The Accidental Italian...she didn't see it coming. Like a bicyclist peddling upstream into oncoming traffic, she was hit head on, thrown from her comfy seat and suffered a momentary lapse of reason. My childhood dream of becoming a freelance writer once seemed a road-blocked prospect, shunned by well-meaning relatives who thought I should pursue more "practical" professions like nursing or accounting. "Writers go hungry," they told me. After a decade and a half of living off the fat of other occupations far more "sensible" in the eyes of suburbia, my hunger pangs for a career as a writer were gnawing at my backbone and eating holes in my heart. Here I am...an Italian by shear accident; a born-again writer by pure happenstance, but a destiny by no simple chance.....I want this. Move over, bacon...I don't claim to write about everything and anything. I offer no literary smorgasbord for the like. I fancy Italy and all things Italian. I love God. I like broken furniture (stay tuned). I am a good girl who is simply a bad girl who thinks she will never get caught. (God knows better) I own a pair of love-handles and a cordless drill. I can fix things but I have more experience breaking things. Primarily promises and my teeth. (God is fixing me on the first of the two!) I swoon over subtitles and all Italian music makes me cry. I get irritated when grown-ups wear Disney and I am morbidly fearful of frogs ( I heard they can choke out a grown man). I like big,deep bathtubs and I have read the same magazine issues over and over again in them. I like wine and if I could find an acceptable way to have it with breakfast, I would. ("I'll have a bowl of Grape Nuts, an english muffin with jelly, and a glass of Pinot, per favore.") Instead I drink coffee and lots of it because they won't let me have crack at work.


I have learned a few valuable lessons in my short go-round on this earth. My time-worn toast adopted from an Irish saying and heard by many of whom have "clanked" cocktails with me:

"Here's to those we love, may they always love us back. Here's to those we loved, who have never loved us back. May God turn their knees around to the backs of their legs so we recognize them by their stinkin' limp all the days of their lives!"

A domani, mei amici...