Quodlibets

Catastrophe! I wake up crying.

I don't actually know if I was crying when I woke up.  I was scared and sad, though, and here's why:  the airplane crashed.  I have crashy airplane dreams more often than I probably should, although it bears mentioning that none of these dreams really occur around travel, and I'd say that over half are dreams with planes crashing while I'm not on them.  In general, in those dreams, the plane is crashing into the ground near me, or into something that I care about (ie my sister's apartment or my dad's office building).  In last night's dream, I was on this plane that suddenly had to turn around and make a crash landing because, and I quote the flight attendant: the light in one of the engines wasn't working.  It wasn't a serious issue--I knew the plane wouldn't burst into flame and become a rolling fireball upon landing, but still, a crash landing isn't every good.  When the plane hit the ground, I ended up rolling out of the plane onto the runway.  And at the same time we were crashing/landing on this runway, another HUGE plane was taking off.  Suddenly, my dad was there and telling us all to duck, and that feeling of the other plane taking off over our heads was so intense, I can almost feel it now.  My brother lifted his head up, and the plane clipped him, and my dad started yelling at him, and then I realized I had lost my purse.  Apparently, this was the most distressing part of the dream, because that's when I started crying in the dream, hysterically.  And that's when I woke up.  Very distressing, I tell you.  I went to the bathroom after the dream, and sort of lingered there, because I was so distraught.

I have distressing dreams fairly often, though they're not always based on something as trivial as a purse.  Probably my number one distressing dream is based around nuclear weapons.  I dream about a-bombs all the time.  I witness, in the dreams, the mushroom cloud.  Once, I was trying to save my sister from the bomb, and she wouldn't leave her apartment without the cats.  Naturally, we couldn't find the cats, and I was trying to convince her to get to the shelter and I can't tell you HOW bad this dream was.  Other times, I'm in the shelter, but trying to get to the best part of it.  Or I'm on the way to the shelter, and I can never seem to reach it.  All these dreams have the one thing in common:  the mushroom cloud.  It's the kind of moment you've seen in movies.  Everything goes quiet and the world lights up and we all watch the cloud.  And then I freak out.  On the whole, these tend to be the most generally traumatic dreams I have.  I wake up very uneasy, but I almost never cry, and I almost always go right back to sleep.  Sometimes I've checked the sky to make sure it isn't Armageddon, and it never is.  That's the nicest moment after those dreams.

I'll tell you, though--I'd rather wake up laughing any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

How I Do

In my quest to fill all my free time at work, I've begun doing crosswords.  Sometimes as many as 7 or 8 in a day.  I try to pace myself--only allowing one every hour and a half or so, otherwise I might do them straight through the day.  But isn't that sad?  I read a lot still, too, because the computer gaming has fallen off exponentially now that the big boss is in every single day.  (Oh, sweet sabbatical, how I miss thee.)  I keep trying to find things to do that have an air of legitimacy, but I'm not having much luck.  I browse the internet maniacally; I've become a PerezHilton addict due to the unfortunate nothingness of my time.  There's nothing like nothing to make you feel like a useless human being.  I know I'm not one; let's be honest here: I'm doing tons of work, but I'm doing it very quickly and efficiently, leaving me with oodles of fillable time.

There's a part of me that would absolutely LOVE to bring my sewing in to work, because think how much I could get done!  But sewing is clearly 100% unrelated to my job (oh, so is crosswords, but at least that has a slight word/book/brain thing going on), and even though it's 100% sure I wouldn't get fired (the boss doesn't believe in firing people), I can't bring myself to stray that far from my job.  I totally bang on about this shit all the time, but you wouldn't believe how having nothing to do at your desk is a complete killer.  Some days it's all I think about, staring straight ahead, looking at nothing.  Some days I stare out the big dotted opaque glass window in front of me and try to watch the TV in the cafe, on mute, on CNN.  Predictably, I don't get much out of it, as I'm barely able to read the big white headlines, and can't see the ticker at all.  I live for phone calls and IM conversations.  I try to blog every day at work, because it will generally kill 30 minutes or so.  Sometimes more, sometimes less. 

Twice or three times a week I walk over to the public and scout the new book shelves, but that's not happening right now because I've got such a glut of reading material stashed at my house.  Also, forgot my library card again.  Remember that post?  Yesterday, in the grips of pre-lunch hunger pangs, I took a spin around the block, but that was incredibly boring and hot, and it's supposed to be even hotter today (the ladies from the back took their constitutional 40 min early today to beat the heat), and I'm wearing jeans.  I didn't feel like shaving this morning. 

