An Explosive Birthday

The big 50 has arrived and rightfully so I thought to celebrate with a party.

As we all know, there is no party without decorations. And so for two weeks, boxes of different shapes and sizes kept arriving. 

I admit it, I might have let myself be carried away, but all those beautiful party ideas on Pinterest are hard to resist, and if you want your house and garden to look exactly like those you saw on the web, you need the right decorations. 

Thankfully the traveling husband was traveling and wasn’t there for my shopping spree, even if he indeed realized I had one, when he came home, the night before the party, and found the kitchen table covered in paper tassels and pompoms and the sitting room floor with balloons. 

I think he was tempted to say something at first, but one look at me and he didn’t.

I had spent the last two days fighting with incomprehensible instructions to make fluffy tassels and pompoms out of flat strips of paper, I had blown dozens of balloons, and I had just realized the final result of all my efforts was never gonna be even remotely close to the beautiful pictures I had seen on Pinterest. If the traveling husband wanted to make his point it would have been at his own risk, and he knew it.

Fortunately, after a good night sleep, there was only space for the great excitement for the party and so, here I am , happily hanging the balloons, decorating the gazebo, setting the tables, etc etc.

All is ready and, I can quite proudly say, looks pretty nice, not Pinterest perfect but nice enough for me, till….: Bang Bang Bang! The wind had risen and the outdoor balloons had popped one after the other and those who didn’t had flown away.

We still have a bit of time before the guests start to arrive, young and fast-working lungs are needed. Daughter number one and daughter number two are slaving away blowing more balloons while I check all the other decorations are well secured.

When the party is over, I let the surviving outdoor balloons fly away and proceed to free the one in the house till……:Bang Bang Bang! I am still not sure what had happened there but when I went to remove the two balloons hung on the floor lamp in the kitchen, the lampshade exploded, on my face. 

 While the balloons are miraculously still hanging, shreds of glass are all over the kitchen floor and I, besides for once managing not to cut myself, wonder if I might have developed a new terrifyingly destructive superpower. Yet not sure how it happened, a week later, while still hoovering pieces of paper confetti and glass, I still keep my glaze down when close to fragile surfaces because, as they say : better safe than sorry.

Bang Bang, that was indeed an explosive birthday party!!!!

. 

https://www.instagram.com/sabina_gabriellicarrara?igsh=MWlyc2x5eWo5c2xsZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

What’s Your Super Power

After four months, three courses of antibiotics, two of steroids, and three of antihistamines, I feel like a bionic woman but, unfortunately, my nose is still runny, the bone on my jaw is still sore and the left side of my face still slightly swollen.
At this stage, I kind of made peace with the puffy side of my face that, by the way, I realized helps conceal wrinkles. My doctor didn’t, and sent me instead for an MRI; just in case we are dealing with something else rather than a very nasty and stubborn rhino-sinus.
It comes the day of the MRI and the traveling husband (who had one on his hips a few months earlier) warned me: “You will see, it a super annoying experience. The music to conceal the noise is awful and no matter how much you try is impossible to stay all that time still as they want you to.”
As usual, I willingly ignore his blunt sense of reality and face my destiny. Well, once again the traveling husband was right, the MRI was indeed an experience or, in my case specifically, I should say A REVELATION.

Yess, the MRI revealed my superpower: I am a sleeper, just not like Minnie Driver in that movie from the ’90s. I am an actual SLEEPER, in the sense that I can sleep….everywhere and anyhow.

