Lost Lovey and Other Life Challenges

While my book has remained untouched this week, I have solved two problems I mentioned in my last post. The first, easier to solve problem, was the crazy eyebrows. Solution: eyebrow gel. This looks like clear mascara, and is available at the drug store.

The second problem was the left behind lovey. That one’s not solved yet, but plans exist for a solution. Ah, the saga of Bunny. Not my bunny, Bunny, but the 10^th grader’s bunny, Bunny.

She still needs Bunny

I would have to tote this up as our most major trip-related glitch. To effect the return of this fifteen year old stuffed bunny – and I’ll believe it when I actually see the grey old thing again – has so far required about a thousand and twelve emails with the Hilton Garden Inn at Rome Fiumicimo Airport, the filling out of two forms, faxing (required, who knows why) of my credit card information, a copy of my passport, and two trips to the shipping center because we don’t have a fax machine and the fax didn’t go through the first time – why not? Because Italy?  The return now has involved at least one random Italian bank holiday, my MIL, my MIL's friends, my MIL's friends' son, one of my brothers-in-law, and, I am grateful to add, kind offers from at least two friends to transfer Bunny into their hands, or into the hands of a relative of theirs, when next they go to various points in Europe.

What a cosmopolitan set I run with!

Anyhoo, Bunny will be delivered by DHL to my MIL when she is in London visiting friends next week at a cost of 36 Euros (plus credit card fee, I’m sure). Not to mention one phone call to Rome, and $7 to fax the above-mentioned information, which may or may not be safer than scanning and emailing it, but is certainly more costly and inconvenient. I’m hopeful that Bunny will wing it back to the states at the end of next week. Then we’ll just need to force ourselves to get to NYC to pick her up. I don’t know how or when or why we’d ever want to force ourselves to NYC…..

This plan remains theoretical.

The glitch aspect is real, though. Although preferable to breaking an ankle, leaving behind this lovey has been an expensive and time-consuming problem. There’s the need to not forget about Bunny, to follow up with the operations manager and the front desk at the hotel on sending the required forms and obtaining price quotes, which takes energy and periodic allotment of time. There’s the processing of the news that to return Bunny to us at home would cost 70 Euros. That’s over a hundred dollars. That’s a lot of smackeroos, but still falls under the heading of Be Careful What You Wish For, because, if you remember from my last post, I hoped simply that the cost would be less than doing laundry in our hotel in Rome was, and it is that.

I’m pausing to let that last bit sink in for you, Readers. Travel tip: Before you leave  home, research laundry services that pick up and deliver, if you won’t have time to visit a Laundromat. Hotel laundry can be repulsively expensive. And yes, we did wash a bunch of stuff in the sink; but a family of four racks up more than a sink’s worth of laundry in a few days.

But, really, when it comes to a lovey, value is inestimable. Right? I still have my bunny, Bunny. She’s basically thread and disintegrating, yellowed foam at this point. I would show you a picture of her, but you might laugh – and then I’d have to hate you, Readers. Bunny is kind of my Dorian Grey portrait, if I think about her existence in a certain (bleak) way. Thread and yellowed foam stuffing, patched over, with shredded ears of unequal lengths, in an old doll’s dress. She’s fifty years old.

I’ve held up better than that.  And now that I’ve got this eyebrow gel, things are looking good.

Who knows if the fifteen year old will hang on to her bunny as long as I have? But I want her to have the chance. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have to follow up with Simone, Francesca, Alessia, and Oscar at the Hilton Garden Inn at Rome Fiumicimo.