Still me, but in France.

There’s this SNL skit in which Adam Sandler plays a tour guide for “Romano Tours.” (If you are in the US, google it, because I am forbidden by the National Broadcasting Corporation to see any clips from here.) But I did find a transcript! **

People love us. But, every so often, a customer leaves a review that they were disappointed or didn’t have as much fun as they thought. So here at Romano tours, we always remind our customers, if you’re sad now, you might still feel sad there, okay? Do you understand? That makes sense? Our tours will take you to the most beautiful places on Earth. [Cut to video clip of Amalfi coast] Hike to cliffs off the Amalfi coast. Fish with the nets in Sorrento. [Cut to video clip of a woman yoga posturing] Do this, I don’t know.

[Cut to Joe] But remember, you’re still going to be you on vacation. If you are sad where you are, and then you get on a plane to Italy, the you in Italy will be the same sad you from before. Just in a new place. Does that make sense? There’s a lot a vacation can do. Help you unwind. See some different looking squirrels. But it cannot fix deeper issues like how you behave in group settings or your general baseline mood. That’s a job for incremental lifestyle changes sustained over time.

[‘Can’ and ‘Cannot’ chart appears in the screen]

I want to be very clear about what we can do for you. We can take you on a hike. We cannot turn you into someone who likes hiking. We can take you to the Italian Rivera. We cannot make you feel comfortable in a bathing suit. We can provide the zip line. We cannot give you the ability to say Whee and mean it. You’re not your sister.

Ahem.

So, one of the things we wanted to do with this trip was have it not be a month of pure vacation. Mark is working remotely for much of it anyway, and we are doing school, so in one sense we wanted to just move our regular life and relationships to a prettier setting.

Since I couldn’t bring my house, which functions as a permanent three-dimensional to-do list that I wake up in every morning, I am free of a lot of ordinary “work stressors” here. But other than that I am still me and we are still us.

I still need a block of alone time every day. So far I have gotten this mostly when Mark takes Simon and Leo to the beach to frolic in the waves. I have stayed in the apartment each time: napping, doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen while listening to podcasts. Or I have gone grocery shopping in town, happy to not have help even though it means I have to carry it all back.

And then. There are a lot of activities we could be doing out there, or I could. I could take the train to Nice for an afternoon and see one of several art exhibits, or walk along the Promenade des Anglais. I really thought I was going to do that before I got here. I thought we would take a shuttle up into the hills and make the boys take an educational tour of a citrus grove, picnic included. Doesn’t it sound fun? And we fully intended to go to Monaco for the day, see the aquarium in the oceanographic museum and maybe the big royal automobile collection.

But just as most days in Minnesota I do not go to the art museums in my own hometown nor drive into the countryside to tour excellent Wisconsin dairy farms, here I just kind of want to sit down and relax into a routine. Eat, shop, cook, wander around, buy gelato, take a nap when I am tired, do schoolwork with the kids in the weekday morning, swap the dishwasher, go to the wine store and ask what I should pair with the dinner I plan to make.

Look. I had this idea that I would embrace French petit déjeuner: coffee and a little bread and marmalade, maybe a cup of really good yogurt; or every few days I would go out to a café and get a pastry and a cappuccino. And I have done those things!

But do you want to know what I had for breakfast this morning? While my drip coffee was brewing I opened the fridge and found the leftover second half of a fat spicy meat wrap that Leo bought himself at the Kebab Berlinois around the corner. It is reminiscent of a Chipotle burrito only with thinly shaved, mildly spiced gyro-like meat and an oniony purple-cabbage slaw, and I think some tahini with the faintest perfume of a capsicum variety. Cold and ever do slightly soggy from twelve hours in the fridge.

What ho! A leftover hoagie!

And just as I would have at home, that is what I had for breakfast, right out of the wrapper.

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Church in an hour. And hey—today is Bl. Carlo and Bl. Pier Giorgio’s big day! We love BPG around here and consequently we are going to be stumbling through our dinnertime litany for the next few weeks.

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** Sorry the excerpt is so long. Still learning the WordPress mobile app. The quote block won’t let me abridge it.