To be completely honest, I already suspected to have this incredible superpower when I slept through the attempted robbery at my next-door neighbor’s with my neighbor shouting at the intruder from the window and the consequent arrival of the guard’s patrol with the sirens at full volume. Did I mention their alarm went off too?
Also over the years, it became common knowledge that I am the worst travel companion ever because it takes me an average of 5 to 10 minutes to fall asleep when on a means of transport, regardless it is a car, a boat, a bus, the train or a plane.
Still, you need to be sure of your superpower before going around showing off your gift. The last thing you want is to look presumptuous but, let’s face it, falling asleep, twice, during a brain and face MRI, requires some skill that not everybody has.
So, here I go into the tube, all geared up for the occasion, hospital scrub, big headphones blasting pop hits from the 90s, and the bell in my hand to call the nurse in case of panic.
I close my eyes , as suggested by the nurse, breathe in and out, and after an undefined time, I hear the nurse screaming in the headphones: “Is everything ok, ?You are very still? all good there?”
“Yes, “I simply answer, slightly puzzled as I thought I was supposed to be still and quiet.
“Remember you just have to squeeze the bell if feeling uncomfortable.” She then added and sent me back in.
I close my eyes, again, I breathe in and breathe out, again, and….next thing I remember is the nurse talking to me:
“Ok, we are done.
“Already? I thought it was supposed to last 40 minutes?” I replied.
“It did,” the nurse said “and you have been very good. As still as a stone.”
“I would say more as still as a sleeper!” I wink at the nurse.

Have you a great week and do not forget to embrace your superpower…..whatever it is😉

https://www.instagram.com/sabina_gabriellicarrara?igsh=MWlyc2x5eWo5c2xsZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

Happy (that) Easter (is over)

Sorry for last week’s radio silence but the spring break had proven to be far far more engaging than expected, hoped, and planned.
It turned out that my darling daughters had chosen my two weeks of chilling and relaxing to blossom into social animals whose engagements, of course, never collided in time and place but, always required a lift by their mother.
(At least during school days, the drives have a fixed schedule!!!)
On top of that, the traveling husband was off, not the entire two weeks, even if it felt like that ; still five days, 24/7 around the house, and, totally useless.
Two weeks without a single second of golden solitude ahead of me.
My only consolation was that Easter is the only time of the year when you have a free pass for comforting food. You can have as much guilt-free chocolate as you want because it’s easter, right?
So here I am, dressing the table for Easter lunch, carefully and lovely placing in front of everyone their chocolate easter egg and, being the optimist that I am, hoping that one would materialize in front of me too.
Unfortunately, the members of my family are creatures of habit and even this year, like all the previous ones, nobody bought me an easter egg.
“You always say you have to drop weight and want to cut on sugars…”They reply to my yearly complaints. “And you really thought I meant it?” I asked back, but I didn’t wait for their response: I know they didn’t. And they know I know.
It is kind of our easter tradition by now. A tradition I still hope they might break one year or the other.
Well, this year, tired of waiting and hoping, I did, and…. oh boy their faces, when at the end of the lunch after they had finished avidly devouring their chocolate eggs I slammed on the table a bag with 8 big bars of pure Swiss chocolate that my friend Fernando,who now lives in Switzerland, gave me as a thank-you token for helping him rent his flat in Dublin.

Bang, now you sack it up, my darling ungrateful bunch!!!!

Indeed at times, being a good person and a good friend, pays more than being a good caring mother and wife.

Eventually back to BAU now, to our fixed routine and, most of all, to those few days a week when the house is all for myself, and the dogs, of course, who, I am sure, they would buy me a chocolate egg if they only could.

Have you all a joyful week💕

https://www.instagram.com/sabina_gabriellicarrara?igsh=MWlyc2x5eWo5c2xsZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

Smart Home Danger

When a few months ago I decided to opt for a smart home I didnt mean to go for one of those ultra-technological homes where you can remotely switch on and off every possible kind of appliance from your phone. I simply wanted a teenager-proof smart house. Or, to be more precise, teenager-proof smart bedrooms where their ridiculous amount of paraphernalia could be stored at certain standards of human hygiene and tidiness because their so-called storing system doesn’t work and despite me, having at regular intervals big throw everything away days, staff kept piling up. Except now they have a system to keep it out of my sight. 

A simple efficient system that I discovered the hard way.

The noise the hoover started to make one day when cleaning under their beds left no doubt. There was a secret world under there. That was their secret system:  stacking everything under their bed and I, the evil queen of cleaning and tidying, was now left with two options:

1-Suck it up and leave it pretending I saw nothing;

2-Actually suck it up …with the hoover.

