how did I get here?

Hello fellow pilgrams. Welcome to a new day.

When you think about it, that's pretty great. Yesterday always goes away and tomorrow always comes. Sometimes I wish time would stop for awhile, but it's probably a good thing that it doesn't. I haven't really thought through all the ramifications, so lets just leave it as it is for now.

No muckin about with time today.



Don't show this to your kids. It will MESS THEM UP. Actually, you probably shouldn't watch it either. BTW, am I the only one who gets a little wierded out when you can see a muppets' feet?

I am in the mood for a little catchin' up. I've been reading lots of new blogs during NaBloPoMo and have been seeing some new people poppin up here. How nice. So I thought instead of my usual daydreaming about life, or this great world we're in, I'd tell you a little bit about myself today.

One question that has been asked is: Why am I in Italy? Here goes:

I met my dear M in graduate school. M is Italian as in born and raised in Italy, fresh off the boat, and I met him one night at a party of a mutual friend. I start with that, because I'm not sure I would have moved to Italy if I hadn't married an Italian. I've always wanted to live abroad, but didn't really have a strong preference as to where... anyway... I remember he said something about my dimple (there you go boys, the big pick up line). We hit it off really well, like immediately, if you get my gist. My thoughts were, "well, that was fun" and just chalked it up to life is good, cause there is no way that someone that charming is actually interested in homely old me. But then he kept asking me out. I just went along with it in a mild state of disbelief for a few months before it started to dawn on me that he might actually really like me. Then I let myself really fall.

Jumping over the years of sailing pregnancy marriage babies house job (yea, that's all in the order it happened)... we find ourselves in California with a mortgage the size of Montana and couple of cute punks... life is good.

But M had been scouting for a new job since forever. One day he asks me, "I have an interview with a company in Italy. Do you want me to do it?"

It's an interview. Why not? Of course I want him to do it.

So he has the interview. The first one was in California. Then a second one in Boston. Then we fly out to Italy for a week. We suddenly have a big decision to make.

Some years earlier M had figured out what it would take financially for us to move to Italy. The offer was enough. M wanted to change his job anyway. My company was willing to hold my position for two years (we're going on three now, so thank you ;). The kids were still in pre-school. We figured in the worst case scenario it doesn't work out and we move back to California after a couple of years abroad. That's a pretty sweet worse case scenario. We wanted to go and just couldn't find a good reason not to. So we went. And here I am.

That said, all this happened after we had given up on ever moving to Italy. We tried for years to do so, but never found a situation that wouldn't mean flushing away our work experience, or savings, and starting from scratch, first in Italy, and then again in the US if we had to move back. When you go for so long on graduate stipends, the thought of doing it again can really sour the deal. Of course, this happened after we finally decided to buy a house. Murphy's law can be a real kicker. I've learned to roll with it (ie, the title of this blog) and life is good.