Mysterious Bites and the City of Lights

So I woke up this morning and the first thing I noticed was that my right eye felt weird. And everything was a little blurry. I sleepily stumbled to the bathroom (carefully, as to not disturb the sleeping hubby who was slumbering blissfully after watching the Gators play to victory at two in the morning), and went to check myself out in the mirror. (Something I don't particularly enjoy doing after I have just woken up.) My reaction at my reflection--Holy cow, Batman! (Okay, I didn't actually think that. It was just for affect.) I look like Quasimodo! (minus the hunchback) Yes, my right eye was a lovely shade of pink and had swelled nicely enough to blur my vision. And I had a complementary huge bump on my forehead above my eye. Hmmmmmmm? Strange indeed. Although, as I have had several instances in the past where my eye has swelled up for some unknown reason (turned out that one of those ended up being the result of a friendly feline), despite my slightly deformed appearance, I wasn't all that concerned. Except the large bump. That was disturbing.

As I sat down to check my e-mail I noticed my right wrist itched. And my left hand. And my knee. A quick scan of these areas revealed to me that I had been unknowingly eaten alive in my sleep by some unknown Israeli pest. Then I remembered that I had woken up in the middle of the night scratching because my hands and wrists were itchy. FYI....probably my biggest pet peeve is when people say that they are "itching" themselves. No, your skin itches, but you are scratching yourself. I'm not a stickler on grammar (clearly) but if you ever tell me that you "itched" a bug bite, I will hurt you. (Even though according to Wiki it is apparently acceptable to use it this way now. To that I say.....whatever.) But I digress. Anyhoo, so I was still in that half asleep mode, where unless you are on fire you just shrug it off and go back to sleep, so I didn't bother to check to see what little creature might have been sharing our bed with us. So I have no idea what could have possibly taken so much enjoyment in eating me for a midnight snack, but now I am sporting several very large red welts each about the size of a silver dollar. And my red swollen eye is super hot. Apparently I am super sensitive to bug bites, if you may recall from the earlier sand flea encounter. In particular Israeli bugs, as I don't seem to have had this problem before. Although I am always the person who will get bitten a hundred times when in the company of mosquitoes (I still swear I had a mild case of West Nile once!) while Phil will only get one or two bites. Must be 'cause I'm so sweet. ;)

In any case, I'll be staying home today to allow my puffy red welts to calm down and my freakish eye to return to normal. Nobody needs to see that. The weekend was pretty lazy around here. We just decided to stay home and take it easy. I'm currently in an obsessive compulsive knitting mode and Phil is currently in an obsessive compulsive research mode. Which brings me to our bit of good news. We have booked a romantic trip to France and Italy in February! We had been talking about where we wanted to travel next and started talking about places in Europe that we would like to visit or revisit. And while we've both been to France and Italy, and Phil has spent much more time in both places than I have, we both have definitely been itching (no pun intended) to get back and see more of both places. We haven't taken any real trips since we've been here so we started looking for tickets and when the price was right we jumped on it!

So, it's going to be Valentine's Day in Paris! Actually, we are kind of looking at the trip as a really long overdue honeymoon as well as an extended romantic Valentine's Day getaway. Usually we're not really big on Valentine's Day anyway. We always tend to avoid the overcrowded busy restaurants and usually just have a nice quiet dinner at home. But the last two years have been seriously lame. Two years ago Phil was in South America with his friend Chris. I was home--alone. I think I watched chick flicks on my couch all day. Last year we were in Oregon and it was the day before the movers were coming to pack us up for Israel. We were busy and stressed, surrounded by chaos in our apartment and ordered in Papa Johns pizza. I think they even offered a heart shaped pizza which we didn't even spring for. Somehow that would have made it even more pathetic. And then we scarfed it down in about 2 seconds so that we could get back to work. Romantic, no? So yeah, we're about due.

So we'll start in Paris on February 12th and work our way down to the southern coast of France and then over to Italy and eventually down to Rome, which will be our final destination. The whole trip will be 18 days in all, and we'll be back just a few days before my 30th birthday (Oy vey, 30 already!?!?!) and a visit from Phil's folks. Phil has been hard at work all weekend researching hotels, transportation, etc. He's really good at doing that. Lucky for me because I suck at it. In fact I don't enjoy it at all. So I am sooooo glad that Phil enjoys it and is good at researching, otherwise we'd end up in Paris without a place to stay or any means of getting there. I'm not so much about planning the vacation as I am about actually being on vacation. (Kinda like our wedding. I really didn't enjoy the months of planning beforehand but I would relive the day in a heart beat!) But unfortunately planning can do a lot to ensure that you actually have a good vacation and don't end up stressed and frustrated. Hmmmmmm? That reminds me of our trip to Spain several years ago where we did virtually no planning ahead of time. I distinctly remember driving late into the night then finally pulling over to stay at a roadside hotel where it was freezing cold, and we realized we could have just stayed in the car and frozen our butts off for free. (Okay, so Phil actually wanted to sleep in the car but I refused. Yeah, we both knew full well what we were marrying into!)

So anyway, that's the news from here. I better get to my workout now. If I am going to spend over two weeks eating nothing but brie (seriously, I think it's my favorite thing EVER), croissants, wine and pasta then I need to make some room to ensure that my pants will still fit me when we get back! Au revoir and Ciao!