About the time most of you read this, we’ll be on a plane back for the United States.  Forgive any typos and misspelling because I’m in a hurry to make sure I get this posted!

Where did we leave off?  Oh, yeah, right before we pilgrimmed to Cascia.  St. Rita hums - that’s the best way I can put it - and in all the best ways.

Leaving Cascia, our GPS plotted us a course to Todi.  When it insisited I drive down what looked like stairs in Cascia, I knew we were in trouble. I dutifully followed the directions, bumping down the stairs, and then it gave us a left turn onto an almost single-lane sorta paved road going straight up a mountain, with a sheer drop-off on the right and no guardrail.  Um.. have we ever mentioned my vertigo and fear of heights?  I can deal if there’s a guardrail or if I’m driving on the inside lane, but driving on the road ahead of me had my heart racing and my little fists clutching the steering wheel like it was my grip on sanity. The boys kept offering to have me pull over (where?!?!?!) and they would drive, but I told them I couldn’t sit on the passenger side of a sheer dropoff either.  After about 10 kilometers of that, I finally was  breathing somewhat normally and dealing as best I could.   The mind has a way of starting to block out what is terrifying, which is handy.  This route took us through more windy, obscure mountain passes than I thought existed.  A couple of hours later, it dumped us out on the highway going into Todi.  Simply.not.fun.  But an excellent method to cure me of some of my fear of mountain driving.  By the time we drove into Orvieto to the train, I was passing cars on windy mountain passes.

And here we are in Rome. All my life I had heard of Rome cab drivers, that they are crazy, drive crazy, just close your eyes when you get in a cab.  My suggestion when our train got into Termini was to take the Metro to our hotel, which a metro stop was really close by, we had a map, it would have been perfect.  No, the boys wanted the “convenience” of a cab.  I had major doubts, but…. we hailed a cab.  Any of you ever play the Grand Theft Auto game?  The boys couldn’t figure out on the drive over whether to jump out at a stop light in terror or take notes on his driving technique for GTA4.  I was terrified, so I just blocked it out and didn’t look.  Now, we gave him the address of our hotel, but I guess he decided just taking us to the other side of the Tiber was good enough, and he basically dumped us out there, indicating Viale Vaticano and gesturing up the hill.  Well, hell, I had no idea where we were, and maybe it was around the corner, and then he just threw our bags out and sped off.

Where were we?  We had no idea.  Luckily we had the GPS, which we pulled out, only to find we were still about a kilometer from our hotel, So we walked there, dragging our bags and hot butts behind us.  

St. Peter’s Basilica (again, we don’t have pictures yet, no SD card adapter for this computer) is… hmmm, I don’t have words. It is a place you can see thousands of pictures of and still not get it.  It’s just a place you have to go inside of and see. I could have easily spent a couple of days just in there.  My not-so-little nontourists at least let me spend an hour before they jetted out.  

Wednesday, tour of the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. Sistine Chapel…. meh.  Kidding!!!!!!!  It is truly a work of art on a scale that you just have to see.  Paying for the tour was worth it, just the little asides on how it got done, the politics between artists, but seeing it is something you have to do if you are anywhere near it.   

Follow-up for the afternoon was the Coliseum.  Holy Emperor, McFly, I’m sorta moved that I was standing on some of the same spots that people stood almost 2k years ago.  Rome is full of that, excavations, bits of stone buildings.  Rome itself?  Yikes, it’s a dirty fright of a city, but I get its magic because I want to come back, but only for a day or two at a time.

These places are like Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, if you’ve never seen them, you take the “idea” of them for granted, but once you go in person and see how truly vast or rich or beautiful they are, your perception of those terms are changed forever and some of the significance of your life is both dwarfed and magnified. 

Now it’s a good night’s sleep and home.  How I long for home. My own bed, unlimited coffee in the morning, my dog, my books, my kitchen I never use.  It has been a wonderful adventure and one I would do again.  Taking a trip like this with your grown children is a treat - you learn about each other in ways you would have never done in just daily living.  By the end of three weeks, we are now picking apart how each other eats or clacks a fork on teeth.  It is both frazzling to nerves and endearing.  We’ve learned how to be more patient with each other because the world’s a big place out here and can be lonely and scary unless you have some people to laugh and share it with.

