Skip to main content

Days 23-29



I’m eating Doritos right at this very minute because last week, my Austrian friend took me shopping. We went to a place called The Snack Shop that sells all kinds of American junk food. I succumbed, but I hadn’t broken into them until today, probably because there’s so much amazing regular food that who needs junk food?

So, yes, I ate Doritos today, but I also listened to parts of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. That must cancel out the Doritos, right? Better yet, I got a library card! Which has absolutely nothing to do with either Doritos or Mozart, but it makes me happy.

Anyway, since the last time I wrote, I have attended a Back to School Night and met all the teachers and got all the forms and signed all the paperwork.


I took the gingerbread boy to Prague last weekend solo because the Gingerbread Man was presenting at a conference in New York. I navigated Prague—there, around, and back. Are you impressed? I am. Especially because my data didn’t work while we were there. And this is me we’re talking about.

Lost Girl.

We didn’t see any of the things one would normally see in Prague because we’ll be back again with the Gingerbread Man, but we did hit up a gingerbread museum (well, duh! Of course we did) and an old book store.



We ate some street food (fresh potato chips, sweet cylinders of dough), met a VCFA friend of mine for lunch (Love that Ellen Yeomans!) and learned that the Czechs do some amazing things with sauerkraut.


We walked across the Charles Bridge, had a Thai massage which alternately felt like I was getting beaten up and like the best massage ever, and found ourselves in the middle of a marathon. We took a walking tour with the Night Watchman, had ice cream in those amazing dough cone-things, attended mass at the cathedral (much to the amazement of the keepers of the door: “You want to go to mass? In Czech? Sit for an hour?”), walked down the narrowest street in the world, and slept in an amazing room that was as fairytale as they come.




I went to the Naschmarkt on Monday, simply to keep the Gingerbread Man from falling asleep. A four day trip to the States does not make for a happy circadian rhythm. We somehow ended up purchasing about $25 of green olives. I’m still kind of scratching my head about how that went down. Perhaps I can chalk it up to jet lag?




I’m making plans now for our first big trip to Italy in October. I also checked out information for a trip to the Netherlands in April. This weekend? Tacofest at Mexikoplatz, and a big flea market. Hopefully, we won’t come away from it with a ridiculous number of olive pitters.

Tschuss!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Sky is Everywhere Contest!

I first heard Jandy Nelson read an excerpt from The Sky is Everywhere during her graduate reading at Vermont College of Fine Arts. The words absolutely sizzled from her lips, and I couldn't wait to read the whole thing. Unfortunately, I had to wait until the publishing world caught up. When I read the finished book, I started it over and read it again. Then I bought a copy to give to my sister. (Yes, I GAVE it to my sister.) Now, thanks to a pay-it-forward contest, I am soon to have my very own copy and give away yet another copy. Casey McCormick began a pay-it-forward book contest for The Sky is Everywhere in an effort to spread the love, and to generate new sales for a talented author. Her contest inspired other contests, one of which was sponsored by Melissa Writes Fiction , and I won that contest. Yippee! So, to make good on my promise, here is my own pay-it-forward contest. Please read the rules below, because this contest is a bit different. The most important condi...

The Greening

Sadness spreads like a sower scattering seeds. The seeds find fertile ground in her and land there, burrowing into her skin, into the deep down places where they sprout, nurtured unwittingly by blood and bone. Shoots spread forth growing both inward and outward, and she wonders if she will ever be able to root them all out. It is like pulling at a dandelion only to have stem detach from root and downy fluff fly off, enabling dozens more dandelions to take root. There is no cause for the sadness; it just is, like cold in winter, like leaves in fall, like rain in April. It sits there, within her, growing bigger each day, a pregnancy gone horribly wrong, and she feels the shame of it. But a breeze blows by, bringing different seeds, renegade seeds, hopeful seeds. They sprout in the midst of all the sadness; they choke it out. When she looks out the window today, she realizes that the world around her is greening. She decides that she will too. She will choose joy.

I Think I'm a Grown-Up Now

I'm reposting something I wrote on my personal blog two years ago. I can laugh about it now that I don't feel the need to visit the guidance counselor's office anymore. The answer to my question was so obvious--had been obvious for years if I had taken the time to see--but apparently I had my blinders on. Or my rose-colored glasses. Or my peril-detecting sunglasses. One of them, at any rate. ***** Mid-Life Crisis The question of what I want to be when I grow up is plaguing me again. Sometimes I think I want to be like Mrs. Murray in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle---a brilliant scientist with a lab in the barn, cooking stew over a bunsen burner. But then I feel too old to go in that direction, not smart enough to be able to pick up and retain that scientific knowledge quickly enough, and not balanced enough to do it all gracefully. Inevitably, I would poison my family with an accidental slip of something into the stew. So I'm back to wondering what I hav...