Now, valuing the good health of my Dyson and also acknowledging the unbalance between the space and the stuff they collect(and the word stuff is purposely used because calling the majority of what you can find in their things/object is an insult to anything rightfully falling in those categories), I was inspired to go smart.

I piled up all their junk in the middle of their rooms, made a selection, filled two big bin bags and went to buy 4 big under-the-bed drawers.

Highly satisfied with my smart choice I carefully stored their things in them and voila’, order and hygene were restored.

It took them a while to realise something had changed in their rooms , (and that says it all about the value and use of what they hoard in there ) but they agreed with me that the under the bed drawers were the best solution for both parties, only for different reasons, as I soon found out.

The formation of grey material, commonly called dust, that I was finding under the drawers, told me immediately that the thought of moving them, when it was their turn to clean,didn’t even even cross my darling daughters ‘s mind. But that was not the issue. The issue was that they got smart too, and discovered the potentiality of the drawers that became their space to keep hoarding, but conveniently unnoticed. Or so they thought, because, as we all know, among a mother’s superpowers, there are also eyes behind her head and an extremely alert sense for details like pieces of unidentified objects sticking out the drawers so over-cramped that couldn’t actually fit under the bed properly anymore, and even if they could, someone was not bothered to do it.

Still believing in my smart home idea, I once again took the matter into my own hands. I took out the drawers, that were now absurdly heavy, accurately clean them and threw away their overflowing content before replace them under the beds.

Come the last of them I dropped it…on my feet!!!! Not even if I took aim at them I could hit them so perfectly. The pain was excruciatingly acute. I fell on my knee unable to breathe and then I eventually screamed.

 Five minutes later I was still crouched down mumbling and cursing the bloody drawer trying to see if I could move my feet. I could. Nothing was broken but I managed to smash the veins, and cut my skin that was now bleeding all over the white carpet.

Great, more to clean!!!!

I clumsily made it downstairs and sellotaped a pack of frozen peas around each foot hoping to reduce the swelling and help with the pain and then hooped back upstairs to finish what I started desperate to blame someone rather than myself. But I really couldn’t. Could I?!

The drawers were my smart idea, I just had to to accept that sometimes being too smart can play against you……but, at the end of the day, you have to choose the lesser evil right? And, maybe, when it comes to teenagers, just lower your hygiene standards too.

Five days later, the swelling is gone, the bruise is now turning from black to greenish, and the cuts are scabbed and I am still calling out all the angels and demons every time I have to slip into a pair of shoes.

Have a great week.

https://www.instagram.com/sabina_gabriellicarrara?igsh=MWlyc2x5eWo5c2xsZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

The Game

Watching a six nations game live is always a great experience but being there for the last game and the one crowning your team champion was a completely different experience and even more so being the game late in the afternoon so that we stayed out to celebrate at night.

No need to mention that, of course, we regretted it the following morning. God bless whoever invented Alka-Seltzer!!

Anyway, back to the game, what made this game quite an experience t was also the guy sitting beside me.

A normal block, there with his wife. Nothing wrong with either of them, at first sight. A happy supporting couple sipping their pint waiting for the match to start. More or less like us.

As they say, things are not always as they look, and, in fact, with the kickoff, the guy suddenly transforms himself into the Mister Mastermind Game. He began to comment on every action, calling all the players by name, and I mean by their first name. “What the heck man, did you know them all personally?” I wonder..

Then he started adding to the commentary his suggestions .”Wow, why he is not this guy sitting on Ireland’s bench instead of Andy Farrel, who, obviously has none of his knowledge and experience?” I think…

The wife was quiet, and I couldn’t help feeling bad for her thinking that if he was that annoying and loud in public I could not imagine how he could be in the comfort of his own sitting room. But then started to be as annoying as him. She was not suggesting strategies, this was obviously his job, but she was feeding his ego by loudly agreeing to his delusional yelling after the players and the coach bad choices.