Thanks for sharing this with me.  Ciao until next week!

Isn’t there some sort of law that nobody should have to live in hotel rooms with boys?  I’ve somewhat insulated myself from my sons’ messiness with a big house, confining the limits of leaving socks draped over chairs and boxers under chairs to their own rooms. Living in a hotel room with them?  Eh, not so fun.  I mean, they are a blast, but I’m not enjoying wading through piles of their clothes on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Paris was… well, Paris.  My boys, as it turns out, are only tourists when they want to be.  Waiting in line to go into St. Chappelle is a big no, but waiting in line to get inside an old Chateau with turrets way up high is a big ole yes.

Another interesting fact — men and women shouldn’t be in the same car together when the chick is driving in a foreign country for the first time, the boys are navigating and, well, all hell breaks loose. It went something like this:  Harry has the GPS - for which I am eternally grateful that we had that or there would have been one or two young men now walking down the side of a road outside of Tours looking for a phone to call home to their father - and he thinks I am a terrifying driver, which I am not, but I am a cautious one and a tidge distracted in a new place with new driving rules and also, might I add, very narrow streets, and my depth perception pretty much blows.  Just the drive from the rental car place back to the train station (did I mention how much I love trains?  why can’t the U.S. get a good train system?  I would take it everywhere, screw the planes, it’s just not comfortable or fun, but trains…. ah, yes) was traumatic.  I was ready to kill him, and he was being snarky and mean and condescending, none of which are normal modes for him, except when someone else is driving that he thinks isn’t driving up to his standards… he who has had his license for, what, two years?  Anyway, no less than three times before we got a kilometer outside of Tours did I want to just dropkick his butt out of the car. His brother, who started his own commentary in the back was next on the list, but he was quieter. My mom and my aunt thought I did great.  So we had a “Come to Jesus” meeting once we got to the hotel that was along the lines of “You may not talk to me that way…. ever… or you will just be dead, and yelling at me and telling me I suck as a driver does not instill confidence in me… and roundabouts aren’t normal in Colorado, and I’m being cautious and I’d appreciate you saying ‘right’ or ‘left’ instead of ‘there’ or ‘this’ or ‘that.’  It’s more instructive, not to mention helpful.” 

What has come out of all that after three days of driving in the Loire Valley?  Thank God we have a GPS that we take with us everywhere.  Our new code phrase for “Blew it,” is “recalculating,” but it must be said with a slight sigh and world-weary tone like the lady on the GPS who pronounces General Leclerc as geneerallllek-lerk.  We think Chateau are super-fun. It’s even more fun when you can’t get into one and spend an hour walking around the entire outside of the walls and moat-that-now-is-a-big-old-garden, looking for a way up and over, only to come back ’round the front and find the sign we should have read at the beginning… you know, the one in front of the now open front gate that says their lunch hour ends at 2 and they re-open for business.

Yeah, we.are.brilliant.

The smell that I’ll remember forever is the climbing roses outside of our hotel here in Amboise and… well, everywhere! They are in full bloom and magnificently perfume the air.  Did you know they grow so much better next to a stone wall?  Well, yeah!  so now I’ve decided I need to build a stone wall around all or part of my backyard during the landscaping I’m doing in July.  The boys have offered to build it (I’m anticipating we get a one-foot start before I call someone to come finish).  It will be perfect for yellow roses.  Who says you can’t bring some of your vacation home with you?

The picture at the top isn’t one we took, but it is the old chateau at Amboise that we can see from our hotel window, with the Loire River out the other windows. Our USB/SD card adapter FUBAR’d before I could get my first picture uploaded, and finding another one of those has been impossible thus far - if we get one, we’ll be uploading hundreds of pictures.  Tomorrow we are on a train for Avignon.  Miss you all!

