My sister has just left this morning on a much-needed many-month leave of absence and has jetted off to some meditation retreat in California and will be going to a boot camp and a yoga center and all these other places over the next three months, and THEN she is meeting my mother in CHINA for an exotic 10-day vacation, after which she will go off to Europe for a few weeks to meet up with friends. Yesterday she showed me her and my mother's itinerary and of course I was extremely jealous but even if I could AFFORD to go to China I can't afford to use up the vacation days, since I'm saving up to spend three weeks in FLORENCE ITALY next fall for fourth-novel-istic research. Plus I think I am supposed to be doing another book tour for my paperback, which comes out in October, so I might need a few days for that. Anyway, so my father, to my shock and surprise, emailed this morning and proposed that he and I take our own trip this summer. He suggested Nashville or Yellowstone Park. I glamorously suggested FLORENCE ITALY this fall instead. And he said yes, as I suspected, as he loveslovesloves Italy, and he said that he will already be in Austria this October and that we could do it then. Which filled my heart with happiness. Especially as we have much family in Calabria and Turin and we have family friends in Sicily and if he were with me we could go visit them all, too. SO I AM VERY EXCITED. And really all I have to do in Florence is walk and walk and walk around it until I know it inside and out, which I could do with anyone. And Florence is cool. And I really want to go to Sicily, where our friends own a big villa in Palermo and one on the beach. And I really want to see the teeny one-room house in Bova Marina, Calabria, where my great great grandmother gave birth to EIGHT CHILDREN who all died ONE AFTER THE OTHER before she realized that her milk was bad, and then gave birth to SIX MORE CHILDREN who actually lived with the aid of a wet nurse. So I am very excited. Plus the Knitters are here next week. The end.