Well, what can I say, “Birds of a feather, flock together. Right? When he had finished his second pint, he stopped drinking because he needed a clear head to dive further into his role of coach in the second and so he used the break between the first and the second half of the match to amend the game scheme he has carefully draw in a piece of paper: Andy Farell, your days are over!

At that point I didnt know if I was more annoyed, entertained, or just sad…for him and his poor wife!

Come the second half he got even more engaged and loud to the point that the lady sitting in front of him turned back and, for a split second, I thought that was it! She, like most of the people around him, had enough and she was going to make it clear. She didn’t!!! On the contrary, she started chatting up with him and so now it was the two of them calling on each other, supporting each other, exchanging suggestions that then one, or the other , was shouting at the players.

At that point, I didn’t know if I wanted Ireland to win to eventually shup Mister Mastermind Game up, or to lose, only for the satisfaction of annoying him. 

In the meanwhile, the lady in front’s husband, was throwing apologetic gazes at everyone around her every time she jumped and shouted in unison with her new best friend whose wife, instead, was only gazing at her husband making extremely clear that his little friendship with another woman was not welcomed.

82 minutes later, Ireland had won, and after throwing his notes in the air, Mister Mastermind Game and his new lady friend hugged in full excitement. Something the wife clearly didn’t approve and, for a moment, I hoped our afternoon could end with a real Irish housewives catfight. Unfortunately, the lady in the front’s husband dragged her away in a hurry to reach the toilet before everyone else did.

So in a hurry that he didn’t realised he had dropped his cell phone. Now, guess who found it and offered to go bring it back? Yes exactly, Mister Mastermind Game, except his wife snatched it off his hand and handed it to me, “She can go, she is closer.”

Woman to woman, I didn’t dare to say no; even if what I actually wanted to say to her was that having some other woman potentially stealing that type of man from her was just a blessing.

 When I eventually spotted the lady in front in the crowd outside the loo, waiting for her husband, and I gave her the phone, she hugged me too. 

It turned out she was a genuine hugger. May be I should have gone back and tell Mister Mastermind Game’s wife that there was no threat whatever over her marriage but, why deny him the pain of spending the rest of the evening listening at his wife rant? After all he spoiled my game and we all know that karma is a b…h when you are a b…h!😉

Happy Sunday, have a great week ahead and, to my Irish friends, Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.☘️

https://www.instagram.com/sabina_gabriellicarrara?igsh=MWlyc2x5eWo5c2xsZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

Carb Your Enthusiasm

Over the years I learned not to be anxious, especially when it comes to things that are out of my control. At the end of the day, there is nothing I can do about it so, why bother?!

Things normally work out themselves. If something is meant to be it will be and, if it’s not, it won’t. No matter what we do or don’t about it.

I know it sounds a bit simplistic, but as older I get the more I like it simple. Also, I experienced this first hand to be true. Of course, this wise realization came a long way, and there was indeed a time when I swore that if someone told me one more time that if it were meant to be it would have happened, I would murder them with my own bare hands. That is also why I carefully choose who to give my little wisdom pills about this subject: no one under the age of 35 who either has just been dumped by their partner or it on a house auction!

Now, in this simple happy relaxed bubble of mine, the problem is my body that, sometimes, still falls into old habits and betrays some nervousness behind my proverbial enthusiasm and excitement.

For instance last summer, 2 days before leaving for our so long awaited American holiday, I woke up with half of my face swollen and a nose so sore that only looking at it was painful. Chronic sinus aggravated by nasal polyps! Seriously????? Two days before leaving???? Is this how we react to too much excitement here? Apparently yes! !!

Well, there were some signs in the previous weeks but nothing that could not be happily ignored according to me, my doctor still has a different opinion. The very same doctor who scrubbed the infected skin off my burned arm the day before leaving for an other holiday and still doesn’t believe in the psychological factor. Unbelievable!. Hopefully, he will this time when looking at my bloody eye and watermelon jaw size.

Wondering what happened? 

Two weeks ago my nose started to hurt, and showing more or less the same symptoms as last summer so I immediately started to use the leftover medication I  still had in the house,  ignoring the fact that was out of date. Worst case scenario it will be less effective…the traveling husband said.

