Okay, I’ll be upfront with you people. There’s a reason my blogging has been sporadic and absent-minded, and it’s not just that I am 1)revising a Holy Week pamphlet  2)Going over copy-edits of the Mary Magdalene book 3)contemplating a new project that was suggested to me last week that, if I do it, will need to be done in like two weeks 4)Awaiting word from a publisher (not one of the two normal ones) that is considering a variation of a proposal of mine 5)Preparing for a quick project that I will have to start on January 25 and turn around in about a day 6)trying to write a Young Adult novel, and get it done in about a month.

It’s because about two months ago, I decided we would go to Rome at the end of February, and I finally bought airplane tickets last week.

Why? Short version. Well, sort of short:

In mid-November, I thought of a killer book proposal that involved European travel. The publisher who heard the pitch thought it was a "genius" (his word) idea, but was, not surprisingly, less than enthusiastic about funding this enterprise I was proposing, suggesting something similar on a smaller scale. That is still under discussion.

In the meantime, I started idly researching what exactly I could do in relationship to this proposal (yes, I’m being vague), and started reading travel discussion boards at Fodor’s, Frommer’s TripAdvisor, SlowTravel, etc. And I got this skewed sense of reality: aka everyone is going to Europe except me. No fair!

(My dad’s trip to Rome last spring, and repeat this forthcoming spring also fanned the flames)

So, when the book proposal talk died down, I kept looking into things and decided, given our family situation, this would be a great time to take the plunge and do the crazy thing of taking everyone overseas. Why? 1)Katie will be in high school next year, taking honors, etc. classes and taking her out of school won’t be an option. 2) The baby is still a baby, and hence, still a lap child  3) Going in the summer costs about twice as much in every area.

So, I clicked that mouse and bought those tix. Now I’m deep in the drugged-out-like phase of researching apartments, and contacting various Rome-based bloggers and other contacts for tips and assistance and meet-ups.

So there you go. We’ll be there on Ash Wednesday – how penetential of us – and will try to squeeze into the Papal liturgy at St. Sabina’s, although I hear the church is small, so good luck to us on that.

I’m not going to open comments on this at the moment because I HAVE to work, and not be tempted to come back over and over to check this thread, because I know y’all are full of tips and suggestions. Later – but you know, if you’ve got a lead on a good deal on an apartment in the Borgo Pio…let me know!