Coming to America...and more

Friday is the big day. Watch out Columbus, (or Coloomboos, as it is pronounced in Eye-talian) here comes Senior Paolo...

This time around he is only staying for about 8 days, because his brother is having a baby (well, his brother's wife is having a baby) so he needs to be back to work when Antonio takes some time off to be with the bambino.

We have a lot planned while he is here including a friends 30th b-day party, some time in Hocking Hills, the Blue Jackets home opener, MY 30th birthday (eeek!!), meeting friends, family, and getting the official Maggie tour of Westerville and Columbus--"this is my middle school... this is my dance studio...this is where we would drink illegally before high-school football games..."I'll take him to the Short North, cause it's the coolest, possibly the zoo (I have free passes), Easton, etc, etc.

I will also force him to eat Chipotle, watch the OSU game on TV at a bar, drink Bud Light, go to Target, and sing the star-spangled banner (Ok, maybe not the last one).

I can't wait to see him, and I can't wait for him to see MY home. I've been looking at it so differently since I have been back. The other day I was in the car with my mom and blurted out "Wow, the trees here are SO big!" I got the "you are a freak" look, and have since learned to keep those types of epiphanies to myself.

I have been pretty busy since I've returned. School is back in full swing and I am taking 3 classes this semester, including statistics--which is like nuclear physics to me, so it's quite time consuming. I've also started all of the legal paperwork for a dissolution and have been in touch with Leslie, so emotionally, I am also pretty exhausted. I experience such an array of feelings on any given day, that sometimes I wish I could turn them off. In fact, sometimes I feel like I just go numb, because it is exhausting to go from one extreme emotion to another. I got lucky and found a yoga studio within walking distance from my parents house--which is convenient for me considering I live there right now, and I don't have a car (doesn't make sense to have a car payment when I am leaving again in January--oh yeah, and I am unemployed...) I have been talking to my friends at the bank and they are trying to work on a way to get my job back, so I am crossing my fingers. An income would be nice...and necessary.

Some differences I've noticed about myself since my trip...I walk A LOT more. It's funny, for example, here we will go to Target...and park in front of it. Then we want to go to Best Buy, which is 300 yards away. And what do we do? Get in the car and drive to it. Seriously. That's American insanity. Another thing I've noticed is the food. I saw a commercial the other day for Giant Eagle. It was advertising all of your "dinner favorites" and was highlighting a montage of popular dinner choices. ALL of which were in boxes!! Why does everything we eat come out of a box? Is anything fresh?

Things are so wonderfully organized and efficient here, there is a process for everything, therefore things generally run pretty seamlessly. Customer service is hands down the best in the world, and people are really, really friendly.

And fat. People in Columbus are fat (back to the food in a box theory). I've read that we have the 3rd heaviest city in the US, but you don't really notice it until you travel to other places and see that people are not overweight like they are here. I know this is something that is becoming more of a focus for us, so I hope that it's something that begins to change soon. Parents--FORCE your children to play outside. Run, kids, run!!!!

Back to myself, I know that I've changed a lot. But I can't really put my finger on how. It's just like things are different...I take things in differently and in turn, probably respond differently. I do no try to cram 300 things into one day. That's something I've learned. We tend to set unrealistic expectations of all of the things we want to accomplish in a day, and when we can't do it we feel bad about it. It's silly, and it takes so much of the joy out of each day, because we are flying through it, not really thinking about what we are doing because we are focused on what we have to do next.

Ok..so there is my current in-a-nutshell update. I think things are kinda coming to me in spurts, in regards to processing everything. I'm sure the visit from Mr. P will definitely be blog worthy. Otherwise, keep checking back...I'll continue to try to post, it just might be on a little more of an irregular basis.

Ciao, ciao.