Travail a la Maison

As I was doing the dishes AGAIN today I was pondering the exact qualities of travelling that I love and I realized that one of my favorite things about travelling is that when you travel you do not clean! You do not worry about the state of the laundry or the dishes. You do not have to clean the bathtub or dust or vacum and heck you don't even have to make your bed. When travelling you declare a boycott on cleaning for a few days in order to go explore the unknown.

So tomorrow I am declaring my own cleaning boycott. The laundry can pile up (that's what happens when I'm on vacation anyways!) and for one day I am going to boycott all those normal housey tasks and enjoy the small portion of freedom that affords me outside these four walls. Maybe if I'm lucky one of those hotel maids will come by with her cart and set out clean towels, small soaps, and make my bed!

Torre Di Torta / Torre Pendente Di Pisa

Yesterday was my husband’s birthday and birthdays seem to require cake. A baker I am not but Pilsbury cakes and canned frosting aren’t too complicated so I prepare the tasty two layer dessert. When I placed layer number two on layer number one, I did not look closely enough to realize that my pilsbury creation was leaning. I noticed as I am frosting but decide it’s not too bad. When I finished frosting the lean is quite noticeable. I try to adjust but it’s hard to move a layer that is stuck in cream cheese frosting. I tried to compensate by putting more frosting on one side. However the lean was undeniable.

I couldn’t help but think of the leaning tower of Pisa. Much like me with my cake, the builders realized the lean of the tower a little too late but couldn’t stop – the endeavor must be completed! And now the tower is known for its unique and what seems to be gravity defying lean. Not what the architect originally envisioned but the tower has lasted 837 years - not bad! Pisa is on my list of places to see – hopefully before the tower falls. Today I took a cyber-historical tour of the tower and the grounds. When I research a place before I visit, it makes me ten times more excited when I see it for real. Here’s some info on Pisa: http://www.towerofpisa.info/Tower-of-Pisa-history.html

So in honor of the leaning tower of Pisa and my husband's birthday our little family is marvelling at the lean of my cake and enjoying it and all it's uniqueness - not what I had intended but memorable just the same!

Windows to the world

OK if this isn't travelling in your own backyard I don't know what is!
Winscape

I can just see myself walking around my house all day wearing that tracking device while I cook dinner and change diapers while enjoying the view of the Golden Gate!

Today I decided it is time to renew my passport. 10 years ago I went to Rome with my good friend and I still remember how exciting it was to fill out the grueling long questionnaire, gather up the info that proved I was who I said I was, pray for the passport picture to look fabulously flattering (it did not), and run to the mail box every day to see if my passport had arrived. I find it interesting that the dream of travelling abroad seems to begin with my homeland. My hope is that someone in a small government cubicle whom I have never met, will agree that I was destined to travel and will therefore grant me the access to the adventurous unknown in the form of a small, thin blue book. The first stamp in the passport was such a sweet victory. And there have been far too few since that day in Rome. And so today I will relive the excitement. This actually inspires me to go change out of my pjs and do my hair and dream that maybe the walmart photo studio will somehow be able to take a fabulously flattering passport picture of me even though I am now 10 years older! Where am I going you ask? Who knows - I don't have immediate plans to travel abroad - but who cares - if the chance arises I will be ready! Want to update your passport or apply for a new one? Here's the site with all the info!

What's it all about

I love to travel. No seriously I love it. I love going someplace new that I've never been to before, trying to figure how to get around, smell the smells, eat different food, people watch, see the architecture. I love trying to communicate in a different language or just listen to people's accents that are different than mine. I gravitate to the Frommer's guides every time I'm in Barnes and Noble and I have a box of maps.

I come by it honestly - my grandmother has traveled the world and use to send me postcards from locations like Fuji and Brazil and Paris. We have definitely decided there is a travel gene and we both posess it! It's the gene that makes us dream of drinking wine at an outdoor cafe in Rome or ziplining through the Amazon rain forest.

Travelling is something though that requires time and money and you must prioritize it over staying home to do the dishes, make the dinners, take out the trash and taking care of kids. Most days the daily drudgery must be done while my dreams of travelling sit on the back burner. I have 2 kids ages 5 and 1 and yeah, yeah - people say you can travel with kids but that is a different kind of travelling than I am interested in! It's hard to be the adventurous traveler in a foreign country while you are dragging a whining five year old girl who has a weak stomach and trying to keep a one year old boy from running into traffic!

But this blog will not be about my kids and their snotty noses and their incoherent sleep patterns or their funny faces and witty comments (but believe me i could talk for a long time about those things!). Instead this will be my retreat and my attempt to find the qualities I love about travelling in my own, wondrously blessed but somewhat boring, every day life.