I'm working a half day on Friday, which is the only reason I'm able to get through the other four days of this week.  If I wasn't, I'd be miserable right now.  It's the promise of sweet relief on Friday that's got me somewhat sane.  And I know things will pick up a little bit more each week with the impending school year.  There was about 3 hours of work yesterday for me, and by August 22, I may even be able to fill entire days.  We'll see.  Anyway, those full days will only last about a week before I'm caught up.  Things'll be busier, for sure.  Just not...full.

I wonder how long the fascination with crosswords will last.

By the seat of my pants

Yeah, my butt hurts.  My poor kiester is sore from the bike seat.  I sort of forgot about that.  I thought it was going to be my legs that were in bad shape, but no.  It's my ass.  I feel like I could ride again tomorrow except that the thought of subjecting my tender butt to that seat again so soon is scary.  We'll see.  Sam and I rode about 5.5 miles today, which is far more than either of us thought we'd do.  For a first ride, that's not so bad.  I think we both really enjoyed it, though I can't exactly speak for Sam.  He is talking about possibly riding to work now, but he's worried a bit about sweat and helmet hair.  Because yeah, we both ended up wearing helmets.  They're not so bad.  I mean, they're not great, but they're not awful either.  I think we saw a lot more people without them than with, but as long as Sam as wearing one too, I don't feel so weird about it.  (I do remember seeing one couple riding--her with helmet, him without--but mostly it was people without them.

I can admit that it was slow-going.  I'm just not very fast, and I never will be.  But that's okay.  I'm riding for enjoyment, not fitness.  It's mostly recreational, with a nifty fitness bonus.  Sam is now talking about all the places we can go on our bikes, instead of public transportation, or not going at all.  For instance, now we can ride to Sweet Mandy B's and get cupcakes all the time.  Or we can ride to that artisanal cheese shop up on Broadway, and get some prosciutto.  Yes, we're the kind of people that think the increased food opportunities are reason enough to ride a bike.

I think I need to get a basket on the front of my bike, though, because otherwise shopping will be impossible.  Sam got a free water bottle mount (and bottle) on his bike, so we've got that.  Because yeah, Sam had to get a new bike when I got one.  He said his old one wasn't good enough, but I think he just wanted a new toy.  I got a new toy, and he had to have one too.  And his bike was more expensive than mine.  But you know, if that makes him a willing rider, ok.  Whatever.

Anyway.  Yay bikes!  The riding starts.

Face Chronicles

Remember a year ago when I talked a little bit about going to the derm and being diagnosed with rosacea?  Yesterday I finally had another derm appointment.  I'd been meaning to make one for ages, because ever since Italy my face had annoyingly disgusting breakouts of acne-like bumps.  So about a month and a half ago (it takes that long to get in to see my derm, who isn't really a derm, but a PA; though a damn good doctor.  I love her.) I bit the bullet after a particularly nasty bout of bumps and made the appt.  I was also looking forward to asking about some weird clear bumpy things that pop up on my hands time and again, and a white bump on my temple that is sort of strange.  I wasn't really nervous about these things, just interested to see what was going on. 

People, here it is:  my skin just really, really sucks.  The bumps on my fingers are a form of eczema (though not an unsightly one), which isn't surprising, ther derm told me.  Eczema is genetically related to the keratosis pilarsis that is cannibalizing my body one part at a time (and is in fact also apparent on my jawline), and so it's not shocking in the least that it's showing up on me.  It's a pisser, although it's non-contagious, so it's not going to spread all over.  But I suppose the downside to this is that there is nothing to stop me from developing other, more unsightly eczemas.  Lovely.  The white bump on my face (a teensy raised bump that's barely visible) is just a cyst, and completely harmless one.  The derm offered to "cut it out" (her phrasing) of my face, but I said no thank you.  I don't like the way knives and human skin work together.  It mostly induces pain.  So, two down, one problem to go.

Of course, and I knew this would be so, my bumps were mostly gone by yesterday.  A month and a half of waiting will usually bring that about.  But she was very clear on the fact that not only do I have a recurrent bump problem, but also a redness issue, which has something to do with the blood vessels under the skin.  The bump problem is hopefull going to be taken care of by a new topical medicine, and then for really bad flare-ups, an antibiotic.  I'm very hesitant to use an oral medication for a skin condition, so I'm going to only use it in cases of extreme need.  I don't feel like I'm there yet, but I've also been holding out hope for a new topical too.  I'm just hoping beyond hope that this new topical is enough to keep those bumps at bay, or at least mute them a bit.  If that's the case, I most likely won't use the oral antibiotic.

