Things that go "bump" in your trip

Shout Out: HAPPY BIRTHDAY Dianne Wade

Prayers to Patty and Scott Chaffin (Patty's Father is ill)

Planning and Chaos: Snapshots from The Trip

Things you can’t plan for……….things that go "bump" in your trip

Yes, Callie is the real writer in the house. I just thought I'd throw my amateur 2 cents into the mix:

The following names have not been changed to convict the guilty:

Peyton got stuck in a women’s bathroom and was pounding on the door for help (but it was in the basement of a non-busy ,classically small ,restaurant).  Meanwhile, his family was upstairs (we were one of the few tables sitting down…..because Americans eat early (6:45pm) compared to the Europeans (8pm)) and laughing about the day, completely unaware of his plight. Fortunately for Peyton, Chancellor came down to wash his hands and heard the pounding. Chancellor said “Peyton?”. After a second of silence, an emotionally exhausted voice responded almost in a whisper…..”yeeeeeees”. Together they freed Peyton from his personal hell. How did this happen? European restaurants have a unique and efficient set up. Both men and women use a common area for the sink and soap and then there is a door for the men’s commode and a separate door for the women’s commode.  How he mistook the women’s for the men’s is still under investigation.

Rainey.

This is one of the things we didn’t plan for……….being sensitive to the  R rated content of the sculptures and paintings (and I’m not talking about the violence or profanity).  With Rainey having two older brothers, we probably didn’t consider the impact of so many naked sculptures and paintings in the different museums. While the kids have been great with our dragging them to important museums, they finally had a break down one day (they told us that they were just going to sit on the bench after only  23 minutes inside the Musee D’Orsay). Later, when we were discussing the day, Chancellor informed us that Rainey had commented  to her brothers “thank goodness we get to sit, if I have to see one more “ding dong” I’m going to throw up”. I’m assuming I don’t need to translate that one for you.

Chancellor

It doesn’t matter what continent that you are on, the parenting dialogue is still the same. After a few weeks of looking at Chancellor’s attempt at letting his hair grow long, and after daily “get your hair cut” squabbles, Chancellor relented to getting a trim. We walked into a little side alley barber shop in Florence and I proceeded to explain to the barber exactly what we wanted. “Trim the sides, trim the back, keep it long on top but give the whole thing some structure”. Chancellor was clear that he didn’t want a buzz cut for the next couple of months. The barber didn’t understand a lick of English but kept nodding and was using hand gestures (on Chancellor’s head) to indicate that he knew what we were saying. At the end of my explanation, I stopped , and with a smile on my face said, “and, also, feel free to be Da Vinci and make this your masterpiece”. I now believe that this was where the wheels came off. Because it was only 4 minutes later, as I was speaking to another American that was waiting for their haircut, I heard a “buzz sound” from the groomer device and I looked up to see “half of Chancellor’s left side of his hair “ now on the ground and then looked up to see Chancellor’s wide eyes of terror in the mirror. At that point, nothing could be done to save him. Ultimately, it ended up being a great cut (although the first day was tenuous because the barber “gel coated” a tuff of hair at the top of his head that made him look like he was a rooster…….and matching 90% of the other Italian male haircuts (below the age of 21).

You learn from history that you can’t learn from history (Nietzsche)

Peyton needed a hair trim for his ears and the back of hairline. Because of the location, the fact that we now had a relationship with the barber, we decided to take Peyton into the same place (3 hours later after the initial event with Chancellor). This time I was VERY specific (pretending to hold the grooming machine in my hand) and showed the spots to be cut. Again, the same barber smiled, nodded, and was excited to get started.  AND, you guessed it, we now had 2 roosters in our nest.