Okay, I'm determined to post something, ANYthing, even though I'm in on of my "Why am I alive, life sucks, the world's going to hell in a handbasket" moods. So, after staring at the blank screen for several minutes, inspiration struck! I'm going to think positive and come up with a list of ten GOOD things, if I have to sit here all night. Here we go...

Ten Good Things

1. Our yard looks really pretty, with lots of flowers blooming and my artful arrangements of pretty rocks around each flower bed. If I weren't so frigging lazy I'd take some photos of those flower beds and post them, so you'd believe me. Oops! Did I veer into negative territory with the "lazy" remark? Skip that part and just pretend there are some nice pictures inserted here:

2. As far as I know, everyone whom I love is healthy.

3. So far, July in Lancaster county has been pleasant, with temps in the mid-eighties and NOT HUMID! HALLALUJAH!

4. Rush Limbaugh will probably not live for more than 40 or 50 more years.

5. I can still picture that hunky waiter in Siracusa. And...it just occurred to me that someone in our group may have taken a photo of him. If that happened, and it can be found, I will post it!

6. We have plenty of beautiful lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini (surprise!), tomatoes, bell peppers, swiss chard, parsley and carrots in the garden. Wow! That's eight "good things" right there!

7. Today I did the laundry AND the ironing in the same day! Usually the ironing sits around, getting more and more wrinkled for days, sometimes weeks, before I get it done.

8. Not all the glaciers have melted yet.

9. Sex between consenting adults is not illegal in most states, yet.

10. Sarah Palin is not Vice President. (Please note that I did not add the word "yet" to this sentence.)

I Was Where??

Six days ago I was still in Italy, but it feels like six months. My memories are fading fast, but I'll try to capture a few of them. More impressive than the Sistine Chapel, the Tower of Pisa or the ruins of Pompeii were the Italian men! Oh my! Those guys know how to dress, for one thing. No baggy pants or oversize tee shirts there. Tight pants and slick, stylish shirts were the rule. While I enjoyed the "eye candy" everywhere, my favorite fantasy-indulgence was inspired by our waiter at a restaurant in Siracusa. That man had me mesmerized from the moment he showed us to our table until we left, two hours later. He had what I regard as a perfect build - well muscled arms and shoulders, flat stomach, and shapely butt, nicely displayed in tight bluejeans. He paid lots of attention to our table, probably because of my attractive daughter and daughter-in-law, so I got to pay lots of attention to his lusciousness. I had sweet dreams that night.

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Okay, enough about my dirty-old-ladyness. I won't talk about the famous sites we visited, because they are well documented in books, magazines and movies. I enjoyed seeing the various ruins, especially Pompeii. The Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel were spectacular. But there were so many tourists that I often felt overwhelmed with people, people everywhere. One of the things that I enjoyed the most was seeing wildflowers growing out of cracks in the stones of the ruins. They were undaunted by the ages.

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It was also interesting to see the mixture of old and new, primitive and modern, in everyday Italian life. For instance, the very old cities still have very narrow, cobblestone streets, designed for foot traffic and maybe horse-drawn carriages. But now those narrow streets must accommodate great numbers of automobiles. Some of the streets, especially in Sicily, were absolute chaos, at least to my untrained eye. There were almost no traffic lights anywhere, very few stop signs and the only rule I could discern was every man for himself. One narrow street might have cars parked on both sides, two lanes of traffic, pedestrians scurrying every which way, motorcycles weaving in and out and an occasional horse and buggy. Intersections were like a giant game of "Chicken." I gained great respect for my son's and son-in-law's driving skills, as well as their nerves-of-steel. I spent most of my car time curled into a ball in the back seat, trying not to scream.

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There were other archaic things I noted, such as laundry hanging outside of windows and on porches (which I liked, since I like to line dry my laundry), and injunctions by hotel managers not to put toilet paper in the toilet. We were to drop the used tissue in a wastebasket placed next to the john. I did not like this, one little bit! Telephones were hard to use and public mailboxes were very few and far between. There were other things, but I don't want to dwell on negatives, when there were so many positives.

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People were, by and large, friendly and appreciative of our efforts to speak Italian (it's amazing how far you can get with 20 words of Italian and 30+ words of Spanish). One especially fun exchange happened when we were in Sorrento. A young man approached us and asked if we were American. We said yes. He then grinned and shouted "Obama!" while giving a fist pump. The hospitality was great, everywhere we stayed. The food was delicious and interesting (especially interesting when the menu was all in Italian, the wait staff spoke no English and we decided to "wing it"). The wine was intoxicating! And did I mention the tight pants?

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But now I'm back home in boring Lancaster, the memories fading fast and wondering if I'll ever travel abroad again. Probably not, but I may visit Cucamonga sometime.

Venice is Okay, But Pickpockets Suck

Bill Stankus commented on my last entry before I left for Italy, "Be sure to slug the first pickpocket you see in Venice."

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Well, Bill, I would have been glad to slug the motherfucker if I had SEEN him. But I didn't! On our first day in Venice, I went toodling off by myself, assuring my traveling companions that I would be just fine and dandy. My wallet was securely esconced in a zippered pocket of my small handbag, which was securely looped across my shoulder and chest. But of course I got lost on my way back to the hotel and had to stop to ask directions several times. I managed to find my way after an hour of panicky wandering, but when I got back to my room, I discovered that I had NO WALLET! Some very skilled shithead had managed to unzip my purse, lift out the wallet, re-zip the pocket and escape, without me being aware of anything. So...I was left with no money, no credit card and no ATM card for the remaining 16 days of our trip. Fortunately, my kids were able to step into the breach and use their own cards to get the cash and credit we needed for the rest of the time.

