My Week in List Form

1. The apartment people came and put a new valve on the radiator, as several commentors suggested, but this did nothing. There are still puddles every morning and loud clanking. Still living on board the USS Lev! I'll call them again tomorrow if I remember.

2. I bought shitty toilet paper! Can you imagine?? I bought Quilted Northern even though we are a Charmin family. The QN was on sale & I figured it would be fine. The package pictures a young girl rubbing her face on the toilet paper as if to say "This is what heaven is like!" and there are well-funded commercials for the product. Who knew it would scratch my lady parts? Stay away from that, no matter how on sale it may be. I would throw it all away and buy more Charmin, but the sale pack I bought had 48 rolls in it and I hate to waste paper in that fashion. I wouldn't even donate it to a shelter, because I don't want anyone's special area to get torn up from that sandpaper. We'll just suffer silently until it's gone and I can get more Charmin.

3. Corey and I had cupcakes for his birthday. There are 2 cupcake cafes in Pittsburgh now. Entire stores where they sell only cupcakes. We sampled Dozen cupcakes. I blame my friend Julie for showing me the store. I now think only about the silky creamy chocolaty cake portion and the sweet buttery frosting. They have so many flavors that I need to go every day to try them all. My big problem yesterday was that I bought the cupcakes at 3pm and had to not eat them until 10pm when Corey got home. That's 7 hours of will power. I am darned proud of myself for holding out! I very nearly bought an additional cupcake to eat in the store so the package would still look full and Corey would never know, but I abstained. This morning, we (meaning I) had a lemon cupcake for breakfast. Man, that's good.

4. We took the car to a mechanic shop less than 90 feet from our house. Not in Monroeville or even Robinson. Highland Park! Tony's Autobody is run by a gang of Fresh From Italy Italian men, who sit around and eat biscotti and yell at each other in Italian all day. The other night, we saw them walking down the street with 40s in brown paper bags. These are much more like our sort of people. So Tony, unlike the Nissan dealer, told us that the catalytic converter is ok. We drove the car 50 miles, he put a sticker on it, and I have an extra $1000 I thought would be gone forever. More cupcakes for everyone! Including Tony!

5. We think we found a house to buy. It is also owned by a recent Italian immigrant. The selling point for me was the wine-making room in the basement, where there were person-sized casks of wine and stomping tanks for grapes and racks upon racks of the red stuff. Another key feature was the pantry, brimming with jars of homemade marinara, pickled vegetables, and figs from the fig tree in the back yard. Italian people and their food items make me very happy indeed. I wonder if Italians invented the cupcake?