Exactly one year ago today, I was in Verona, Italy - an often overlooked gorgeous Italian city in Northern Italy not far from Venice or Lake Garda or Switzerland.....you see what I mean by overlooked? I spent a month only in Verona and planned on staying longer. As things often tend to go, plans changed and I had to return to the USA on the perfect day, July 4th! (Luckily, I'd already been to Switzerland and Venice!!) I had packed up my nearly 20 years of living in Brooklyn and took off for England on April 30th, 2013, leaving my essentials in storage. I have dual EU/USA citizenship and my life is transportable so I thought I'd go visit some friends in England and then.....probably Italy as I knew Italian (but wow do I need to work on my grammar!) and I'd loved Italy on my last visit. But where? Not a big city, not a tiny town - I needed a "Goldilocks" version (for blondes, of course) that was just right. It was Verona. 




The flying gods dictated that I was to fly home via Sicily.  The Palermo airport is an interesting one as upon immediate observation, I'm quite sure that with the requisite Vet papers, one could in fact, check in a goat along with 9 suitcases. Never saw anything like it, but then there's a reason why Sicily and Italy like to separate themselves from each other. That's an entire post or seven. The flight home was THE LONGEST of my life - approximately 10-11 hours in reality, not bad compared to the flight from Sydney, Australia to LA - that's about 17 hours, but after 12-13 one really wishes to GET OUT. It was also the worst landing ever; the plane must have stalled as we simply dropped onto the runway; no light two-stage touch down. WELCOME BACK TO NYC!! Now, you're homeless - not exactly how I thought things would be. I'd always expected that I might need/want return to the States but I'd have time to make arrangements; the bureaucratic nonsense that called me back did not allow for such idyllic notions. I booked an airport hotel; one does not travel NYC on the 4th (things are exploding all around)....then into the city for a few days. During the weekend, I called some family in Westchester who'd said "come on up!" I did and from here, I now write.


One year later. I've got a nice new bed, TV, couch and car that does more things than I can figure out; it even started speaking French one night while I was driving to Connecticut. I'd been trying to use the hands free option. I tried, in French, to ask it to revert back to speaking English. The technology has not come that far yet; it took awhile but I had to reset it by hand on the "mission control" panel in the dash. Oh and this MacBook is new too. I haven't a CLUE what it does. It looks nice though and it has my screen writing software on it. One of these days I'll go to the Apple store, see a "genius" and maybe figure out what this thing does. Might be handy.


So guess what now? I'm planning to move to Florida! I think even the "Where's Waldo" people would be thinking "I'm out!" Because here's where else I need to be (but not necessarily live, except maybe for New Zealand!) now: Colorado, England's Lake District, Seattle, LA, St. Barth's, New Zealand, Les Calanques, France & Switzerland because they confiscated my Swiss Army knife last year at JFK. Yes, I know you can buy them anywhere, but mine WAS purchased in Switzerland and the name of the town (Rapperswil) I bought it in was etched on the main blade. You can see my dilemma. First, I must work on getting me and my things to Florida. Oh if only to have Star Trek Next Generation transporter technology! "Energize!" Me and my things were atomically broken down and reassembled in Florida. Not going to happen. I've got boxes. Many, never unpacked. Thank goodness.