NR, RN's Page

I'm speechless.

Meet George Ephraim Blake Perlingieri. My nephew. 7lbs 9ozs. Born at home. No drugs. My sister is a titan!!!

My poor, overworked, abused chef comes home around midnight or one looking like this:

We are so happy to see each other! We talk about our days and sip wine or beer. He showers and about 30 minutes later, starts looking like this:

Soon, after fervent denials that he is "not tired" and "wants to hang out with my super" (that what we call each other) he looks like this: (his pajama top says "I'm with Super")

I miss him. But on lovely (rare) days off he makes me something like this:

I am one of the luckiest girls in the world!

One of the benefits of having a chef husband is that occasionally people give him things. Fun things. Last year a purveyor gave us tickets to a Los Angeles Angels game. The seats were so great we could hear the players swearing and I could make out all the sweet buns. This last Monday we got VIP tix to the Los Angeles Clippers. I was super excited until I did some research and realized they were the worst team of the league. But that didn't faze us, the tickets were a gift after all, and we had never seen a pro basketball game. We started our night at Osteria Mozza. (check out mozza-la.com since they won't allow a link.) We sat at the bar for a couple of hours feasting on ravioli's topped with egg, grilled octopus, homeade orrichette, sweetbreads, and seasonal cocktails. Thank you Matt for treating us so good!

Thoroughly stuffed, we drove downtown to the Staples Center. We took a wrong turn off the freeway and got to see what downtown LA looks like at 8pm on a Monday night. Sketchy. We were running low on gas and I had time to ponder if I would be able to run fast in the shoes I wore. Luckily, we made it to the parking garage. Free, thanks to our tickets. We entered the stadium from the VIP entrance and got to walk by all the cars of the "playas". Bentleys, Rolls, Range Rovers, and Ferraris. I ask this: If you have enough money to buy a Ferrari, why choose orange?? Anyway, we bought some big ass beers and found our seats. The view of the not-so-great game was fabulous. The biggest entertainment was during half time when they brought out the "junior" cheerleaders. It was really weird. One moment we were looking (ogling) at the regular cheerleaders in skimpy outfits and then they bring out little girls in skimpy outfits to do the same routine. Eeeww. We ended up leaving early when a Spurs fan in our section and a Lakers fan in the section behind us started screaming obscenities at each other. The final straw was when the Spurs fan yelled, "I'll pimp your ass right now!". What?! What does that mean? You got a 9mm underneath your oversized jersey? Why are sports fans such psychos? As we left, security stopped us and asked us not to leave. "We are kicking out those troublemakers", they assured us. Umm, I'm not waiting around for that. For future reference, the stadium has these private rooms that are basically like a hotel room with large glass windows facing onto the action. No sitting around stupid people. That is VIP. Next time...

Still, it's always fun to get free stuff. Especially for things I wouldn't normally choose to spend money on. Thanks to Rhonda from LA Specialty for hookin' us up!

I am once again a chefs' widow. I pretend I look like this: but this is probably more reality..
I suppose I had forgotten, after 8 months of having my husband home and at my beck and call, what it truly was like to be married to a chef. His last day off was, ummm, 3 weeks ago. I think. I can't remember. I do remember that he got about a thousand phone calls, from work. He leaves the house before I get up and comes home pretty much right around the time I decide I'm done waiting up for him to come home. When he does come home he is his usual loving self, but then falls asleep in his chair while I'm midsentence. I find his clothes all over the house. Dirty aprons by the door, pants by the closet, and his undies on the bathroom floor in front of the shower. I can piece together his time at home by following the clues of his clothing. I've taken out the garbage several times. The fridge is bare. My cooking is WAY out of practice. We "share" a car, which means I haven't been in it in several weeks and I know my bus routes by heart.

He finally has a day off tomorrow. You know what he wants to do? Visit his grandmother! I hate to be selfish but, what?!? So I will be the dutiful wife and visit gramma Lea on our one day off together. One cool thing is that we can hit the Chino Farm stand and get all sorts of goodies and cook a fabulous lunch for her. My husband loves to cook even on his days off. (or maybe he would rather cook than have me cook, out of practice and all..)

So, I'm back in the club all you chef wives! My fave chef wife is funny, smart, and cute. Check her out at www.desperatechefswives.com

#1: You either haven't gotten or are (finally) over influenza this season.

#2: You haven't bitten into a prickly pear cactus and filled your mouth full of thorns because you "heard they are edible" and took a bite.

#3: You didn't dip your finger into the sauce you were making, not thinking that you also had a hand held blender at full speed in the same bowl.

#4: You didn't amputate the tip of your finger and then the leave the ER (with your finger dangling) because you are an illegal alien.

#5: You didn't get bacterial pneumonia and just happen to be allergic to almost every antibiotic known to man.

#6: Your rectum didn't prolapse as you were having a particularly trying bowel movement.

#7: You're not homeless and the best prospect to having sex is in an ER exam room after your peritonsillar abscess is drained of pus. (See last blog.)

#8: You didn't break your collarbone jogging because you stared so hard at another jogger of the opposite sex running by that you ran into a stop sign.

#9: You didn't slice your hand open from "cutting cheese".

#10: You didn't give a guy a blow job who happened to have an outbreak of herpes and now you have genital herpes covering the whole inside of your mouth.