After reading Marina’s review and Ina’s review of MDCI perfumes, we were so dismayed when we thought these would be so exclusive and so expensive, only Paris Hilton could afford them. Then the elegantly charming Claude Marchal’s explanation that these perfumes will be accessible cheered us right up. Being the inquisitive and acquisitive rich mafioso’s moll wannabes that we are, we prevailed upon Mr. Marchal to send us some samples. Have we mentioned how charming he is and funny? Today we’re reviewing the first three scents in the MDCI line; these were done by Francis Kurkdjian (FK).

Now, before we begin, the names on these perfumes are just not conducive to writing a good review. Part of talking about a fragrance involves using its name. But saying FK1 and FK2 really blows the sexy name component every perfume must have. So we’ve taken the liberty of renaming them. You’ll be able to see fairly quickly why we aren’t going to get jobs in the fragrance industry naming perfumes. [March says: you invest all the time and effort in the juice, and those flacons, and you can’t come up with better names? Also, the FK nomenclature is alarmingly close to the FCUK scents, which is about as far at the other end of the class spectrum as you can get. I’m going to use the French phrases from your online catalog.]

Acey Deucy (FK1) has notes of mandarine, lemon, ylang-ylang, jasmine, sandalwood, tonka bean and vanilla.

Patty: As Marina noted, it does start off like Guerlain’s Attrape-Coeur. It doesn’t veer that far off of it for me, but something in it is easier for me to wear than AC. AC stays too stout or powdery or both, and this one seems to assert the tonka bean and vanilla in a different way that makes it pretty gorgeous. I prefer it to AC, which is saying a lot, because I think AC is pretty gorgeous to start with.

March: No. 1 — “pour le jour” — I love the opening, a pop of champagne fizz with some tart citrus on the side. I can definitely see the reference to Guerlain here. It’s the least sweet of the three — greener, with more of an emphasis on the sour fruits than the florals. Somehow I like this less than I think I should. Don’t get me wrong — it’s very nice. But the drydown goes a bit flat and sour; like Patty I find myself comparing this to Attrape-Coeur, only I think A-C is a richer, more pleasing fragrance, at least on me.

Pretty Princess (FK2) has notes of litchi, peony, hawthorn, moroccan and turkish roses, violet, cedar, musk and vetiver.

Patty: This one is supposed to be all pink or rose, sweet and soft, and Lord, it is. This is the softest of pink linens and velvet and satin with a blond-haired cherub sitting in the middle of it. If you say a bad word about this, you’ll make the Baby Jesus cry. It’s like soft, pink babies, you can’t stop sniffing it. At first, I didn’t think this would be for me, no matter how pretty it was, but I’ve changed my mind… this is the one I have to have. The sillage on it is just stunning. I waft through the world in the Ferrari Daddy bought me, trailing pink furs, pink pearls, and tinkly silvery-pink giggles. How can something so wrong for a grown-up woman of 47 turn out to be absolutely right?

March: No. 2 – “tout en rose” — I could smell the rose from the start, its sweetness cut perfectly by the slightly gamey, green smell of hawthorn and peony. I kept waiting for that moment when the rose smell makes my stomach lurch – but, shockingly, we never got there. I am having a really hard time describing this one, because I like it so much. There’s something dilute about the rose – watery in a good way – more like a rose under water? Gad, that sounds stupid. This is the smell of roses from a distance during the middle of a heavy summer shower, with you safe and dry under the gazebo. Watery, woody, green with a rose underlay. My clear favorite of the three, and I can’t believe I’m typing that. Patty, help me, I’ve been kidnapped by aliens!

Le Reste de L’histoire by Paul Harvey (FK3) has notes of bergamot, mandarin, ylang-ylang, jasmine sambac, tuberose, rose, wallflower, patchouli, sandalwood, vanilla and vetiver. (translation of The Rest of the Story provided by some free translation service, so it’s their fault if I butchered French — I don’t know enough French to be able to butcher it)

Patty: (pacing in front of credit card) No! You.may.not.buy.another.perfume. All I can say is: Hold Me, Betty, Or I’ll Buy Again! As much as I liked Isvarya from Indult, this one gives the complete story on that — it is like it takes that idea and finishes it. Must be the tuberose, which punches up from the bottom of it like a scalded cat about 20 minutes after application, and then it’s like Tuberose Criminelle dressed up in her best jasmine undies. Again with the sillage, I can smell me everywhere, but it is not annoying or intrusive, it is just right.

