What I want from Italy

The best prosciutto I've ever had.
A cheese I've never heard of.
A scene that reminds me of Ovid.
One that makes me think of Virgil.
One that reminds me of John Fowles The Magus.
Some distance from my obsessions.
A return to blogging?
A behavior modification that lets me learn to roll with the punches (i.e. fly across the Atlantic without panicking, sleeping on a lumpy bed, 3 hour dinners that I fall asleep in the middle of, 5 a.m. travel, not worrying about the cat, plus more, much more).
A revised food book. A new proposal--who comes first? Must I be driven by my desires/appetites? When can you put someone else's bodily desires before yours? A man's? A child's? A chicken's?
A swim or 20 in the Adriatic.
A plan for next year.
A little bit of a sun tan.
One conversation in Italian where I don't sound like a complete idiot.
A taste of something I never suspected that I would love so much I will, after my return, always pine for. Or maybe I already said that when I noted the cheese...

Random things

I'm going to do that 25 random things list but only one at a time. And maybe not all of them.

But here's one.

I have never used bleach without spilling getting some on whatever I'm wearing. Or, it's not even like I spill. I'm soooo careful. I pour it over the sink. I hold my arms out as far as my hands will take them. I wrap the bleached item in a towel or pour the bleach in the wash using something as overly-cautious as a pour spout. Today, I wasn't even wearing what I'm now wearing when I was playing with bleach. But somehow, the bleach puddled or pooled or melted through whatever barrier was between me and the bleach. Now there's big caustic stain on my brown skirt. I'm thankful the whitish-brown splotch is at the top and I can pull my shirt over it, but I can't get passed the feeling that my skirt is tainted, and therefore permanently ruined.

What kind of summer is this?

This is not turning out to be a normal end of the semester. Usually, by now, I've watched 18 episodes of Top Chef and started writing to make up for the last two month's non-writing festival I call teaching. And coordinating the "area." And planning on a visiting prof at the end of the month. But, even before turning in grades, I took off for Tucson for a weekend of swimming and applying sunscreen. I still smell like chlorine and sunscreen--it was magnificent. But also crazy because I came home to grades and visiting prof plans and meetings and appointments and oh yeah a presentation I gave this morning and then do laundry and pack for a camping trip this weekend.
Also: with housesitters? One feels compelled to leave less than 1,000 dirty sunscreened, footprints on the floor.
All of this is in preparation for the trip to Italy about which at this point I can only complain. It will take three days to get to Lecce. We have to drive down to Hub City on Sunday, get up at 5 to fly out from Hub at 7 on Monday, fly to Atlanta for 3 hours. Hang out in Atlanta for another 3 hours and then fly 10 hours into Tuesday, land in Rome, fly to Brindisi. Then, dumbly, I told my dean I'd check out our sister school in Siena where Egg and I will interview and film people about I don't know what. We'll get to our destination and then fly out again 4 days later from Bari to Florence, which is 1.5 hours away and whose flight leaves at 8. Meaning we wake up again at 5 and drive to the plane.
I'm sure/I promise that when I get there, I'll stop complaining about my so hard existence. Or maybe after the Siena part of the trip, when I'm back, fully sunscreened and chlorinated in the villa's swimming pool.
Perhaps I should have stayed in Tucson.

Cure for Insomnia Discovered

Cheerios.

Sleep

I woke up when Z woke up for milk and didn't go back to sleep. I think it was 3 or 4. I hope 4. I finally got up at 5:30 to eat some Cheerios. Now, of course, I might be able to go back to sleep but in an hour, I have to get up anyway.
Why is the end of the semester more stressful than during? I think it's this one foot still grading, one foot in summer business. And I don't feel I'm going into that collapse of summer. There's so much travel ahead. It seems as busy as work.
Just like with sleep, and that impossible place you get to when you are on the verge of falling and then think something stupid like "hey, I think I'm falling asleep," which then wakes you up, a too busy travel schedule interrupts what might have been actually relaxing.
But instead of agitating against the universe, I'll try to relax and travel simultaneously. It's like being asleep and awake--