Have you ever been close to a “blue blanket” moment? (If you don't know what that is, you'll learn about it if you read on.) When we got home from Italy last week, at 2:00 am (11 the next day in Italy) we walked into our home, exhausted after 24 hours of travel. The first thing I did was go out on our deck to see if the Wisteria had engulfed it. (It grows up one leg of our deck and completely surrounds the railing on three sides.) While surveying the 20 inches of new growth on that busy bush, a bat flew into our house and for the next ½ hour, Terry and I took turns ducking as it recklessly flew at us from the living room to the kitchen frantically searching for an escape route. (Sounds like a great computer game to play...Bat the Jet Laggers.)
It was a big bat with a furry wing-span of about a foot! (Having a bat in my house is as terrifying to me as having a terrorist in it, leaping from chair to table to counter itching to use his oozy.) At one point the bat's radar must have miss-fired for he and Terry bumped heads! That’s when we decided to leave the sliding, glass door to the deck open with the light on outside, turn off all lights on the inside, hope he'd go to the light, take our chances chipmunks or raccoon didn’t decide to move in and flop into bed, thoroughly exhausted.
A Blue Blanket Moment
One of the funniest scenes EVER in a movie, was in “The Producers” with Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel. In the scene, Gene has a meltdown over a time constraint he's been given. It’s such a funny scene because we’ve all felt the way he feels, but we’ve learned that sort of behavior isn’t acceptable. Please watch the short scene so you’ll know where I’m going with this blog. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ9UQxzG2po
The next morning after the bat fiasco, I woke up and had no idea where I was and was not even sure who I was. It took a few moments for my senses to report to me the reality of the situation. Then I remembered the bat. Turned out he did leave, and there weren't other critters running around in our house, but suddenly, I wanted my blue blanket like Gene did.
It was that same morning that I wrote the blog about being glad I was home from Italy and I know now, one should NEVER write when she needs her blue blanket (if you haven’t watched the YouTube video link yet, you don’t have a clue what I mean, so watch it please). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ9UQxzG2po
The Milk of Human Kindness
Remember when Scrooge drank the milk of human kindness when the Angel of Christmas Present gave it to him? Just to refresh you, here’s that scene from Scrooge starring Albert Finney. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpTxBuo8zno
It has taken me three days to melt into the person I love to be and finally the milk of human kindness that is almost always coursing through my being is finally back, running freely through my system. Fatigue can certainly pinch off the flow, so it's real good advice to stay off your phone, off your computer and in bed until you get yourself back!
So if I may, here’s a new version of the I’m Glad I’m Home from Italy blog.
Back From Italy
Kristi, my bonus daughter, and I are in the kitchen of the villa we stayed in, throwing together a quick dinner. (The cantaloupe in Italy was the best I've ever tasted!)
It was so fun going to the grocery store and seeing the difference between our grocery stores and the Italian's. For one big thing, there's not a huge, long aisle of chips and crackers! In the big store we shopped in, there was one small shelf of chips and one for crackers!
I'm happiest when I'm in the kitchen and Kristi was able to sign us up for a cooking lesson. We made pasta of course and Chicken Cacciatore! AND WE GOT TO EAT IT! Our teacher (on the right) works in a tiny kitchen and produced one of the most delicious meals we had on our trip.
Some of my fondest memories are sitting down at a table with the family waiting for our food to come. This is Kristi and her husband Ted and the kids, Tanner, Kyle and Kaytee. I've never eaten so much bread and pasta in my life but if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't miss a noodle or a loaf! Anyway the Italians use a different flour than we do here in America and I told myself the bread and pasta in Italy are calorie-free.
I fell in love with Venice. Because there are no streets, IT'S QUIET! We got to go on the canals
in a gondola AND we were serenaded! Can you tell I'm in heaven listening to the music and enjoying the evening breeze from the water? (That's my son-in-law in the background.)
I don't know how people in Venice lived before satellites and cell phones. Walking from neighborhood to neighborhood was like walking in a very entertaining maize, and some cobblestone pathways came to dead ends. Yet with the help of our cell phones
we always managed to get back to our villa. I was lost in the woods once, so I have an illogical fear of getting lost which caused me to be constantly on guard as to where Terry and the family were. Duh, so what if I'd got lost! There was delicious food at every turn and I could have just enjoyed it had it happened!
Actually the best part of the whole vacation was being with my family and spending time as a family, sharing stories, laughing, playing cards, learning from each other as we all grow in our own ways.
As a grandmother I see these five people as my kids. (I remember my grandparents referring to me as a kid when I was an adult, but now I understand where they were coming from.)
I'll close with a video from our trip. It begins with me surprising the family of our presence in Italy. (Kristi set it up so Ted and the kids thought they were being picked up by a "driver." They had no idea we had come all the way to Italy to join them!)
If you didn't read my blog written under the influence of jet lag, click on this photo of us enjoying a wonderful glass of wine.
Love,
P.S. With school back in session, this is the perfect time to get organized just enough to please you. I recommend "The Joy of Being Disorganized." You'll learn how to de-junk your home room-by-room, how to delegate and get the 3x5 cardfile system that has worked for millions.