March: No. 3 – “parure por le soir” — I am not the first blogger to comment that there is something Guerlain-ish about this one as well, and you know from me that’s a compliment. It has the rich, baroque complexity of the sort of florientals I love – Apercu and Mitsouko spring to mind here – along with a bit of the soft powderiness that appeals in many Guerlain scents, like Plus Que Jamais and Attrape-Coeur. My overall impression is the well-orchestrated notes coming all at once, rather than sequentially. This isn’t a fragrance that’s going to turn your head with its wild innovation, but if you’re looking for an evening going-out fragrance that is as elegantly constructed as your dress (or dinner jacket – a man could wear this), without smelling instantly recognizable in the way that, say, Joy and Mitsouko often do, this would be an excellent choice.

Patty: The thing I am liking the best about the Mad Dogs (we have renamed the MDCI part of it too because we can’t remember it except to think of Mad Dog 20/20, the first two initials to get it started) is that they are not going to whack you over the head with a statement. At least these three (we’ll do the other two next Wednesday) develop slowly and beautifully, but I noted in trying all three of them that the sillage is really gorgemous. It is not linear, it catches you here and there as you walk through a room or move, and you just want to find that smell to try and get a little closer to it.

If you want to buy these, you can either get them in the stunning presentation for lots and lots of filthy lucre, or you can get them, for the time being, in the aluminum containers for 1.5 ounces for 130Euro or the 2.5 ounces for 150Euro (about 170 and 200 U.S.) by e-mailing the so very kind and charming Claude Marchal at parfumsmdciparis@free.fr.

Have we done a drawing this weeK? No? Well, let’s fix that. Drop a comment if you want in the drawing for a sample set of all five of the MDCI scents.

Staying Home for the Teen Years (washingtonpost.com)

This is all I’ve learned about teenagers, having been a really bad one and having one son that’s 16 and the other about to turn 13:

1. Some teenagers have trouble, some don’t.

2. The teenagers in trouble don’t always correlate to bad homes, bad parenting, bad situations, single parents, two parents. I have three brothers (named Tom, Dick and Harry, my dad’s cosmic joke) and one sister, we were raised in the Midwest, on a dairy farm by two traditional parents with a lot of discipline and love. Two of my brothers were shithead teenagers, one was an angel. My sister was an angel, I was a total teenage bitch. Three out of five turned into Bad Teenagers®. Odds suck.

3. Don’t judge the parenting of a teenager until you’ve raised one. For those of you that got lucky and had easy teenagers, good for you, but try not to look smug about it, it makes those of us raising Teenagers From Hell want to kill you so we can go to jail and get out of raising the damn alien that stole our sweet, adorable child. Especially do NOT remark that you don’t understand why teenagers have so many problems, yours were just perfect, maintained a 4.0, got a full boat scholarship to Harvard. STFU, ‘kay?

4. Teenagers talk when they want to. The single most important thing you can do as a parent is to be there when they want to talk. Don’t tell them what to think, feel or be, just shut up and listen. You can get your point of view in, but you have to listen first.

5. Don’t be a hypocrite or liar. Teenagers have a hypocrisy/truth meter like a bloodhound’s nose — they know it when they hear it, they don’t mind pointing it out to you, and if you deny you’re being a hypocrite, they won’t hear another thing you say. Their lying friends are a whole other matter — they are trusted absolutely in all circumstances, over you, so don’t expect that truth meter to work there. Remember, your teenager’s friends are someone else’s lying teenagers, ‘kay? And your teenager is their friend’s lying friend. Don’t get on a high horse about your kid’s friends, some other parent out there is in as much pain as you are with their own psychotic truth-impaired hormonal Teenager.