In a way, the experience was liberating for me. I no longer had any financial responsibility and had, literally, nothing to lose. I didn't have to carry a purse. I still had pockets, but no contents to pick. So I got to be the "kid" in the family, just asking various adults for a few euros here and there, when I wanted to buy something. I'll settle up with the grown-ups when their bills come in.

Okay! That sums up Day 1. It did get much better on Day 2 and beyond, and I'll talk about it tomorrow. But now I have to finish unpacking and then go for a walk with my hubby, whom I missed SO MUCH while I was away. Absence does, indeed, make the heart grow fonder.

Arrivederci Amici!

One week from today I will be on my way to Italy. I will be traveling with my daughter and her husband and three kids and my son and his wife. We will be gone from June 13 to July 1. I am excited and terrified. I am not packed, but I have been refining a list of stuff to pack. It must all fit in one bag (21 inch expandble upright) small enough to take on board and fit into the overhead compartment of the plane. I have been practicing rolling each item of clothing into a tight little ball. I can't imagine how I'm going to get everything into that teensy bag. I keep telling myself that it doesn't matter what I wear or how it looks, because no one will be looking at me anyway. I'll just be one old broad in a sea of tourists. One tiny speck in an infinite universe. Who the hell cares if my clothes are wrinkled and/or sweaty and dirty? There! I feel better already.

So! We'll fly into Venice, spend two days there and head for Florence. Two days there and down to Rome (after a stop in Pisa). Then two days in Sorrento and then it's a night on the ferry and finally arrive in Sicily on June 23, where we'll spend the next 7 days. Whoa! I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it!

I'm going to try to set up a "travel blog" to chronicle our adventures. Believe it or not, even though I'm the oldest of our band of vagabonds, I'm the only one who maintains a blog. So I was elected to be the official diarist. Now it remains to be seen if I actually get this done in time. Maybe tomorrow...

Wichita Kansas - Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's few providers of late term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher. The slaying of the 67-year-old doctor is "an unspeakable tragedy," his widow, four children and 10 grandchildren said in a statement.

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So much for the sanctity of life, gentle readers. A demented murderer took it upon himself to gun down in cold blood a living, breathing man, 67 years old, in order to protest abortion. I think it is probably safe to say that Dr. Tiller's murderer has never been pregnant with a child he felt incapable of bearing and rearing. I also doubt that he has devoted his life to adopting and rearing great numbers of unwanted babies. But he decided, as did various other murderers-of-doctors before him, that it is perfectly okay to kill a mature adult, but it's a heinous sin to comply with the request of a woman to abort her fetus.

We're All Doomed, But It Doesn't Matter

Okay, I've moved on. I've made great progress since that last silly post about anxiety. I am now completely absorbed in the subjects of the futility of life and the insignificance of the human race in the vast scope of the boundless universe. How's that for progress?!?

As an example of futility, I just now attempted to insert a picture of a photo of "The Sombrero Galaxy" taken by the Hubble telescope. Do you see the photo? No? Neither do I. I did manage to copy the text under the photo, which reads as follows:

"The Sombrero Galaxy - 28 million light years from Earth - was voted the best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The dimensions of the galaxy, officially called M104, are as spectacular as its appearance It has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across."

Just picture this really cool photo of a zillion stars pressed into a ring of exploding light.


Now think about the puny earth...just an insignificant speck out there in the Milky Way somewhere. The Milky Way is just one of zillions of galaxies floating around in infinite space. And yet! We think we are so important! And goddamn it, we are important! To ourselves, anyway...and what else matters to ourselves but ourselves?


These profound thoughts have occurred to me not only while looking at photos of outer space, but while looking at my kitchen counter. Okay, you're thinking, Madam Z has officially gone off her wobbly rocker. Wait! I'll explain! You see, my kitchen counter is besieged by ants. Small, brown ants that persist in monitering my kitchen, watching for interesting bits of food that would go unnoticed by humans but are, evidently, highly desirable to my six-legged nemeses. Several times each day, I swoop down on the indefatigable critters, wiping them up with a wet sponge and washing them down the drain. When I do this, I feel guilty. I anthropomorphise them. The poor little things try to defend themselves. They run, panicky, this way and that, as the sponge approaches. Some of them rear up on their tiny hind legs, in a defensive posture. Every darned one of them wants to go on living! Just as humans would, if they were being rounded up by a giant, sponge-wielding Martian on the streets of New York City.

I've forgotten just what my point was, but I think it had something to do with Dr. Hubble inventing galaxies. Or maybe I was wondering whether ants on Mars would rather eat bread crumbs or space dust. Or was it this revelation?

To Med or Not to Med

Three months ago, I stopped taking anti-depressants. (I had been taking various SSRIs for the past eight years.) After a couple weeks of diciness, I settled down and thought, hey! I've got it licked! I'm just fine-and-dandy-peachy-keen! I don't need no stinking drugs. But now I'm having doubts. Over the past week or so, I have been feeling increasingly anxious and demoralized. All day today I have been on edge, feeling as though something dreadful is going to happen, any minute. What tiny bit of rationality I have left is telling me that is nonsense. There is nothing any scarier happening today than there is on any other day, at least not that I know of. So why this nameless dread? Am I insane? Or is it physical...a mere chemical imbalance in my fevered brain? If it's a chemical imbalance, maybe I should go back on medication. Okay, the SSRI's crushed my libido, which is the main reason I decided to stop taking them. But anxiety is not exactly a big turn-on, either. If I don't feel better by Monday, I will call my doctor.


There! I said it! It's in writing! I will not renege.