A comedy:

I once said over a beer at a pub in Niles, which no longer exists, before I was 21 that I wanted to write a book about my crazy family. I don't actually recall saying this, but an old pal, Sam, reminded me a few weeks ago. I don't remember what was going on with my crazy family at the time of said novel-idea (pun not intended), but funny enough, craziness was occurring whilst Sam reminded me. Craziness occurs pretty much 'round the clock at the Mangiardi abode. And the craziness could possibly make a comedic picture show, maybe sans sounds in the spirit of Charlie the Chaplin.

Currently my dad is building a pizza oven in the backyard. You might be picturing a 3x3 type oven around the size or a little larger than most kitchen ovens, or you may even have some memory of eating at some Italian restaurant that boasted some oven fired pizzas. What my mom came home to the day he began construction was a backyard cleared of all plant life - foliage, flowers, ficus, ferns, grass (dang G!), you get it. There he is, poised with chainsaw in tow ready to execute an unsuspecting apricot tree. (More on apricots in a paragraph or two.) My mom was somehow able to plea for a governor's pardon for that lone backyard plant. In the months that followed, a building similar to a mausoleum grew brick by brick. I suggested engraving the words "Capulet Tomb" on its stony face. ( I was ignored by my dad who has the BEST sense of selective hearing...a talent I am honing in myself out of pure admiration. And from my mother, a "Who, honey??" Perfect.)

Cut to day 94 after convection conception: Although the yard is in shambles, the pizza oven is functional and producing cooked food. Around 4 or 5 months ago, strange jars filled with a gooey, dough like substance began turning up mysteriously all over our house - in kitchen cabinets, behind hallway closet doors, under heat lamps (no, my parents do not grow weed)... The mysterious filling in the mason jars, labeled with my dad's all caps shorthand on masking tape, was "mother." "Mother" in my house equals "dough starter." I have learned way too much about the process of creating dough from scratch, and I am not going to scribble (aka type) out all the chemical equations here (see dad's shorthand notes on masking tape for more info), but I will say he finally perfected a "mother." And since then, each morning, like a diligent and loyal servant. my dad wakes and feeds the "mother" with a carefully measured (using a digital scale...again, no weed. I know....crazy!) amount of flour and other ingredients (secret, sorry. wiki!) He then began making pizza dough...dough he could be proud and assured he could call his own. And this hatched the idea for a full scale pizza oven...the like of which half completed and huge stands stoically beside the lone apricot survivor.

My cousin, Jason the architect, helped transform the little hatchling idea into a 3 dimensional computer animated model, after dad read about 600 pages of information detailing pizza oven specs. (This is why he cannot understand how I have zero minutes during work to check email and the like...he's reading about brick types and mortar drying times all day!!!) After my mom saved the tree and dad broke ground on his "little project" he could not be found inside the house. One morning over coffee, I looked out the kitchen window at the rain coming down, and suddenly the high pitched whirring sound of the table saw cutting bricks stopped my latte mid sip. I looked down, and there he was, soccer sweats, long sleeve t, ball cap stuffed on his curly head....cutting bricks...in the rain. And he would be found out there in the dark of night, in the frost of the morning, in the snow (ok...that's not true! I'm thinking postal service.)

And now that the oven is functional, he's out there baking loafs of bread. This is what too many women in your life do to you, I have decided.

Oh, and those apricots. The past 2 days my dad and my mom have harvested, pitted, chopped, and turned those little suckers (tons of them) into 64 jars of apricot jam.