Doing Nothing

We stayed up until 1:30 this morning and then jumped up at 5:30 to see Linda and Bill off to the airport.  It wasn't a good night for sleeping, because I was worried about oversleeping the alarm. The eventual departure was uneventful, but it was interesting to walk through the Trastevere early in the morning.  We really do live in the party district of Rome, and the streets are dead at 6 a.m.  By contrast, once you get out of our neighborhood, the rest of Rome is coming to life.  There was a late night party-goer sleeping off his hangover on the steps of S. Agata, glasses askew and the usual accumulation of after-party trash.  All the shops were closed up tight.  Bill made the observation that he sees little smoking in Rome, relative to what he expected.  That's true and has surprised me as well.  Bill also observed that there appeared to be no use of chewing tobacco--certainly not observable.  Of course we are in a district frequented by presumably educated and better off tourists, who may be a bit more health conscious, so maybe that has something to do with it.  On the way home, I paid more attention than usual, and noted that wedged into the spaces between the cobblestones there is a profusion of cigarette butts, slowly disintegrating into the dirt that is pervasive in Rome.  As we waited for the tram this morning, we caught a glimpse of the sun rising over the city, casting a bright orange glow over the landscape.  Linda noted that Rome didn't seem to have the accumulation of smog that she had noticed last time she was here.  Whether the orange glow is pollution-related or not, we're not sure.  Certainly the city has made a concerted effort to clean up the smog, and the measures taken to retrofit cars and public transport with pollution control devices are impressive--something we also noticed in Germany.  (I swear:  my next car is going to be a Mercedes imported directly from Germany.  American and Japanese carmakers really should do the right thing and import some of this technology.) But I digress...

After putting Linda and Bill on the train, I crawled back into bed, and we all slept until nearly noon.  Today is an Administrative Day, e.g. Lazy Day.  But funny how that works out:  After I went to bed, my brain was on fire--worrying about getting food, worrying about whether the girls are up and bored, worried about whether Linda and Bill are making it through the airport, worried about the next educational target for the girls, worried, worried, worried.  I realized as I drifted in and out of much needed sleep that I simply don't know how to do nothing.  I don't do it at home, and apparently I don't do it on vacation. Ever. Thus, I'm experimenting with what "Nothing" feels like.  Somehow, I think this isn't going to last much longer.  The fact that I'm sketching out blog posts suggests I might be going a little stir-crazy!