6. Blue hair, spikes and all black clothes can be attractive — it just requires a new definition of attractive. Love your teenager and let them figure out who they are without you overtly trying to help. They’ll figure it out eventually and return to an improved, older version of the lovely child you once had, but they’ll stick in whatever hellish outfit they land in if you try and form them back into Garanimals for Teenagers.

7. Set good limits, but be ready to give on the stuff you really don’t have any control over. Kid run away because they got bad grades and are grounded? Get him/her home safely. That’s your job, to keep that kid alive and off the streets. A kid can get their GED, can improve their grades, but you can’t bring them back from the dead. This doesn’t mean give them anything they want. This means be prepared to listen to why they think school isn’t relevant, that they feel left out, that they don’t feel like they fit in and compromise if you have to without giving up the stuff we can’t compromise on.

8. Love them even when you don’t like them. This is how they learn about unconditional love. They have to know from someone that no matter what they do, you will love them regardless — when they lie to you, break your trust, steal from you. This is the testing ground for all that stuff you just played around with when they were toddlers. “No, no, Junior, don’t bite your friend. I don’t like what you did, but I will always love you.” Lot harder to say and mean it to a snarling ball of nihilistic angst that’s taller than you, dressed in black with spikes in his hat that’s pulled down over his eyes. Refer to hypocrisy/truth meter in rule 5.

9. Don’t ever give up on them. They need you to keep believing in them, even when they’ve lied to you and broken every promise they made to you that morning. They need you to believe they can be better people. They’ll likely disappoint you over and over again, but don’t you dare accept where they’re at right now or they will stay there — ask them for better, expect better, keep going back over why trust is important, but never, ever ever tell them they’re a liar and a cheat and that’s all they’ll ever be. If you’re a liar and a cheat yourself, fix yourself first before you try and fix your Teenager.

10. Work on getting them to tell you the truth, but be prepared to hear it. Plead for mercy when you’ve had enough, ask them to warn you if they’re about to tell you a truth that could hurt, but tell them you will hear the truth and you’ll give it back to them.

11. Don’t compromise for a second on your morality. If you don’t have morals, go get some now. Then accept that for a while, your Teenager will likely not accept your morals or definition of morality or may even argue that there is such a thing as morality. This is not the time to play around with the concept of moral relativism in your thinking. Act like like a grownup for a while, you can go back to slipping and sliding morality once you get the teenager out of the house, but do not screw your kid up in that way and then foist him/her off on society with shifting values and a moral compass set to Maybe North.

12. No matter how many times your Teenager tells you “everyone is doing it,” don’t believe them. Has it been so long since you were using that on your parents? And that means sex too. Don’t flirt with this subject. Unless your moral compass thinks it’s okay for teenagers to have sex (and accept they’ll likely be having sex with much older people as well once you take that position), be very clear that you expect them to refrain. This includes young men and women. Do not wink at your son, slip him a condom, and tell him you know he needs to sow his wild oats unless you’re prepared to slap your 15-year-old daughter’s new boyfriend on the back and invite him to spend the night. Expect better from them. Be clear that you understand they may not always live up to what you expect, but you’re not lowering your standards. Society may be telling us and them that teenagers can’t control themselves, but have a little more faith in them. They aren’t animals with no impulse control over their sexuality. They ARE insane, but not insane animals. They want you to tell them the limits. They may go over them, but don’t let the reason be because you never bothered to tell them that their sexuality has value and shouldn’t be passed out like treats to whoever asks.

Mosty…be prepared to change into a better person. Teenagers will make you be the best person on the earth if you let them. You’ll have the patience of Job, the forgiveness of Jesus, the perseverance of a Saint. They will learn from you who they want to be when they’re done being an insane Teenager. I’ve only got about two hell-filled years under my belt so far, with about five more left, but I wouldn’t trade what my teenagers have taught me for anything.

But what do I know? I ain’t done yet!

tip for original article link to Marriage Movement, a great website