sausage, mushroom, monterrey

It's the weekend. Time for me to blog about pizza. Pizza so round...symbolic of wholeness, unity, celebration, inclusion, life.  Pizza- a relaxing, reuniting, togetherness ritual

Thanks to Pizza Pie Cafe Express for the text special.  I got two, two or three topping pizzas for five dollars each. Also picked up a cheese for Bethany and a pepperoni for Grant.

Here's the Canadian bacon and pineapple....that's for Mary.

 Friday evening I dropped Ben off at a friend's house down by the university, then drove over to PPC express.

I ordered, then sat down on the bench to wait...self-toasting by the big silver ovens, relaxing to the vibrations of the slow moving conveyor belts, breathing in the cheesy warmth.. the wonder of the so savorable pepperoni and the sugary-tang surprise of PPC's speciality, raspberry desert pizza..  The guy handed me my four hot boxes. I could smell the layers...the salty and sweet of one, the  milkiness of another...and on top, I was sure, was my favorite: the sausage, mushroom, and red onion.

Smells, so closely linked to memories, and sausage pizza, in particular, remind me of my high school summers at Sonny's Pizza.  I thought about pizza all the time then.  I thought about people in terms of pizza...tried to size them up by way of veggies or no, thick or thin, medium or large, whole or by the slice.

  I loved browsing in the paper goods closet. I guess I'm easily fascinated, because I'd find myself daydreaming about the large boxes of straws, napkins, Styrofoam cups. Loving the abundance, the preparedness, the suppliedness of it, I had a vision of myself running my own pizza place with my future family, in some other small coastal town, driving an old green pick-up...maybe like an '82.

Some place like Monterrey.  My senior year Mr. Biggle, one of my best teachers, took the physics and chemistry upperclassmen up to the physics museum in San Fransisco and the Monterrey Bay aquarium.  I'm grateful for that memory...though sometimes I forget to think about it.  So in Monterrey, there was a little pizza place, never knew the name, maybe that's the prototype of that particular fantasy.

Here's the sausage...spicey, mushrooms...earthy, generous in presence, and red onions...colorful and caramelized... pizza.

Last week was one of the quickest I can remember. Update on the exercise goal: followed up well with Sam, but had to give myself an okay to do some homemade yoga moves right before bed clause, because I just couldn't take the time to go out. I really wanted to make some progress in a few other areas of my life.

Like getting the house in order for one.  The kid consensus was: Monday was maybe the worst holiday on record.  All we did was clean.  I'm not really sure we had much to show for it at the end of the day, nothing picture worthy.

We ended MLK day with a small celebration, at least.  Ben talked me in to letting them use up our two gingerbread house kits .It wasn't like I'd been saving them for Valentine's...so I agreed... also hoping to gain back some bit of popularity.

This house wouldn't stand on it's own so we had to do a little engineering.  We're not perfectionists, as you can see.  It's all about snitching for most of us.

Ben is our artist.

Here's a midweek sunset that Sam photographed.

So Friday night, with Ben and Kyle off with friends, and Sam at a student leadership activity all night, and Bethany at a Irish Dance performance with Granddad and Judith, there was a new dynamic. Olivia grinned from ear to ear to learn that she was the oldest kid at scripture time.  Grandma Martha was over to share in our pizza night and catch up on some laundry. She introduced me to her favorite soap opera from Mexico, as no one had clout enough to stop the adults from choosing the programming, for a change. I happened upon the very episode where the priest learns he has an eighteen year old daughter.  Good thing it was in Spanish.

Saturday morning I was back to another unapologetic day of only cleaning.  First day of feeling like I'd made a difference.  Remember the pantry?  Looks better now.

I love the zen of empty shelves.

The laundry room is stabilizing. It almost makes me feel functional.

Made the kids help me till the little flower bed in front of the house, since the temperature was above freezing. Maybe I'll get the bulbs in the ground this week.  The basement is still a disaster.

Sarra per un altra volta.