her food intake, and bullying people for being skinny is total LOLs. OHMYGODI'MKIDDING. And so one evening in front of the TV, when she asked Dad to get her half a glass of water and an ibroprofen, I turned to her and christened her Fat Bitch because I mean, gluttonous much? The calories on those headache pills are a lifetime on the hips Ms. One-Way Ticket to The Third Circle Of Hell. In other news: anorexic jokes aren't funny. Also: this is not to be confused with Fat Pat, under which she is saved in my phone. It's an EastEnders thing. Mama laughed down the Skype-cam . You know how we use Fat Bitch? she said and I was all, remember when you gave me my graduation card and actually called me 1st Class Bitch? And she was like, uh-huh yeah but that doesn't help my story right now LAURA. Sorry, Mama. Where were we? Fat Bitch. Okay. Go. Well, they use the naughty NAUGHTY word wit...

You know that I'm all about breakfast, lunch, dinner, elevenses, supper, and midnight snacks, right? Like, to the point where today I didn't actually rise to my hangover until gone noon, and that reduces my time to eat today by approximately five hours so I'm pretty much going to be chain-eating right up until I go back to bed so I can catch up with myself. I'm totally taking one for the team. If by the team we mean MY THIGHS THAT CHAFE WHEN I JOG. But at least I'm jogging . I actually have palpable, tangible, FITS of excitement complete with singing out-loud and skipping and kissing-strangers-on-the-mouth-but-without-tongues-because-that's-just-weird when I get to go to the supermarket. You want to spend Saturday afternoon on Via Del Corso window-shopping in Zara? I want to stand in the aisles of M.A. Supermercarti comparing pasta sauce. I came to the ( alleged ) cultural capital of the world to stand beneath tube lighting in my free time. The supermarket is ...

Right now I'm dating as many women as I am men. If by dating you understand I mean not really,  because being paid to sit in a room with a stranger to correct their pronunciation of the 'th' sound isn't an actual date. Also, remember THE WELTS! THE UGLY RED WELTS! My job is to date. Kind of. This is the bit where I explain the awesomeness of my work through its variedness. Oh! There I go again, making up words like I'm godamn Billy Shaksepeare. Except I can't spell Shakepseare. Shakspear. SHAKESPEARE. There we go. I fanny about with registers and lesson plans and student books and AMIN-Y STUFF for two hours of my day, teach a couple of classes of kids for a couple more because that is, after all, what I'm actually employed to do , and then normally I have a kiddie conversation class one-on-one and finish my (six hour! SIX. AND THIS IS A FULL-TIME CONTRACT!) day off by heading upstairs to the grown-up department for a Big Person Class. People that have enough...

The first thing I thought of when I woke up this morning was lunch. That's a pretty normal thing for me. Got nothing in? GO BACK TO SLEEP. Know that you got paid yesterday and so can buy a vitamin sandwich with a side of awesome from the health food store just around the corner from work? I probably slept there, and I probably enjoyed that sandwich with morning breath and wearing yesterday's underwear because I wanted to make sure I was early enough for the bread to still be warm and I'm probably dribbling aubergine juice down my chin as I type this and NOMNOMNOM. This morning my first thought was, THE PASTA! Legit panic. It suddenly occurred to me that I had totally forgotten to prepare lunch for myself last night, and right now I totally have to make my own lunch EVERY. SODDING. DAY. for the sake of my face. October was pretty horrific in terms of learning not to take Work Shit home with me and thus making it into Can't-Sleep-For-Thinking-About-It Shit, or If-I-Close...

I'm glad we agreed to give this another try, Internet. Shall we celebrate by making out with tongues like, everyday ? I'm all about forgiveness, you see. And especially because if I'm honest, many of the most important relationships in my life aren't really working out right now, so it's essential to me that I have you. That bitch Rome? My relationship with her is total balls. And look, I KNOW. Skyping Calum the other day I made a comment about (SH)Italy and he screamed BUT WHO SAYS THAT ABOUT ROME? and I was like IT'S A THIRD-WORLD COUNTRY PARADING AS A CULTURAL MECCA AND THAT IS TOTALLY FALSE ADVERTISING and he was all BUT YOU SAID YOU SEE THE COLLOSSEUM EVERYDAY and I was all THE COLLOSSEUM CAN SUCK A BAG OF DICKS. It's exhausting. My second manuscript is going to be called 'Dear Rome: Screw You' and feature essays on the nature of its backward technologies and refusal to join the 21st century with working washing machines, dryers, wifi and publi...

'I said no to a party,' I bemoaned. 'You said no to a party?' she replied. 'Uh-huh. Straight out said no. Who says no to a party? 'You do.' 'Well I know. But I don't want to be the person that says no to a party.' 'That's a bit of a condundrum then.' And you see, the thing is this. I'm 25. I just graduated . I have two student overdrafts yet to be paid off and so my pay check isn't my own. I work as a conversation teacher and move classrooms on an hourly basis. I SHARE A BEDROOM . I didn't want a party because the apartment is structured so that our room would once have been the main living space. So it's huge. Party huge. Thing is, if we opened up our apartment for a party we'd have to use our room, and ultimately there would then be people in my bedroom which means in just a short hop, skip and jump there'd be people on my bed. And that bed? IT IS THE ONLY THING IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE UNIVERSE THAT BELONGS ONLY ...