11:26 a.m. - 2006-05-22
Ways I Enjoy Torturing Myself
I am very, very good at torturing myself -- mostly in the mental and not physical sense.
One of my favorite and best-loved ways to torture myself is by playing a little game called "One Year Ago Today." I usually only do this to recall extremely happy times (hence the torture), but sometimes I do it to mark milestones of things I'd rather forget.
Last week, and this week, I've been playing "One Year Ago Today, I was in Itay." It's a great way to depress myself -- I can become fully reminiscent of sitting under Tuscan pine trees, eating mozzarella di buffala and swilling good red vino, all the while eating a vile Lean Cuisine at my desk and counting the hours until I can go home. One year ago today, exactly, I was on a train, heading from Venice to Milan, pretending to sleep while I really just avoided my husband and father, who had almost come to blows over an argument over which seats on the train were ours and where the luggage was supposed to go. That is what seventeen days with your parents in a foreign country will do to you.
I could wax nostalgic about Italy until the cows come home, but if you read "Under the Tuscan Sun," you'll know what I mean, and why I'm obsessed with this country and its food and its clothes and its land and its language and its people and every other damn thing you can think of. Ahhhh, but Falls Church, Virginia, has its charms, too. There's an Einstein Bagels, and a Starbucks, and we're close to the mall.
