Regarding Florida not being warm enough:
Familiar
(Can you spot the Sandhill Cranes?)
Florida is colder than I imagined, though I suspect that may be due to the potent combination of rain clouds and my delicate sunflower of a personality. If these 75° were accompanied by sunshine, I would be running around in short-sleeved exultation, but as it is, I’m nursing my jet lag with special roast (what makes it special, I wonder?) and trying to summon the energy to decide on an outfit.
My trip here was mercifully smooth. No luggage was lost, no flights were missed, and my eardrums did not explode on the plane despite threatening to for a solid four eternities (I picked up some of these for the return trip and hope to goodness they work as advertised). Re-entry was emotionally smoother than I expected as well. I remember the sudden, swooping disillusion of my first visit to the U.S. after we moved to Italy—how everything looked too big, how I stuttered over my native tongue, how conspicuous and foreign I felt. This time, American soil feels familiar. Not home exactly, but welcoming all the same.
It’s easy to forget in all the day-to-dayness of life that I’m an expat, a transplantee. People often come to my blog expecting to read about life abroad, and I wonder if I should apologize for not writing about it more. Perhaps it’s like being married to a celebrity; you know in the back of your mind that he’s one of Hollywood’s 50 sexiest men and a recurring figure in daydreams worldwide, but your immediate focus is balancing your checkbooks or working through an argument or coordinating your school pick-up schedules. I’m don’t think it’s possible to remain starstruck with the everyday. However, trips like this help prod my awareness out of hibernation, and for that I am grateful… and in dire need of more special roast.
Sweep Me Away
Something about today whispered spring cleaning. Never mind that winter just finished unpacking its bags or that the air is the approximate temperature of a slushie; my instincts demanded I open all the windows and invite the sunshine in to dust with me. (I wanted to write “sweep with me,” but that’s a double entendre in Italian, and now I’m worried that learning a second language has guaranteed my mind a permanent spot in the gutter. Italian vocabulary tends to be very… passionate.) My energy levels are regrettably dependent on the weather, and I tend to slog through January with all the motivation of a boiled cabbage. Thank goodness the sun came out today; otherwise, our house guest tonight would have ended up sleeping on a pile of unsorted Christmas decorations.
Despite cohabitating for a whole 11 ½ days, 2011 and I haven’t really gotten acquainted yet. I know it uses a different brand of shampoo than 2010 did and takes less sugar in its coffee, but I haven’t figured out what makes it tick, how its hobbies and personality traits intersect, whether or not it is likely to be a good housemate in the end. I’m waiting until after my trip to get back into running and to pick up where I left off on Ye Olde Novel, so I guess that’s when I’ll schedule my heart-to-heart with the new year. We’ll likely survive until then. It puts its own socks in the laundry, and I don’t pry when it stumbles in at 3 a.m.; good enough for now.
So. How are you? Have you made any great discoveries yet this year? Do you have any new projects or goals that spark your enthusiasm? Any survival tactics for less sunny days—you know, in case I don’t manage to finish spot-cleaning behind the oven today? Any double entendres worth sharing?
Dramamire
I feel like I should preface whatever comes out of my fingers next by saying that sometime during the night, my brain tripped into a custard quagmire and is now up to its eyeballs in thick, eggy blandness. I have nothing interesting to say although you might think I would considering I’m hopping on a Florida-bound plane Sunday morning and have less than a week to arrange for my family’s survival in my absence and to talk myself out of any dramatic airport scenes. There’s a slight possibility that I’m not looking forward to the trip. (Maybe that explains why I spent all morning avoiding my damn to-do list? And now I’m swearing. F—crap.)
Here’s the thing: While this trip really isn’t a big deal—just a skip over the pond to renew some documents and eat fried okra as much as possible—my imagination has taken it upon itself to prepare me for any eventuality. The following is a sample of likely trip outcomes, courtesy of my flair for the dramatic:
- Blizzard-hurricaness bury the plane during my layover on the East Coast, pulling down frigid air from the melting polar ice caps that freezes everything on contact and ushers us into the second ice age just like Dennis Quaid predicted; I miss my flight.
- I arrive safely, but the U.S. customs official revokes my citizenship because I chose to live elsewhere, and I am forced to spend the rest of my life wandering the airport countryless à la Tom Hanks.
