Some day is now

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Our farewell trip to SC.  My last day of work.  Our going away party.  Our pack-out.

All of these things seemed like distant dates on the calendar.  Now they have happened.

Our flight is today.  It feels very real.  And yet not at all.

I have spent the last few days saying goodbye to friends.  To DC.  Visiting favorite restaurants again.  (Las Placitas.)  Crossing a few things off the DC to see list.  (Visited the Maine Avenue Fish Market yesterday.  Recommend.)

Now this is happening.  We are moving.  Across the ocean.

I’m excited.  I’m looking forward to the adventure.  To being settled and not living out of a suitcase.  Less so the flight.

And I’m sad.  We have amazing friends here.  It has been 10 years in DC.  You love a lot in 10 years.

I have escaped emotional basket case status by not focusing on how real it is.  There is the internet.  And facebook.  We’ll be back to visit.  Three years will be fast.

But I know we will miss a lot.  Many things change in three years.  We will not get to pick up right where we left off.

But that’s the trade off.  For what I hope is an amazing adventure.  And it is happening NOW.

You can take it with you

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Listen up, troops.  We are going to attack this beach in three waves.  First, group, you’re with me.  You lot are a small team, but have the most essential stuff.  We’ll attack right away.

Next wave will be a larger group, but still small.  You guys will follow in 1-2 weeks.

The bulk of the battalion will follow in 6-8 weeks.  Probably closer to 8.  Maybe more.  You don’t really know how freight will be.

The rest of you peeps will stay here.  Until we all come back.  In three years.  Got it?  OK MOVE.

Obviously this would be a terrible battle plan.  Maybe in some kind of time-warped campaign?  I really can’t think of a feasible scenario.  And it would definitely make a terrible movie.

But this is how our packing went down.  We all (including the infant) get two bags of carry-on.  Then about 700 pounds to follow soon-ish.  Anything else will be later, and the rest will go to storage.

James coordinated the moving effort last Thursday and Friday.  (I took kids to the pediatrician and then settled into our airbnb in SE.)  The way it sounds is that James spent two days telling a team of 3-5 people what goes where.  In an ideal world, we would have had a spare bedroom or more room to separate things.  I found prepping to pack particularly tough because so many things to come quickly are daily use items that I needed up until the end.

Our attempt to set aside 700 pounds of stuff was laughable.  We came up close to 400.  That included ALL of the kids’ toys and books, extra clothing, kitchen stuff, diapers, towels, sheets, and pillows.  I hoped to add extra kitchen stuff if we were light (suspected), but at that point it was already packed.  We had been told that they would pack the 700 pounds of air freight before moving on to other things.  Oh, well.

Our place is partially furnished so a lot went into storage.  Even though we pared down significantly, I have a feeling that it will seem that we over-packed later.  Let the culling continue!

Can we all just agree not to bring toys to the playground?

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Or can someone just explain to me the rules on how to deal with this?

Picture it:  Me and the kiddos, exploring our temporary digs in SE near the Navy Yard.  We check out a new playground.  A few somewhat similarly aged boys are also there.  Sounds good, right?

Henry goes for an abandoned toy beside the slide.  An excavator.  Who could resist?  Out of nowhere, a kid swoops in (while riding a bike) yelling for his toy.  I panicked.  I think I tried to negotiate.  The kid isn’t backing down.  I made Henry give up the toy.  Henry raged.

Later, Henry goes back to play with some abandoned toys.  After a minute, same thing.  For a hot minute, it looks like all will be well.  There are three items and the two boys are playing side-by-side.  Then the owner decides he needs all the toys and physically takes the toy.  I didn’t stop him.  Henry raged.

I didn’t feel good about how I handled either of these transactions.  Not one bit.

Coincidentally, I just started reading It’s OK Not to Share and Other Renegade Rules for Raising Competent and Compassionate Kids.  I haven’t finished it yet, but if I’m understanding correctly, it seems a better strategy would have been to tell the other boy that Henry was having his turn, and try to get Henry to agree to give it back when he finished.

But . . . it technically is the other kid’s toy.  Do I have the right here to assert Henry’s rights?

Also, I worry about other parents’ reactions.  If we brought a toy and temporarily abandoned it, I would consider it fair game.  But do others feel the same?

Bringing our own toys wouldn’t solve it either.  It is a mathematical certainty that all kids’ toys are more interesting than your own.

So could we all just agree not to bring toys to the playground?  Or at least until I develop a spine to talk to other parents, talk to kids, and help Henry negotiate these frequent interactions?  The slide is pretty cool, right?  Ok, thanks, bye.

A blog is born!

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I did it!  I named the puppy.  After much deliberation, I picked a blog name and locked it down, along with corresponding gmail and twitter handles.  

This was hard for me.  Why so difficult?  I have a lot of themes I’d like to cover.  Some go together, some not really.  I wanted a title to cohesively pull together:

  • life after biglaw
  • my attempts at parenting two wee ones
  • minimalism and simplicity
  • prepping to leave the country
  • attempts at writing
  • adventures in Rome
  • food

And I’m sure other things that I’m now forgetting.  I happened to be whining about how hard picking a blog title was to my family (#firstworldproblems) when they congregated for my darling niece’s baptism.  Because I’m so tickled–both by the titles and the fact that they even tried–I wanted to share their suggestions:

  • Rooming in Rome
  • Mommy Gladiator-something idea
  • Spaghetti on the wall
  • Spicy meatball
  • Call and see em
  • To Roam with Love
  • The Italian Blog
  • Gelato
  • Italian Graffiti
  • Renaissance Dare/woman/something
  • Ciao bella/chow bella
  • Project runaway to rome
  • A Roma Therapy
  • The/my Roman forum
  • Something with roman numerals
  • Fiddling in Rome
  • Caesar’s commentaries
  • Hadrian’s wall
  • Circus minimus
  • Rome Antics
  • Something with a play on rom-com like Romemantic comedy…rome-antics

I settled on Roman Reboot as something that could conceivably cover all the topics.  Also, in case I’m blogging years from now after we leave Rome, I didn’t think I’d hate the title even though it has “Roman” in it.  Because this is what I’d like to capture.  My efforts on trying something different to create the life that I want.  I like many things about my current life and some I will miss very much.  Leaving the law (temporarily?) and moving to a foreign country are a pretty big course correction.  I hope not an over-correction.  I guess will see and tweak again if needed.