Now, the redness is another story.  The only thing that can fix that (because it's the under the skin blood vessels) is laser treatments.  They're VERY expensive, and have to be repeated a few times to really have the desired outcome.  And, ever so wonderfully, they bruise your skin so badly that it looks like you've got blueberries smashed onto your face for about seven days.  There is a lesser bruising treatment, but that one has to be repeated even more, which is more expensive.  I'm not jumping up and rushing out to do this laser thing--blueberries?  Seven days?  But I'm also aware that this redness might get way worse than it already is.  I'm ok with it right now, how it is.  It doesn't give me much cause to feel bad about myself.  (The bumps are another story when involved with the confidence levels.)  So I'm going to have to adopt a wait-and-see kind of an attitude about the laser treatments.  I can't say no for certain, because I don't know how bad I'm going to get. 

All in all, I'm cautiously optimistic about the whole thing, and I guess you can go ahead and assume things are better unless I have a reason to blog here again.

Motorin'

I bought a bike!  I did something very out of character (and it was hard to do!): I took the money my dad gave me for my birthday, money he gave me so Sam and I could eat out a bunch and enjoy good dinners, and spent it on a bike.  There was no way I could have afforded a bike without using that money, so I feel good about it.  I feel a little sad, obviously, because I was looking forward to some special dinners with Sam.  And I'm sure he feels a few pangs of sadness now that we won't be getting back to Custom House anytime soon.  But I'm also really, really happy about this bike thing, and I hope it works out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm scared as hell--it's been FOREVER since I've been on a bike, and I'm extremely nervous about riding the crowded lakeshore path.  But I feel like I need to get more active, and like I said, Sam vetoed running.  This is a bit of an anticlimactic announcement, because I won't probably get on the bike and attempt to ride it until next weekend.  Sam's bike needs a major tune-up, and we're so busy we can't get it to the place until Thursday, and then can't pick it up until Saturday, because I have a wedding on Friday night.  So we won't be riding until Saturday afternoon, at the earliest.  That's kind of nice, in some ways, because I can have a week to get used to the idea of riding a bike.  On city streets. 

Cross your fingers!

Hiatus

On the way back from Salt Lake City today, I saw a woman literally destroying her book as she was reading it.  She was ripping 5, 10, 20 pages out at a time after she'd finished with them.  It was a romance novel she was ripping up, so maybe she viewed it as some sort of throwaway literature, but still.  Can you imagine ripping up a book that way?  It was horrifying.

We were in Salt Lake City over the holiday weekend for a wedding.  My cousin Tbhs got married to her fiance, as nice a guy as you could ever hope to meet.  The wedding was fine; the bride was lovely and the reception was very nice.  Not the most fun wedding I've ever been to, but I think the good times are predicated on you knowning tons of people at the wedding.  Which we didn't.  I barely ever see this cousin, simply because she's lived far away for her entire life.  So I don't really know her, so it wasn't as fun as some other cousin weddings.

Otherwise, SLC was incredibly dull.  It seems like a very sterile city; the food was nothing to write home about (save for a trip to the CA chain Rubio's), and the town is very boring.  There's nothing much to do and see, and it's not even really a city, by my estimation.  I live in a city.  SLC seems like a suburb with 10 tall buildings in the middle of it.  Even walking, which was certainly do-able, seemed sort of pointless when faced with the six lane roads going everywhere.  They're supposedly the relic of the 2002 Olympics, but whatever.  They make the city into a driver's paradise and a walker's hell.  But the people seemed mostly happy and my cousin the ski bunny (the bride's younger sister) really does seem to love the city.  There was nothing really wrong with the place, but then again, there was nothing really very right about it.

We did make a day trip to Park City, which was nice, though sorta not the most fun.  Park City is a resort town, but it's a winter resort.  I can't imagine the place in the winter, with the boarders and the skiiers everywhere.  In summer, it was shoppers and bikers and hikers, all enjoying the outdoors.  I sort of don't love the outdoors, so it was only so-so.  And the shopping did get pretty repetitive after a while.  Still, it was somewhere I'd never been.