- I forget to leave detailed instructions for our washing machine (which no longer has indicative markings because the factory painted them on with a special air-soluble glaze), and my family runs out of clean clothes and slowly dies of scabies while I search in vain for free wi-fi.
- Everything goes smoothly and I’m allowed to return home, but my ears explode on the flight due to pressure changes and the fact that they are world-class wimps, and the resulting spatter of gore gunks up the landing gear resulting in a spectacular crash; my corpse is recovered and donated to science who rejects it on the grounds of earlessness.
I guess what it all boils down to is that I don’t want to leave my husband and girls, even for a week. The thrill of adventure is notably absent this time; travel-related calamities are no fun without my little family to share them with. True, I’ll get to read entire books uninterrupted on the plane, and I might even get to eat my Sky Chef boeuf bourguignon while it’s still hot, but… I’ll miss them. A lot. The end.
Custard, take me away…
The Answer Starts With D
Hey kids, it’s time for a pop quiz!
This milk frother is sitting on our balcony because:
A) In impressive disregard for the natural laws of quilted fabrics, it got so hot on the stove as to burn a hole through the pot-holder, and it was moved outside in my fear it would burn the kitchen down as well.
B) In my bleary pre-10:00-a.m. haze, I forgot both to add the milk and to remove the plastic frothing mechanism before putting it on the stove, and it was moved outside so as not to kill my family with the toxic fumes.
C) It was not the first but the second disastrously failed cappuccino attempt of the morning (don’t ask about the espresso machine), and it was moved outside so the sight of it would stop making me cry into my orange juice.
D) All of the above.
Some mornings are just better left alone.
Auld Lang Syne With Frosting
Dear, neglected little blog,
It’s been so long I’m not even sure where to start. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve thought of you often—while baking and decorating and wrapping, while celebrating holiday traditions with our Italian family, while toasting to the new year under a dizzy display of fireworks, even while huddling feverish under a mound of blankets unsure what month it was anymore. I had promised myself that this would be the December I found time to blog regularly, but whoops, look at that, it’s January already, and what?!
Not only is it January, but 2011 is already hurtling full speed at my head. There are some quick decisions to be made and goals (note: not resolutions) to be focused in on before my brain power scatters in fright over this mighty new year, and I’m already behind on so many things that 2012 is starting to get worried. This is no way to celebrate the untapped potential of 365 fresh-faced days, I know. I also know that stressing over a vague accumulation of responsibility is neither going to help me get well nor whittle down my to-do list… but that’s what I do. I stress. Then I write about it. Then I share it with you, and then I get back to living like a reasonably sane individual.
New years always seem to find me this way, on the restless side of recovery, bewildered, angsty, unsteady. I guess it’s sort of my post-holiday tradition. Some people make resolutions; I fumble around for my bearings. It’s not a bad practice, truth be told—sifting through perspectives and reclaiming priorities. I should probably make more of a habit of it rather than waiting for it to knock me off balance the moment the fireworks fade, but I just get busy, and weeks scurry by, and when I finally pause at the page again, I don’t recognize its landscape.
But this was supposed to be a letter, not a therapy session. So, dear blog, here’s some of what you’ve missed over the last two weeks:
- Two small giggly girls rocking around the Christmas tree to their favorite tunes, headbanging in Santa hats, and reenacting every possible mention of reindeer.
- Wrapping paper, ribbons, and sparkly pens taking over our living room with scissors in small hands as the four of us shared the fun of dressing gifts up in their holiday finest.
- A friend and I running across the cobblestone streets of downtown in our high heels in an umbrella-snapping rainstorm, determined to make it to a concert on time and laughing harder and harder the less presentable we looked.
- Christmas Eve morning spent introducing a houseful of Italians to the wondrous thing we call brunch (they couldn’t bring themselves to drink coffee with it, but it was a delicious success nonetheless).
- Some mangled slabs of gingerbread, gobs of frosting, and four solid tons of mismatched candy turning into one of the most hilarious and happy family activities we’ve ever attempted.
- Legos, board games, Wii (ours), Kinect (not ours), and more Legos—time spent together rediscovering the lost art of play (though I have yet to rediscover the lost art of maneuvering video game controls in a competent fashion).
