These summer days have been custom-fitted with a fisheye lens. We unpack, we clean, we eat salad, we sleep in puddles of melted motivation. Our priorities have adjusted to the demands of changing homes, not to mention the brick-baking heat and the reality of two girls at home, and the hours arch and flex strangely. My writing time keeps slipping outside the bubble where it waits, nose to glass, to be invited back in.

I see it, of course. Each day shifts through a hundred nuances I wish I could bottle and share or weave into a Ray Bradbury book. I’d love to invite each of you up to our balcony at dusk, when the fading sunlight plays alchemist on the city. We’d pick mint for our mojitos and debate in whispers over the exact color shimmering off the buildings below. Orange? Pink? Mother-of-Pearl? Enchantment?

I’d have a printout of my thoughts from the day ready if conversation began to lag. You could read how absurdly long it took to get myself and the girls ready for a morning walk to the park and how, by the middle of our steep climb back, I would cheerfully have exchanged my children for a day at the spa. Before you had too much time to judge, you would read on to where Natalie hung socks on the laundry line with me while we sang “Old MacDonald” (and Sophie occasionally interrupted her own “E-I-E-I-O” to point at the sun and shriek “THE MOON?”) and how love for these two girls of mine pulsed against the confines of my sanity. You would read how NieNie’s latest entry pulled my heart into pieces and how a line from Elliot Smith brought back the thrill of diving into the blogging world seven (seven!) years ago.

You would get a little dizzy from the way my mind flits from friend to friend, the way I still miss my best friend at age six, the hopes I hold for current acquaintances. You would reach the paragraph with all the secrets, at which point I would decide it’s time for a chocolate-whiskey-and-beer cupcake and four consecutive rounds of Balderdash. Secrets are secrets, after all. But this is my wish-upon-a-star in writing—to put myself in words and invite you to share.

So in lieu of an Italian balcony blogfest*, here’s a question for you: What would you like to read more about? Any pressing inquiries you’d like to see addressed? A topic that’s been on your mind lately? Something you’d like to know about me? Glassy-eyed summer days or not, this blog is ready for some friendly conversation. (Cocktails optional but recommended.)

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*As lovely as the idea is, teensy matters like distance, time, and money make it unlikely. Annoying matters, those. However, if you’re ever coming through central Italy, do let me know, and we’ll try to make some magic happen.