What a great life!

the living room of our Cortona apartment in Tuscany

The outside courtyard of our apartment. There are 15 apartments in this building total. It has a pool too! 

Brian and i leave for Italy in the morning. I have over planned, over organized and have left no stone unturned. What i haven't done, i can proudly say, is overpack. And thanks to my friends on Facebook, pearl, louie, my niece Kylee, Aysin, many WEA friends, my sister in law Debbie, Julie, and so many others.... I so appreciate their comments on my series of Really Dumb Traveling Questions. (I think there were 7 in all.) I am not going to be that traveler that holds up everyone.

I am having the best time of my life...!

• I retired. (I did go back to work for this month at the headquarters office, but my last day was yesterday....so now i'm totally free!) 
• I used an ATM machine for the first time. 
• I am going to Europe for the first time in my life. 
• And we finally got that Last Will and Testament - picked it up from the lawyer just this morning. 

What's weird about getting that will is how great i felt when Brian and i left the attorney's office this morning. The feeling was similar to when we applied for our marriage license oddly enough. Maybe because marriage and death are a huge part of living. All i know it was a huge weight off of my shoulders. We have talked about it for years and years but never got around to doing it. This Italy trip was the push. If our plane goes down now i will feel a lot better knowing that we got that out of the way. 

Also, I have to take back my feelings of a love/hate relationship with Facebook. It's been an incredible resource for a planner like me. How on earth did i ever go anywhere without the Internet and Facebook? 

I will say though that it has been quite the ordeal getting ready for this trip! There are so many things to think about and remember for someone like me who doesn't travel. This is only my fourth trip on a plane since 9-11 We went to Mexico in 2002. Santa Fe i think in 2003 and Sedona in 2012. In comparison my niece Kylee is on trip #14 in just one year!

I always have some anxiety about flying due in part to a few horrible flying experiences in my limited air travel. (a terrible storm on the way to Japan - my first air travel when i was 11 years old and  i threw up the whole trip sitting by myself next to a soldier i didn't know (my mom was with the three kids in front of me) ; lightning outside the plane near the wing on a trip back from Yosemite in the 80's where even the flight attendants were strapped in and looked scared; a big drop in the plane on the way back from Palm Springs in the early 90's when i went on a buddy pass with my flight attendant friend Molly. When that happened Molly said "THAT's not normal." 

But what i will do is remember all of the million of miles that pearl travels without incident. And Kylee. and so many others. And i do know that i am probably less safe every time I go for a run by myself as i have been doing all these years. So that and Xanax (and a bloody mary) will get me through the willies. And truthfully, once we're up and settled in I do look forward to the forced relaxation of just being. 

Ok, nothing too riveting, but i just wanted to change the blog. 

Oh, here's a photo of my luggage, packed and ready to go. (My plan is to wear many of my clothes more than once since we have a washer, so that helped packed less clothes!) 

I think i did pretty good!