In fact, the whole trip was basically just a trip to somewhere I'd never been, coupled with a wedding obligation.  I'm home, and that's nice.  Too bad there's a work week ahead.

I am sick

And not physically.  I'm sure I have talked about this before, but apparently it's high season for biblioholics like me, because right now, I.  Cannot.  Get.  Enough.

There are not enough hours in every day to read what I want to read, and that includes my 4-5 hours of reading a day at work.  And let me tell you, I keep bringing books home as if by sheer wishfulness I'll be able to get to them all.  I just walked across the street to the public library and checked out five more books, and I say more because I checked out four last week.  And on Monday I bought three books, and today S should possibly be buying me one more.  Some of my favorite authors have new books out, and sometimes at the library, I can't pass up new books (because I only ever take books off the new display shelves.  No dirty books for me, thanks.) that were on my list once upon a time, or look really good.  I've really cut down my book-buying, I'm sure of it, by visiting the library once a week.

Yay for me.  But what that doesn't help with is the stacks of books piled on bookcases and tables, scattered on the floor (I've been trying to organize the myriad books that I've checked out of my own library.), and contained in two separate tote bags.  Yes, some of the bookshelves are dedicated to books I've already read.  But I do have one whole bookcase full of unread books.  (And lest you think that I never get to those, you'd be wrong, as just a day ago I finished The Birth of Venus, which I picked up ages ago as an ARC.  As in ages ago when I still worked at a place that had ARCs available by the bushel.)  And as much as I read off those shelves, they never seem to empty.  Part of it is poor maintenance (I've got gaps where I've taken out books and read them, and never filled them in with new books, because I am patently lazy when it comes to my bookshelves.  Organization schmorganization.), and part of it is that one of my favorite authors is always coming out with a new book.  And!  People, I don't keep romance novels.  Reflect on that for a bare minute. 

At least two of the books I checked out from the library I've flirted with buying, and one for sure, Love is a Mix Tape, I know I carried around Borders once, intending to buy it.  That I didn't is a mark of just how disciplined I've been at the bookstore, and the fact that I've got it now from the library (nearly new!  pearly clean!) is like this incredible adreniline rush.  Yee-ha, I've cheated the book-buying gods once again.  But, and I falter here when I think about this, am I doing it for the enjoyment or because it's like a race:  MUST.  GET.  ONE.  MORE.  READ.  *Pant pant pant*?  Most days, it's very clear it's all about me liking reading.  (I tried once, on a 15 minute walk to meet some people for lunch, to figure out what it was I loved so intensely about reading, and I can tell you right now that I came to zero conclusions.  It's certainly not always the physical book, because I like magazines and blogs and I am happy to give books back to the library after I'm done with them.  But then again, there is very little I like more than cracking open a new book and breathing in the new smell, the smell that will be gone in a few days, after my own imprints upon it.  And it's not the learning, not always, though I do like that too, and I am crammed full of useless facts that all come from one source:  books.  It's very possible that it's just the most entertaining thing on the earth for me personally, and that I could give up TV and movies and with a bit of whimpering, music, but I could never, ever part with reading.  If that's not passion, what is?)

I think I was in the middle of a thought.  Nonetheless, it's very clear that I value reading above most other things in the universe, but when I'm this gluttonous with the reading, I feel guilty and weird, like I'm trying to get away with something.  I'm not, obviously.  But perhaps the only thing I like as much as books is food, and when you are gluttonous with the food, it is bad.  Hedonism is bad when it comes to food.  Books?  Eh, the jury's out.  If you're looking for me, I'll be reading.  I can't even tell you what I'll be reading, because the choice is making me indecisive right at this moment. 

Do you think I need an intervention?

And in the end

Day 9
We walk down to the beach and grab the ferry to Amalfi.  After spending a few hours in Amalfi, we catch the ferry back, and walk back up to the hotel.  Then we walk back down to the beach, eat dinner at Chez Black for the second night in a row (good again) and walk back up the hill to go to bed.  We ate gelato.  Twice, I think.

