I’m reading his book right now. “Does The Noise In My Head Bother You? A Rock N’ Roll Memoir” .
The guy has an unbelievable sense of self and humor and an insane like quality of writing.
Gotta love this guy. He’s Italian. Who doesn’t love an Italian?
More later.
An afternoon at Pretend City with the kids was fantastic! An evening at the Hollywood Bowl with The Him and Jason Mraz was magical!
The same pose could be said for our son on this flight. To say that I was exhausted after just manageing to make this flight would be an understatement. We both needed a rest after that sprint through the Houston airport.
P.S. - The mint julips...if you ever make it to the south and have one...it is BOURBON!!! Don't let em tell you it has sugar and mint in it....IT IS BOURBON!!....lol...holy smokes...a few drinks of one and you can say bye bye. I managed to have just a couple of sips before I declined the rest...knowing that if I were to drink it all I would not be able to drive back to the hotel :) lol.
Another little P.S for all that follow our blog. We are here...we are healthy...we are raising our kids and having a blast doing it. We are though, unfortunately, spending probably way too much time on Facebook. :) Hope this finds you all well.
My heart stopped for just a fraction of a second and all the breath got sucked out of my body.
I wanted to be thrilled that everyone else in the house had been implicated in the screaming, but the reality is that I am aware of my Dragon Mom status and that the bellowing starts at the top and screeches it's way down the totem pole.
I always feel bad about it. (Does that make me human or a rationalizing bastid?)
I wanted so badly to pull over, shine a light over my angelic little curly tops head and ask my little one to DEFINE screaming, you know, in her opinion. But I didn't want to alarm her and I was kinda hoping she'd forget about it before we arrived at the Child Development Parent Participation class and told all the other mothers my dirty little secret.
I honestly want to be the Mom who calmly intervenes when she spots the children pulling the dogs ears in seperate directions and hanging on to the tail as the poor animal is running for safety, but I tend to be the mom who inhales as if she's witnessed a drive by shooting and I start to yell.
I long to be the Mom who calmly goes to my 4 year old and gently hugs him after he's slapped the crap out of another kid and asks what he was feeling and what made him do that. But my honest to goodness first reaction is to quickly assess and bellow from where ever I am, "Knock it off!"
I honestly feel bad about my nut job reactions to the 6th time I've told one of the kids to stop whacking the other, through clenched teeth. I mostly regret my incredulous, bombastic intake of breath as one of my kids overflows the toilet. And I almost *GET IT* that screaming doesn't really do anything to change the behaviour but only serves to hurt and alienate my children.
And I guess it really isn't the big deal moments that cause me angst...it's the repetative small things like the constant nagging (me, not them) about washing hands, or the mind bending requests to pick up toys ...it's in those moments that my voice reaches it's highest decibals.
In my defense, I come from a family of screamers. In fact, I must be a push over because I would have never had the nerve to tell my Mom or Dad that they were screaming too loud....the fear errr..respect level was too high.
Anyway, I promised her that I would try very hard to control my temper and not scream. And I even meant it.
Any other screamers out there?
It starts out as a drive on the beautiful Amalfi coastline (I being from California describe the Amalfi coast as Big Sir on steroids). The Amalfi coastline is beautiful!! Enough said. This story also involves 7 of us in a minivan (one cousin, one nonna, one friend, 2 little ones, my wife and me). It involved tight roads...shear cliffs...white knuckle driving by me...did I mention....it's stinkin BEAUTIFUL??!! (see above) It unfortunately involved the gas station below and an attendant named Nino (see below).
Breakfast was great. The little ones enjoyed their Italian latte's and toast. We our espressos and sweets. Lot's of laughs and an anticipation of the day.....
My wife's dear cousin from the area wanted to show us the Amalfi coastline in all it's splendor....Amalfi, Positano, Ravello. Our first stop was to be The Grotto Esmerelda. Problem was that we could not find said Grotto. Our cousin raved about it. We drove back and forth. We asked for directions...we still could not find information on it. After some time we settled on just heading toward Positano. It was after this decision that our day took a turn of great proportion....no one died...no one got hurt....let us just say that our plan of filling the memory chip of our camera did not occur.
