About 20 hours from now, my plane will take off from JFK to Berlin, and then fly from Berlin to Rome.
At this point, I feel like I am essentially paralyzed with excitement. All of the packing and preparing and talking to the luthier every day has swirled me into a pile of bones that needs to be put on a plane.
There’s really just nothing else I’m decent at right now…
In effort to defy jet lag, I’m planning to stay up all night. This way when I get on the plane, I should be just about ready to pass out something fierce.
As much as the first two weeks of this terrible absence dripped and dragged, the last week was quicker – and the last 24 hours have flown. For me, this is the fairy tale part. I just need a godmother to slap Italian into my brain with her wand. That would be extremely helpful.
I’m really good at terms of endearment, however. So at least if I find myself in hot water because of my lacking language skills, I can still tell everyone that I love them.
I’ve packed and unpacked my bag three times. I’ll probably do this two more times 
before I close it. There is something completely surreal about my impromptu trip to Italy and the beautiful man – my favorite, in fact – awaiting me therein.
There won’t be screens on my trip, just mountains, waves and the love of my life. Probably an instrument somewhere, paper and ink, I imagine.
Finally. For a minute, I really believed the day would never arrive. I wrote a poem I really liked during that dismal set of days, at least it was good for something.
Now I’m out…