Day 10
Up early for the jet boat to Capri.  The jet boat was CROWDED.  The Marina at Capri was CROWDED.  The line for the funicolare was long and unhappy.  So we jumped a cab and went to Anacapri, the other town on the island.  I'd never been, but before we left, S and I saw a show about Capri, and the traveler in the show went up on a chairlift to the top of Monte Solara from Anacapri, and S was very keen to go.  (I have to say that I was feeling really, really shitty for the first time in the trip--my throat was raw and I felt achy.  So S and I popped into a pharmacy for the second time on the trip, and I bought some very strange Italian throat lozenges.)  But when we got there, and I saw how far up the chairlift went (and the fact that they were single seat chairs), I started having second thoughts.  But S wouldn't let me not go, so I worriedly got into line and ended up plopping my butt into the chair.  The first 5 minutes of the ride were not good.  I clenched the bar and the seat really hard, and I wasn't happy.  But it was actually okay.  The 12 minute ride up was pretty relaxing, and the views were great from the top.  (Kate, I can say right now that you would NOT be going up that mountain.)  The ride down kind of sucked because it was COLD, but it ended up being well worth it.  Probably one of my favorite things we did on the trip.

Okay, so then it wasn't quite lunchtime.  We wandered down through Anacapri, and ended up walking a long long time to get to a very secluded restaurant (Il Cucciolo) that was recommended in one of our travel guides.  The setting was gorgeous, and the food was very delightful, even if I didn't like my pasta dish.  Then we began to walk down to the blue grotto.  I hadn't been aware that there was a land entrance to the thing, but in the guidebooks, it recommended taking the bus there.  We came across a cab not long into the walk, and thank god too, because the walk was very long.  I decided not to do the blue grotto thing, and I felt like shit even more than I had at the beginning of the day, so it was good.

Then we went back up into Capritown, which was AWFUL and crowded and bad.  We got in line for the boat, and watched in horror as a whole big group of ticketholders (not including us, thank god) got left on the dock as the boat was full.  Not cool.  And then, after walking up, I decided I absolutely couldn't walk down and up again for dinner, and in solidarity, everyone stayed up too.  We went to a restaurant that was embarrassingly bad (they served us hamburger buns and white bread instead of good bread) right around the corner from our hotel.  I felt guilty, but oh well.  You can't win 'em all.

Day 11
To Rome again, to go home.  We stayed right by the airport, but took the train into Rome to spend money and have gelato at Giolitti one more time.  I was exhausted by this point--we all were.  So yeah, that's it.  The great Italian trip.  It was fantastic.

Around Tuscany in a Mini-van

I lied, okay?  I sort of forgot that I was going to blog some more at work, and ended up racing through a book because I was really ready to be done with it.  But let the vacation round-up begin!

Day 1
Our plane lands at 8 am or so, on Friday April 20th.  Flying overseas sucks if you can't sleep on airplanes, and I slept the most out of the four of us, with a solid 3 to 4 hour chunk of sleep time.  Sleep deprivation + half an Ambien = sleepy time in a coach seat.  Needless to say, we were tired.  But my dad picked up a rental car--a Chrysler mini-van, which is a completely inappropriate driving machine if you're planning on being in any cities--and a GPS rental, and we set off for Florence.  We stopped at one of the first AutoGrills we saw, and ate our first Italian food.  Let it be said:  roadside food in Italy is fortythousandmillionbajillion times better than any crap we get at highway oases.  And that first stop would set sort of a pattern up, because any time we all got in a car, we stopped at an Autogrill somewhere. 

But tiredness conquered hunger, and my dad relinquished his driving seat to his wife, which was fine, except for when the GPS failed and we ended up in Florence going around in circles but NOT at our hotel.  We were tired, and I was feeling like I wanted a shower more than anything else in the world, and well, it was fine.  We got there, eventually.  We slept.  A lot.  We showered (well, S and I did).  And then we went to dinner at a place that curiously, didn't know how to cook pasta al dente.  But I hasten to add, the food was good.  Then we ate gelato (thus setting up another pattern, because I'm quite certain that there was only one night, out of what?  11? that we didn't eat gelato after dinner.  And that's not saying that we didn't eat it after lunch.  Or before our evening nap.  Whatever.  What I'm saying is, we ate so much gelato I gained five pounds.), and went back to the hotel and slept. 

