I came across a greeting card this morning that made me laugh. The front shows a Mom driving a car with a couple wild kids in the back and says, “Mom, you took us everywhere…” The inside says, “And even brought us back home! Astonishing!” It made me think back to the road trip my family…
Category: The People I Thank
Quit a Job to Go To Italy? A Story about Motivation
In January of 2006, while on a beach in the Florida Keys with two dear friends from my college days, my mother called me. After exchanging pleasantries about my trip, my mother got to her point. “So your grandmother joined a senior citizens group. And guess what the first thing was on the agenda of…
Rocky Road
I rushed through the front door with a carton of Rocky Road ice cream in my hand. “I know you all don’t really like chocolate, but I wanted Rocky Road,” I told my hosts who were sitting in the living room. They looked at me in dismay. “Did we say we didn’t like chocolate? Are…
Lessons From A Four Year Old
It was the shoes that first caught my attention. They lined both sides of three wide steps which led up to platform on which sat a tent. A sign on the top step said, “Please leave shoes here,” and people had – sandals, boots, flip-flops, sneakers. What was this place? Could I go in? Any…
Smoking Hot
In the junior high cafeteria, I sat alone every lunch period. I knew no one and no one seemed interested in getting to know me. I had braces, no fashion sense, and a body that was all out of proportion. I ate my lunch as fast as I could without making eye contact, then stuck…
Changing Tastes
I scoured the shelves on the door of the refrigerator. Dijon mustard! Score! I smiled as I squirted it into an empty salad bowl. I hate mustard. But I always have some in my fridge to make this very dressing – one that I loved from the moment I tasted it sitting in my host…
The Joy of Blogging: Grandma and the Camino
Before my parents took off for the weekend, they asked if I could do them a favor and drop something off at my grandmother’s house. I agreed – not just to maintain my #1 Daughter status, but also because I was moving in less than a week and visiting Grandma was something I needed to…
A Down Day
Walking the Camino, like walking any other path in life,can sometimes have its “down” days. Today was one of those days. I just didn’t feel like walking anymore. I opened my pedometer to see I’d only walked 200 steps since last I checked it. The route was descending steeply and full of rocks. It took not…
On Walking
As we walked toward Piazza Venezia, I flipped open the pedometer on my belt. “How much?” Daniel asked. “Nine miles.” I’d made a mistake earlier of telling him that I set a personal record ten days ago when my sister Jessica and I walked seventeen miles one day in Rome. He, of course, wanted to…
Another Cinque Terre Tale
“This is ridiculous,” I called down to Scott, thirty feet below me on a trail of our own making. “This is the kind of stuff you hear about on Dateline NBC.” With that, he and I started to create the opening monologue of the program that would tell our tale and subsequent demise. It was…
RenaissanceRebecca 