Italy and a murder mystery (or something)

1. Today I came out of the post office to see a car with a license plate frame that read "Happiness is being ITALIAN." It made me smile, as earlier in the morning I'd had a skype call finalizing the details of my trip to Rome next week. There was an Italian flag sticker next to it and a flag hanging from the rear view window and a sticker in the window that said something in Italian but I didn't know what it said. The car was cool. Silver, sleek, I imagined it belonged to a man proud of his heritage or maybe a spunky mid-thirties woman. But as I glanced in my rear view mirror ready to drive off, I noticed an elderly woman climbing into the car! I had heard her chirp, as I left the post office, "I'm back! I forgot to buy a book of stamps!"

I went on with my errands, Walmart, for a light rain jacket and a prepaid phone card, and Target for some on-sale thank you notes and a new notebook for end of the day journaling and beginning of the day prayer.

I went to Kroger after that, made a big loop, to get tilapia and other such morsels for dinner. (Okay, I don't know if I'd call tilapia a morsel, but it is a fun word!) THE ITALY CAR WAS PARKED TWO OVER FROM MINE. Note, this was quite a while after the post office sighting. It wasn't as if she'd followed me to the store. I hoped I'd run into her in the store, though I wasn't sure I'd be brave enough to mention the car, as I'd just seen her from inside my car after all, and she hadn't seen me.

I was perusing the clearance shelf, looking at a box of fancy decaffeinated black tea, when SHE APPROACHED. "Are you finding any good deals?" She asked, and I showed her the tea. Earlier, I'd been told via skype that in Rome they don't really drink tea in cafés. (I suppose it is less common here, as well.) I told her that the tea was a good deal, "if you like tea" and she said "I LOVE tea!" And that gave me hope I could still love tea and live in Italy. :)

2. I've started reading Gone Girl for my mama's book club, which I've joined. I'm not a thriller, murder mystery kinda gal. There's enough of that in real life, I don't want to read it for pleasure. Ugh. I'm only about fifty pages in and I already hate it. Not because anything has really happened yet, I mean, something happened but we have no real information, but because I can already feel the tone of "menacing" and "sinister" the back of the book warned me about. The book is a page-turner, quite riveting, I'll give it that, but I hate it. The writing is magnificent, and the characters, I think so far, are well done. So if you're into that sort of genre, give it a whirl. I am just not!