Day 2
Are you bored yet?  I hope not, because there's still 10 days of this crap.  This day started out badly.  S set his alarm for 7:30.  We heard a knock on the door, S looked at his watch, and thus the ball rolled downhill.  It was 9:23.  Our tour guide?  Arriving at the hotel at 9:30.  Not so dire, considering we had showered the night before, but not the greatest start to our first day in Italy.  So we did a guided tour, which was lovely.  And then we ate a spectacular meal, possibly one of the very best we had in Italy in the entire 10 days, which is saying something, let me tell you.  For future Italy goers, the restaurant we had this stunner in is "Le Pennelle" and it's just down the street from Dante's house.  Check it out.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful.  Shopping.  Dinner.  I did make a bad choice on my dinner, ordering fish, but it's okay, because I ate enough other food to be fine.  Oh, and the prosciutto at the restaurant had hair.  I mean, the leg they cut it from was hairy.  Yay for hairy ham!  (It was also, in its defense, possibly the most delicious of the trip.  So suck it, hair haters.  Eat the hairy ham, you won't be sorry.)

Day 3
We spent the morning in San Gimignano, which is as nice a town as I've ever been in, and has some really, really good gelato, according to my dad and S.  It was a lovely morning, and it was to be followed by a super-hellish afternoon.  The problem is that we attempted to drive the mini-van into the center of Rome, to get to our hotel.  I'm not sure who thought this was a good plan, but I certainly didn't veto it, and I didn't quite realize what we were in for.  I was the main navigator at the very end, and I literally steered the car to within a block of the hotel, but that block or so was frustratingly far away from our hotel.  Let me repeat that:  we were within a block or so of our hotel, but could NOT get the car to the front of it to unload the luggage.  We ended up, and I am not kidding you, driving 45 minutes out to the airport to drop off the rental car and taking a van back to the hotel with all the luggage.  It was a LONG, long experience, and it made us all testy, tired, and hungry. 

I was pretty much just happy to be in Rome, and every minute felt pretty good.  We walked by some old landmarks--the classroom building!  Pascucci! and then past one of the places I spent the most time in while studying in Rome.  A cafe called Brek.  It was closed, and it was clearly closed permanently.  I can't describe how that felt, but it wasn't good. 

Then we ate at Giolitti, another disturbing occurence, because it started out a chain of days where we ate Giolitti twice a day.  Did I mention that I've gained five pounds?

Phew.  I'll go into days 4, 5 and 6 tomorrow.  Day 5 is a REAL doozy.  It's worth reading, I assure you.

Italy Dreaming

Last night I dreamt about Italy.  Only not really, because what I actually dreamed of was the stupid airplane ride over there.  I had two flying dreams, and they were both awful.  Not the kind of awful where you wake up sweating and crying, but just vaguely unsettling.  They both jarred me out of sleep, one at 2 am and the other at 5, and after the awakening at 5, I didn't really go back to bed.  If this happens every night from now until Italy, I'll be a wreck. 

I have a fair amount of flying dreams normally, so it's not that shocking.  I don't enjoy flying (even though I love the travel part that comes after), and I'm a very nervous flyer besides.  I'm scared of crashes and breathing problems and blood clots and that makes me hate every minute I spend in the sky.  The 9 hours to Italy sucks, but I'm willing to do it because, well, I'm in Italy when the plane finally lands.  The joy of that mitigates the suck of the flying. 

I'd be lying, though, if I said I wasn't nervous about going back.  This is exactly how I felt last time I went back, a tinge of fear and worry combined with the overwhelming sensation of excitement to be going back.  And it seems as if the fear and worry get bigger, the closer I get.  Rome is such a loaded city for me; the last time, I cried on the tram from the Trastevere train station all the way into Largo Argentina.  I mean, just tears pouring down my face.  The plan is a bit different this trip; we're flying into Rome but then going to Florence straight-away, no stop in Rome.  Rome comes after Florence.  I can't imagine crying in Florence (actually, I dislike Florence, but feel S should see it), and I don't know if I'll be shocked into the kind of emotion I was last time by coming into Rome after two days in Italy.  I'd like to not cry.

Anyway, I'm afraid because Rome is a loaded city, and I'm afraid that I'll round a corner and something won't be where it's supposed to be.  (Oh, please be there, Enzo's restaurant.)  I'm also worried that I won't connect with it like I once did, and that's even worse.  I've, in some ways, built my life around Rome, and the time I spent there, and to not love it now would be a nightmare.  Rationally, I can't imagine that would happen.  But I'm not always a rational creature, and in the two weeks leading to this trip, I'm sure the irrationality of this all will hold sway.  It's the kind of person I am. 

But I've been waiting for this trip for four and a half years (since the last time I was in Rome) and I am just ready.  I am so ready.  April 19th cannot come fast enough.  (But no more Rome dreams, hopefully.)