Ten minutes down the road we came across the aforementioned gas station and Nino....who we now just refer to as Jackass...and that is probably being kind. I'm sure our Italian cousin was calling him much worse in the following six hours. As you can see from the picture above...this gas station was fairly isolated...out there! It had a great view...but it was isolated...meaning help was not close at hand.
Anywho...We pull into the gas station. Most gas stations do not let you pump your own gas in Italy so we let Nino pump it for us. "Diesel Per vore" I exclaim! He pumps the gas...I pay the bill...we are on our way right? Well...we got about 100 feet out of the drive before the car began to sputter and died. Fortunately we were on an incline and were able to coast backwards back into the drive....with alittle help from the attendants we were able to push it back into the gas station..you can only imagine our confusion!
Needless to say this event kind of sparked some interest in the other attendants at the gas station, namely the gas station manager. He asked Nino what gas he put in the tank....after the verbal dressing down he gave Nino we learned that he had put the "wrong gas" in our car!! What could they do?? We are on a picture taking adventure here!! We need to get going!! How does this happen??!!! Well...I've mentioned we were in these bozo's company for six hours! Here's alittle run down...
Hour 1
They decide that they need to syphon the gas out of the tank...this process takes close to 45 minutes to accomplish. In the meantime...crackers are handed out to the kids...we try our best to keep them entertained...ya see, we made the decision that they were not to leave the car because leaving the car would have subjected them to the danger of the speeding cars that wizzed by us every so often...all you had to do was to step 15 feet from our car and you would have become part of their windshields!
After they finished taking the "wrong gas" out of the car, we pushed the car into the lane for the "correct gas"! They filler up and test it out. Well...the test didn't go very well. It managed to sound worse than when we coasted back in to the station :). On to hour 2!!
Hour 2
Did I mention that is was stinking beautiful here?? It is in the second hour that we become concerned not so much with getting the car fixed, but with keeping the kids entertained and happy. My wife and I, being the communication junkies that we are, had our Iphones at the ready...loaded with Mickey Mouse cartoons and a couple of movies. Let just say by the end of our ordeal our kids became experts in manipulating our phones :) We did not have an infinite amount of power in them though and no way of charging them since the car was dead. We at this time did not think of that because we still thought we might be out of here soon.....HA!
As far as the pit crew at the gas station was concerned...they popped the hood and began to "work" on to the problem....well..they worked on the problem for all of hour two!....On to hour three!!
Hour 3
Hour 4It is in this hour that the mechanic did arrive....not the 20 minutes that the owner said (to our shock!)...but more like an hour and half later!! He now begins his surgery on the car......
While waiting, I found one the ironies of the afternoon. While mindlessly looking through our telephoto lens I came across a sign about 50 yards up the road!
The picture above was one of those shots we will remember. We have to give props to our taxi driver Dominic....a nice older man that knew the area quite well. In fact on our drive he specifically stopped at the above pictured location...not the greatest of pics but you can only imagine how great a view is was....Salerno below and Mt. Vesuvius in the background.
It is here were I will wrap up quickly. It was indeed as you have read...quite a day for us. A beautiful day on the Amafi coastline. Too bad we had the same view for a good part of it :) Dominic got us to Naples and the Hertz dealer. We managed to find our way back out to Amalfi and our hotel. We got to bed around midnight and had to pack up the next morning and head out.
I don't want you to feel though that we did not get our fair share of pictures of the coastline though. The next morning we did pack up all our luggage and passengers and headed out for a day of picture taking in the city of Amalfi and Ravello....and yes....we did fill our memory chip :) Maybe someday, when we get around to it, we will just post those pictures...no words would be needed :)
OK! Now let your fingers walk you over to the Barking Mad lady who is giving away all this crazy money and show us your favorite posts!