Less effective indeed, in fact, on the Friday night all the veins in my left eye burst, and the pain on the face’s bones got quite acute.

Seriously? The night before our dear friends were coming for a long weekend? It had happened again,  too much excitement!!!!

Nothing I could do about it, if not try to relax, have a long beauty sleep, and ignore my body’s attempt to rebel against my mental wisdom and lack of anxiety.

The following morning the symptoms were all still there but nothing I could not conceal with some makeup and my good mood was untouched.

“My dear body, you are not going to spoil it for me. I won’t let you!” And I didn’t,  not even the following morning when my eye was injected with blood all over, the left side of my face double the size of the other and my guests finally admitted they had noticed something was wrong even the previous day.

Determined to not let the old unwise me to win,  I openly confronted it and loudly said I would call the doctor first thing on Monday morning, and…..hear hear, the good old placebo effect kicked in.

“I tricked you rebellious body of mine!!!!!!”

P.S

All this to excuse me from skipping last week’s post, but I spent 10 days snoozing on the couch dosed up in antibiotics and steroids. Sometimes the placebo effect is just a placebo effect 🙄

https://www.instagram.com/sabina_gabriellicarrara?igsh=MWlyc2x5eWo5c2xsZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

Freaky Friday

There was a time when I used to hate midterm school holidays.

As you can guess that time was when the kids were small …an entire week, 24/7 with your kids; no breaks except when sleeping, rarely at the same time. And then there were other people’s kids let running like lunatics where, on normal civil days, my dogs were let running like lunatics, probably with the same intent: wearing them out.

But now things are different. Now I love midterms. No, to be exact, I crave midterms. An entire week at slow pace with no school runs, no activities, and no alarm clock basting my ears in the morning before I can bast the girls ears shouting they are late.

There is still of course the annoying presence of other people’s youg kids invading the dogs’ space but I try to be understanding…after all, we have all been there.

This February midterm was indeed one of the best, at least the first half. Daughter number one, aka grumpy pants junior, was away skiing, the traveling husband, aka grumpy pants senior, was traveling, and so it was just me and daughter number two free to have cakes for lunch while knitting away in front of a good old-fashioned horror movie: Heaven.

Then San Valentine’s Day comes and the husband is back. No, he did not return from his business trip for that, it was already planned, but he brought me a big chocolate heart. 

“I picked the one I would never choose for myself, thinking that was instead what you would have liked,” he said after seeing my slightly puzzled face when I realised  that pink was its actual color, not just the paper it was wrapped in.

Milk strawberry chocolate. Not something I would have picked myself either, to be honest, but I appreciated the gesture and showed it eating it all that same evening. Mission accomplished and the traveling husband went to bed happy and deeply satisfied with his choice. Less happy was instead my stomach the next day, but nothing that a couple of spoons of Andrews couldn’t fix. After all, it was chocolate, not sugar fruit jelly, (see previous post, ” no country for old jelly”).

As it happens to everything too nice, the week came to its end and by Friday I could say bye-bye to slow pacing around. The gardener, the builder, and the plumber decided to come to do those jobs I called them for months before all together depriving me of the last day of my midterm break.

And if only was that! The one morning, that of course I was needed at home, Gino decided to go on one of his adventures.

An hour and a half later, when there was still no sign of the dog, I was left with only one option : call the traveling husband and gift him the joy of dealing with the contractors while I went to get a coffee and I patiently waited under the lashing rain for Gino to find his way back to me.

Another two hours later, (because of course, the damn dog came back just during those 10 minutes I went for coffee and not seeing me he took off again), I got home.

“Oh, Mrs V. Thank God you are here…..” The happiness of the contractors when I showed my face and handed them a cup of freshly brewed coffee.

 The traveling husband, on the other hand, was beyond cranky.

” Eventually you are back. I am trying to work here,  but it’s impossible with this noise. Plus they keep coming asking me stuff I don’t know.” He barked as soon as I stepped foot in the house. I said nothing and closed his study door, as quietly as I could.

