Author: Christine

During our 3-day vacation at the beach, in between devouring books like ravenous beast, I decided that July will be the Month of Self Care. In the past six months, I have: finished earning the down payment on our apartment; obtained a teaching contract at a new university; just about completed the second year of my masters’; trained to be a speaking examiner for a second international English exam; purchased the aforementioned house; and zipped home to the US to support my father through the removal of his bladder cancer. It has been a damn busy time. One thing I have not done is conceived a child. These 3 days at the beach were well-deserved, but it occurs to me that perhaps that whole thing about stress impacting the likelihood of conception is a Real Thing. Hence: the Month of Self Care. I will exercise, by enjoying meditative walks around the burgeoning countryside! I will eat healthy food, which I will cook in a relaxed manner while listening to podcasts. I will give myself leisurely reading breaks. I will reconnect with friends in this reprieve from the pandemic. I will calmly and methodically move my possessions into the new house, resulting in an organized and peaceful space. It will be delightful and restorative.

Continue reading “The month of self-care” →

We’re getting verrrry close to moving into the new apartment (!!) minus one small kink: there is no electricity there yet. I’ve been so focused on getting all of our stuff moved over there and organized, and the fact that the electricity has not been activated yet (despite the fact that we were assured that it totally would be, seriously don’t even worry about it, ragazzi) that I sort of haven’t even processed that once we move, we won’t come back to this other apartment any more. I mean… obviously. But we have spent almost a full year going to the new place on weekends and in spare moments to check on its progress, first as a construction site and then as one or the other of us moved a few items or unpacked a few boxes, that it almost feels like playing house over there. It doesn’t yet feel like we will sleep there (probably also because our mattress is still here) and have breakfast there and start our workday there and look out those windows and not come back here and look out these windows anymore. (Yes, I definitely have some sort of thing with windows.)

Continue reading “Little happy moments: Mornings at the old apartment” →

• There doesn’t appear to be anything weird on my dad’s kidneys. Hooray! Except it makes me nervous to actually celebrate this too much before the official doctor’s appointment on Monday, so let’s go with a very small and tentative: hooray?
• I found out I probably won’t need to quarantine upon returning to Italy after all, so I pushed back my flight by a few days so I can take my parents to that appointment on Monday. I’m not-so-secretly hoping that they’ll actually let me in to listen to the diagnosis, etc., so I can take notes. That’s a thing, right? The offspring serving as a sort of secretary for parents at a certain point in their lives? My parents are still quite spry and absolutely lucid, but still. I’d find it comforting and also feel it would maximize efficiency. We shall see.
• I am missing the partner and also feeling sad to be missing out on this theoretically lovely time of release from the school year and from the pandemic into a cheerier summertime, when we would also be happily moving into our new place… but it’ll come. Just another few days later. Have to take what comes sometimes, right?
• Speaking of having to take what comes, I got my period. It was two to three days late and my temperature was still up on all three of those mornings, so a little (medium) glimmer of hope had definitely started to form. I’d even mentioned it to my mom yesterday morning, just a few hours before it all turned out to be a false alarm. Sigh. Maybe next month?
• The cicadas are still out and I somehow find them very… comforting? Grounding? Reassuring? I don’t know, but for some reason I’m glad to hear them every morning when I make my way back up to the surface of consciousness. I think I will associate their bizarre sound (to me, they sound like several car alarms going off in the distance) with this also bizarre interlude… here in America at a time of year when I am usually not, getting my first glimpse of what the parent/child role reversal will look like… in limbo but hoping for good news for my dad, not ready to face the alternative.

Photo: A cute little chipmunk from my last walk. A cicada photo would obviously be more appropriate, but I don’t have one, and this little guy surveying the slightly gloomy, very humid, trying-to-be-summer landscape feels very apt.

Dear Internet, I think coffee might be magic. I mean, I guess it’s technically a drug and lots of people think drugs are magic, so… the logical conclusion is that I should also try other drugs? Probably not (I’m really tired; there is a strong possibility my brain is not at 100%, or even like, 43% right now).

Anyway, listen to this week and then I will tell you why coffee is magic. (I mean, okay, chances are you already know, but whatever.) So, this was another week of mad intensity to crown the previous weeks of mad intensity, culminating in the final exam for one of my very favorite courses for my masters’ program this morning. Let’s cycle back to the start of the week to examine this madness properly – I feel like I will want to look back on this when I look in the mirror and wonder why I look way older and more decrepit than I should right now.

Continue reading “Friday report: I can’t even believe this week” →

Hi, invisible internet friends! This weekend was simultaneously quiet and cozy (video call with best friend! visit to the house! lots of cozy studying while it rained outside!) and not: driving the partner to the ER due to another gallbladder episode and translating in the car while waiting for him.

First the more fun stuff: spent Saturday morning curled up with lecture videos of one of my favorite courses and a cup of coffee. Super satisfying to finally be making some headway in catching up on this course, and also genuinely enjoyable. (Even more so because raining outside, so totally not tempted to be doing some fun outdoor activity instead.)

Continue reading “Weekend report: Bread + the ER” →

I have loved planning since I was a little kid (my mother can tell you about how I used to meticulously plan out our snow days and throw tantrums when she and my toddler brother did not conform to the plan) but sometimes my utter lack of realism is still astounding. Even to me. I guess I haven’t really improve much since my elementary school days of trying to impose my snow day plans on everyone? Not a great look, but here we are.

Continue reading “Overwhelmed and overbooked” →

ACT 1, SCENE 1 (The curtain opens on an empty apartment; the floor has just been put in – look at that snazzy fake-wood tile! – and the doors windows are all hanging in position but lacking frames. The main character is industriously setting up what appears to be a small classroom or art studio in one corner of the room, while her partner flits about holding a measuring tape up against various items in the room, equally industrious. The materials the main character is setting up include two sets of cabinet and countertop sample cards, a stack of photocopied kitchen plans, and an assortment of colored pens and highlighters.)

Continue reading “A Kitchen in Italy: a play in three acts” →

The boyfriend, working shifts as he does, has lots more opportunities to go visit the house than I do and the big news this week is that they started laying the tile for our floors. We have been eagerly witnessing the neighbors’ tile go in over the past few weeks (would dearly love to share it with you, invisible internet friends, because some of their choices are…. choices… but that does seem a bit disrespectful of their privacy and so I shan’t) and this week the boyfriend returned from one of his solo expeditions to report that finally our tile is going in too!

Continue reading “Mid-week house visit: the floors are in!” →

I remember the the last normal day really well, because it coincided with a lovely day out hiking with friends. In fact, the juxtaposition couldn’t have been more dramatic if I’d planned it: a lovely Sunday out, long anticipated in my planner and so I can remember the exact date very easily. A good hike on a glorious sunny day in the hills, and a long, multi-course lunch of local traditional food — one of those types of lunches that movies like “Under the Tuscan Sun” will have you believe are an everyday occurrence when you live in Italy, but which are actually fairly rare. And then The News.

I want to take a few steps back, though, because when I think about it, it’s completely mindboggling how quickly things happened. We went from “oh man, poor China, that’s so crazy what’s happening over there” to completely disrupted lives literally in the space of days.

Continue reading “The Last Normal Day” →