Countdown to Our Italian Voyage: 4 days to go!

So, it's 4 days and counting. I'm counting by minutes, not days or hours. There aren't enough minutes in the hour--not enough hours in each day. I'm being hit by all sorts of curve-balls, too. Like when Lisa and Lucas said they "had" to go to his school's bingo night so Lucas can have one last blast seeing his friends. Right after school today, Mom decided Lucas needs a haircut, even though my view is he'll fit right in with Italian kids with a more shaggy cut. More time lost. And I need Lisa to sit down with me--uninterrupted--and double check all the paperwork and scheduling. And I still have some house buttoning up to do. Put away stuff in the sheds, put the pool pump away, etc.... 

And then there's the pain in my butt over the last 2 months. We've had an electrical problem that I've been hassling with... and that needs to get solved before we leave. I've done my own electric for the last 40 years or so, but this one has really got me stumped. After tackling the problem 6 times, revisiting with varied solutions, well... it's still is not working right. (I won't bore you with the details... this isn't an electrical forum, but if I don't solve the problem our automatic security lights won't go on while we are away.) Needless to say, I'm trying to squeeze in another 2 hours this weekend to my already overburdened plate to give it one last try. Sigh.

Yesterday I got all the lodging details and confirmations into PDFs and ready to install on my Kindles and phones. Today I'm loading them up. Next, it'll be making sure we have all the plane, train and automobile stuff ready and squared away... either in PDFs and/or in a folder to take with us.

When going through the hotel details yesterday I came across photos our first stop... an agriturismo in southern Tuscany. I ran the slide show of pictures and it DE-stressed me right away. I pictured myself sitting there looking out onto that rolling Tuscan vista. I pictured myself on that stone veranda having a glass of wine and some cheese. Ahh...

Almost there... stay calm... Yes, that's right. Practice your Italian... Stai calmo!

--Jerry Finzi