The poor man was totally unprepared for the situation! How was he supposed to know which bathroom the new sink had to go to? It’s been only 6 months that every morning and every evening he brushes his teeth and washes his face over a cracked sink in our ensuite. And not to mention the trees, how could he remember that those two big pieces of wood on the grass were marking where the new trees had to be planted?!And what about the audacity of the builder unwilling to drill tiles noiselessly?!?!

The poor man, having to deal with all this while his careless wife was sipping coffee at the park exercising her vocal cords calling for her in the lashing rain.

https://www.instagram.com/sabina_gabriellicarrara?igsh=MWlyc2x5eWo5c2xsZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

Sunday Mystery Tip

Because I am also a mystery writer, today post will be a hint of why this week there will be no proper post😳

So now, look at the picture above and guess! But remember, this is for the pure and genuine purpose of challenging my readers and has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I might have indulged a bit too much in Netflix over this midterm school break, ending up far behind everything else🙄🧹🧽🧺

P.S

For the record, the picture comes from my actual laundry room👽🧺 and I am still hopeful that, some day, someone will drop from the sky to sort my laundry up and, may be, even end the genocide of socks that lives so many heartbroken split pair behind.

Of course, till that day comes, I will keep fighting whatever creature is living in my attic and that perpetually adds to my laundry basket.

Yes because that’s the only rational explanation for the amount of dirty clothes we daily generate in this house.

https://www.instagram.com/sabina_gabriellicarrara?igsh=MWlyc2x5eWo5c2xsZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

Eye Spy With My Little Eye

I started to wear glasses at the age of three and, over time, we became just one thing.

Of course it wasn’t always easy, and we went through more than one rough patch.

In preschool, for example, I hated them and I negotiated an arrangement with my grandfather. He was keeping my glasses when dropping me at school and giving them back to me when collecting me. I was leaving and returning the house diligently wearing my glasses and my mother suspected nothing . 

I wonder if wearing my glasses more when I was a child would have spared me to become as blind as a bat by my teenager years when, I hated wearing them even more, but for different reasons. 

Those were the years when “fashion by glasses” did not exist and the cool boys were not paying attention to girls with glasses. As I soon found out, they were not even paying attention to girls without glasses squinting their eyes trying to decide if they knew it not the person on the other side of the path.

So, if someone from my past is reading the blog, I didn’t wave back not because I was an arrogant b…h but because I couldn’t see you because stubbornly keeping my glasses in my safe in my pockets.

Growing older I became smarter and found the perfect solution to my troubles: I was dating only boys wearing glasses too. Snd let me tell you , it worked. I even married one.

If, in all this, you were about to suggest contacts, DON’ T. They never really worked for me and that one time I thought they did, I spent 40 minutes pocking my eye trying to get them out, except, there was nothing there. At some point I must have lost them without even realising it. It was my wedding day, no wonder my memories of it are so blurry. I had always blamed the wine, but …maybe…..it was literally blurry out there. Still I married the right guy, though!!!

Anyway, back to the point, my relationship with my glasses was now steady and happy and so it lasted up to three years ago when, we stopped to be a couple and became, at first, a threesome and then a foursome. Too crowded!!!

It came the time when I was juggling between a pair of glasses to look close , one to look far , one for the computer screen and one pair of prescription sunglasses with everything in them that, got me vertigo every time I was moving my eyes too quickly. 

It was a practical and financial torture. My bag was filled with glasses cases and my wallet was permanently empty because every time I had to upgrade my prescription was bankruptcy. Not to mention the ridiculous time I spent interchanging my glasses.

Then, that same man I married in a very blurry day, suggested eye surgery. Something I never really considered. The thought of an unnecessary surgery on my eyes was never particularly appealing to me, but he was thinking about it for a while and, in fairness, the perpetual switching between multiple pair of glasses was becoming even less appealing. And so, when, in the middle of the covid boredom, he went for his preliminary visit with the specialist I tag along.

Within the next two months, we both had our short sight back.

