Madness is in the air. Last night, Miaosie got the kitten-crazies and dashed around our apartment like a roach on crack. Then, M got midnight insomnia and could not fall asleep. Finally, just as he had closed his tired, dry eyes, resting his aching, weary head upon the feathery plump pillow – BANG!

BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG!

Apparently, our next door neighbor had caught the insanity as well. But hers was not the benign kind. No, hers was the drunk-as-hell, holy-rolling up to my front door and sticking her finger at M’s nose kind of madness. The fever that really only comes out at 1:30 am. On a late Monday night. (Well, Tuesday morning, but why quibble?)

After we banished her back to her music-pumping lair, she continued to scream, this time at her poor boyfriend for “not being on her side.”

Well, when you wake people in the apartment below and next to you in the wee hours of the morning, I can see why your boyfriend may not have been the most sympathetic. She berated him for 3 hours.

Seriously - until 4:30 am.

Sleep-deprived, sick with annoyance, anxiety, and festering anger, I decided to exorcise my demons the healthy, sane way.

I made a spicy pasta pomodoro for dinner. I wanted something more than ordinary spicy though. I wanted a nuclear bomb exploding in your brain and holding your ear canals POW spicy. A mouth-watering, eye-searing, yet still utterly delicious type of hot.

Six tomatoes were dismembered and reduced to bits, simmering over medium heat in a pungent base of olive oil, sauteed garlic, and onions. A mound of parsley was chopped and thrown in. (Yuck, but it needed to be used up.)

The pièce de résistance, a lone habanero chili. Chopped, with seeds intact, it was flung in the pan too. I even shook in black pepper, red pepper flakes and a dash of cayenne for different levels of heat.

The sauce, tossed with penne pasta, and topped with a spicy italian sausage for M, was a masterpiece. Definitely outdid the spaghetti alla carbonara of last Friday by a good mile. Complex, flavorful, boldly spicy, but restrained enough for my more delicate taste buds.

Meal finished, wine enjoyed, I felt somewhat better having cooked out most of my venomous bile. M, belly distended and groaning, had eaten himself stupid once again.

xoxo,

Jenn