- Fireworks bursting on all sides of our balcony, too many to count, a dazzling 360° salute to a year of new mercies.
I’ve missed you, dear blog, and I’m sure any lingering hard feelings can be smoothed over with this artisan dessert:
(May or may not contain several pieces of licorice that Sophie tasted, spit out upon realizing she hates licorice, and stuck to the roof before we clued in about her building method.
Also, Management is not responsible for any diabetic comas suffered as a result of looking at this photo.)
You’re welcome,
Bethany
No Morale of the Story
My Top 5 Expat Blunders (because everyone loves an embarrassing story… or five):
5) Shortly after we moved to Italy, I was trying to get to know some of the women around my age at church despite my struggles with the language. I tried breaking the ice one Sunday morning by complimenting two of them on their retro jewelry. “In fact,” I continued, “when I was young—” Immediately, they doubled over laughing. I later learned that the word “young” in Italian applies to people from ages 14 to 40, and I might as well have started the sentence, “When I was middle-aged.” Oy.
4) In the early days of life here, even simple trips to the grocery store were daunting. I had to memorize vocabulary lists just to make sure I ended up with toothpaste instead of antifungal cream, and it took me a couple of weeks before I worked up enough courage to order from the deli counter. I had taken careful mental notes when shopping with Dan though, and I knew how to specify whether I wanted mild cheese or sharp, aged or soft, sliced or in a wedge. I also knew I should ask to taste a sample before ordering, so I cleared the trepidation from my throat and ventured, “Can I taste, please?” The counter attendant raised one eyebrow and asked, “Come again?” “Um, can I please taste?” The attendant shook her head in confusion. I tried another approach: “Can I taste a piece?” Nothing. I pointed at the cheese we were discussing and enunciated carefully, “I want to taste this cheese please.” Now both her eyebrows were raising and lowering in quick succession. I finally gave up, ordered the cheese unsampled as it was, and hurried home where I discovered that I had gotten the word for “taste” confused with the similar-sounding one for “dry.” Why yes, I had just spent several minutes trying to convince the deli attendant to let me dry her cheese. On the upside, I haven’t gotten the two words confused since.
3) Once upon a time, we took a stroller, my pregnant belly, and a week’s worth of grocery purchases on a bus. You can read all the painful details here.
2) Two winters ago, we went with a large group of friends on a settimana bianca—a week in the mountains at a ski resort. The lodge we were all staying in provided meals in a giant mess hall, so I didn’t have to worry about packing anything more than my snowboarding gear. As it turns out, I should have worried about packing more than my snowboarding gear. I realized within minutes of arriving that my fleece hoodies and wool sweaters would stifle me to death in the lodge’s near-tropical heat, and that left me with only my undershirts as viable tops. And within seconds of arriving at supper that first night, sweating in my jeans, snow boots, and thermals, I realized that meals on a settimana bianca are formal affairs. Our friends were utterly elegant in their high heels and ties, and I looked like Frosty the Snowslob in the middle of a meltdown. It was a long week.
1) Today was dedicated to the girls; I took them to a special kids’ event at a local restaurant this morning, and then we had fun getting together their costumes for this evening’s school play. The theme for the play was “A world without borders,” and Natalie got to don my sparkly pink cowgirl hat to portray an “americana” while Sophie was transformed into history’s cutest wolf with furry ears, a homemade tail, and lovingly hand-drawn whiskers. Most of the children in their class were assigned the same costume—“jeans + lupetto bianco”—but I didn’t have a chance to see the other wolf costumes until Dan and I were settled in our seats and the curtains rose. There on stage was a choir of preschool angels, adorable in matching white shirts and golden halos… plus one set of shaggy lupine appendages. Sophie was the only wolf. The horrible suspicion that dawned on me was easily confirmed: “lupetto” also means turtleneck. We dashed out as soon as the play ended, but I still have to show my face at the girls’ school tomorrow. I could use a stiff shot of tequi morale right about now.
Friends, this is your time to shine. If you value my dignity more than I do at the moment, share your own embarrassing moments and spare me the necessity of running off to Greenland and having to start this whole expat process again.
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