Well I had, the poor man took in fact another three surgery to get his vision fully recovered, and by the time he did, one year later, he needed reading glasses. A true shock to him who, not like me, never used them before.

Luckily for him, his amazing tasteful wife made his life easy and bought him half a dozen of stylish reading glasses to keep in the key places for him to use.

Unfortunately, his amazing thoughtful wife, has no control over her husband when he is out in the world on his own and forgets to bring his glasses with him. So here it’s her, looking at him borrowing her black and diamonds cat eye glasses at the restaurant to finally read the menu after pretending for 15 minutes he can do it without help; or looking at him behind the desk wearing this awful pair of glasses, he had bought for himself during a business trip. No wonder they didn’t close the contract! Who slightly mentally sane would do business with someone wearing a pair of glasses looking like Jeffrey Dahmer had designed them and the Abba’s tailor had picked the color?!?!?

Thanks God, things get lost in our house😉

https://www.instagram.com/sabina_gabriellicarrara?igsh=MWlyc2x5eWo5c2xsZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

No Country For Old Jellies Eaters.

The advantage of age is that you learn to know yourself, you make peace with who you are and, most of all, in this aesthetically obsessed world, you learnt to accept yourself.

I have never been on the skinny side, except in a very young age when I was a skinny thing with the patch on one eye. So not a cool Kate Moss skinny type…at all.

Soon enough the patch went and the weight came. That skinny little girl with the patch on one eye became a chubby girl with glasses. A chubby four eyes….even worst, I can assure you!

Those were the years when food, especially in Mediterranean countries, was the answer to everything. Parents and grandparents genuinely believed food could heal any discomfort of the soul and the body.

That until the American TV arrived, and the white teethed tan Californian actresses set a new standard. And it wasn’t bad at all, because under that curly over blowed hair and the shoulder pads nobody could really say if you were slim slim or not so slim.

Who really f..k us all, was Jane Fonda. Suddenly everybody was aerobic obsessed. And aerobic was not just a simple work out, it was a lifestyle, and it came with its own fashion. Akins of fashion that if you were carrying some extra weight could be the essence of a shame and pain. Squeeze your extra weight into those extra tight and extra bright body suits to be worn on top of shiny thick leggings was, in fact, painfully undignifying and uncomfortable.

But we survived, with some scars, but we survived and diet after diet we pretended to have found the right balance bewteen weight, food and exercise. We learnt how to pretend self-acceptance and to fake self esteem, till we actually found it.

The years passed by and that wisdom we envy so much in our mothers became ours too.

And by wisdom, I mean when you can say “F..k it, I am too old for that s..t!” And you mean it!!!!You think it, You say it and You mean it.

That is when you accept the fact that you will never be on the skinny side because instead of your mother petite bone structure you inherited your father’s bulky genes, but it’s ok because years after years you came to know yourself, your weaknesses, your strengths and your limits. Years after years you really found that balance between health, food and weight and you had never been in greatest form.

Bye bye absurd diets, the days of eating 15 eggs a day because Dr Dukan says so are long gone. You exercise at your own pace because it makes you feel healthy, not solely to slim down and yet, you probably have never been slimmer.

Happy days!!!!! Till of course menopause hits and suddenly your are back to your puberty miserable years, on top of probably dealing also with your kids puberty misery. Thank God some brilliant person discovered HRT and you get your so hardly conquered age wisdom back .

Now that said, I am afraid my wisdom can still do with some improvements. It looks intact that, at the odd time, it miserably lets me down like when allows me to eat a full pack of fruit sugar jellies most likely synthetically flavoured and colored, while waiting to wash the car.

Wisdom indeed comes with age but age erase that digestive system that used to make you process even steel bolts if necessary and we should never forget that.

A full week of odd runs to the bathroom later, I wisely learned my lesson:

F..k it, I am far too old for the jellies!Lets stick with the wine and cheese!

https://www.instagram.com/sabina_gabriellicarrara?igsh=MWlyc2x5eWo5c2xsZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

https://www.threads.net/@sabina_gabriellicarrara