It’s up early and out by around 1:30pm. Airport shuttle. I’ve never actually taken a shuttle to the airport. Usually someone drives us – or I park down at the airport and pay $40 to park so that I can drive us home after our trips. I really hate asking/depending on people to drive to the airport because it’s just such a drag. We’re almost ready to go – just a few last-minute details, saying goodbye to our cute cats and bidding Los Angeles farewell for a couple of weeks. We will be hitting Milan, Modena, Florence and Rimini in Italy and then flying over to Paris for four days and four nights (which turned out to be expensive, too expensive to justify). I’m still feeling much trepedation about this trip. My daughter is now 11 and she’s plenty old enough to really figure out the whole situation. I just hope that it goes as well as possible for her.

She didn’t grow up with her father and didn’t meet him until she was eight. She then visited him again at nine. Then we skipped a year and she’s going back at eleven. This is an experiment to see if it’s possible to forge a relationship between her and her Italian relatives. Part of me feels scared about it – like what if she gets hurt somehow. There is no grand plan. We’re just kind of making it up as we go. If all goes well, the process will move forward. If it doesn’t, I’ll pull the plug.

Finished, I tell you. Flipping through O Magazine and it suddenly hit me that the cult of Oprah is about perfecting, not accepting. Suze Orman scolding we befuddled and bad financial planners, the array of things we can’t possibly afford – freaking ballet flats for $300? Spanx to suck us in, agonizing books to read on top of being the best mom, the best business woman, the nicest person, the most charitable – you know, enough already. It’s hard enough just remembering to buy and then correctly use tampons so that you can spare that last decent pair of underwear. Christ almighty. When will it end.

Oh, and asterickly speaking, I once went up for a job to be the Oprah guide on About.com. Did not get the job. Why is this not surprising?

Aquafan is a big water slide park located in Riccone Italy. It costs some bucks to get in but once in you can ride very scary water slides or else wade in the smaller kid pools. But if you don’t get there early you don’t get a chair and if you don’t get a chair you spend a lot of time standing (if you’re not swimming). But in their large pool they have “entertainment.” Here is a sampling:

The open market in Rimini is spectacular. You can find any number of fruit, vegetables, meat and of course fish. It’s the best and only way to shop. We went today and loaded up on clams for lunch and some kind of fish that needs peeling for dinner. I promise pictures of all. We have five days total left in Italy, two days in Rome and then back to the urban sprawl I hold so dear.

Since I haven’t had time to update what with the exhausting beach trips and lounging at the beach bar but here but here is a link to the flickr page with all of the updated pics.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61914873@N00/

I promise more later. But tomorrow is a national holiday and I’ve been sworn off using any electronic equipment. Italy is lovely.

I really hate to be the type of person who would rather sit in an internet cafe than wander the streets of Rimini but there you have it. A fast connection, ability to know what’s going in this strange little newsy world of the net. I am happy to be able to spend time on the outside of it, as Emma and I are doing. It does put things in perspective, no doubt. No one, for instance, at the end of their life, is going to have made memories sitting in front of their computer. Most of our lives still need to be among the living, I’ve decided. Easier said than done.

Today Emma and Luca are at the beach. Maybe later we will go to Aquafan, a popular swim park here in Rimini. Emma wants to see “miniature Italy” and so we will probably do that. I want to go to San Marino and so we will probably do that as well. It’s lovely here.

After a two-day travel odyssey we have finally arrived to a windy, sort of rainy Rimini, Italy. It is nice to be here. Jet lag has gotten the better of both of us, though, and we were awake with our various demons at 3am and finally went back to sleep around 6am. Rimini is full of vacationing Italians, French, Russians and the occasional — very occasional — American. It is not a big tourist spot and is yet undiscovered. Maybe because it is so retro, so established in its ways and isn’t as pretty as some of Italy’s other beaches it isn’t on anyone’s list of places to visit before they die. Even Fellini, who was raised here and buried here had to get out and never really came back. Though he paid tribute to it in Armacord he certainly never “gave back” to his hometown. In a doc about his life he revealed that the Rimini in his mind is the one that counted most to him. Well!

We will have lots to report and eventually get the photos up on Flickr. Right now we’re dealing with internet “issues” and thus, can only squeak out this fairly pathetic post.

If I had a brain in my head, which it is clear I do not, I never would have booked a trip that makes us literally traveling for two whole days before we even get to Rome. After a brief laydown disguised as sleep I forced myself awake at 3:30am to make coffee and get our shit out the door. Cheap airport parking meant we drove ourselves. Los Angeles is at its best at that hour. There are no people in their cars clogging the freeways and believe it or not you can actually see a star or two.

I surprised myself at how organized I was, remembering even our passports. I had a brief sweaty palm moment as I looked at 9 year-old Emma’s passport. What if they expire earlier than ours? But luckily, there is still one more year on it.

A very nice guy named Julio is housesitting for us while we’re away, a traumatizing event for our three cats but hopefully not fatal. Getting the old hovel ready for Julio was a chore onto itself but lo, it was actually looking pretty nice when we hurried out of the door this early morn.

A mostly eventless flight on Air Canada has now brought us to Toronto where, I kid you not, we have a five hour layover. Then it’s an overnight flight to Rome where we have to kill another five hours to get the direct train to Rimini. We won’t even be at our destination until 10pm tomorrow night, if you can believe!

Never again. Never again! No matter how much it costs, next time we’re flying direct. Emma has proved a formidable and efficient and rather joyful traveling partner. Other than making me carry her backpack (argh) she never complains, hurries when she’s supposed to and even tried to console me when I freaked out on landing.

Yes, plane travel is the safest way to fly. I know this. But nonetheless, I am human and I’m born to be grounded. Whenever there is the slightest bump upon take off or landing it freaks my shit out. But I tried to think positively: “dear God, hear my plea. If you’re going to kill us in a plane crash please at least let us go to Italy first.” No, I didn’t really say that. I know better than to pray to God after all of these years as a staunch non-believer. No, I take my licks. Life can be suddenly tragic and that is all.

On a happier note, watching Europeans and Canadians and anybody but Americans is always an uplifting experience. They don’t seem to care as much as outward appearances as we do. I know that is a gross generalization but still.

Here are the archetypes I’ve noticed so far: Annoyed writer type with his writer magazine, his Ipod and his cell phone. He kept pushing his seat back every time I accidentally bumped into it. Graying hair AND a pony tail. He was seated next to a very nice seeming Israeli woman and every time she had to get up (I think she wet herself once because they had to change the seat she was sitting in, literally lift it up and change it) he begrudgingly stood and looked impatient and put out while she walked to the bathroom. A woman who looked very LA. Mid 50′s, bottle blonde, Kabbalah bracelet, expensive big bag, watching “Waitress.” You get to watch a variety of media samplers on Air Canada. A sleeping teenage boy with an iPod blaring. A screaming toddler who did not want to be placed in his seat, a wild seeming, ready to bolt Asian girl with a flustered old Asian man chasing after her. Granddaughter, I bet. Both were driving the other absolutely batshit.

We’re trying to make the best of it but both of us can’t wait to get to Italy!!