What a difference a year makes

I just finished reading this post, dated one year ago today, and I just cannot fathom that 1. Italy was so, so hard (and I was so, so whiney) and 2. That I had so many moments today, one year later, in America, where I was like uuuhhhngggghh my life is so haaaaaard.

Just to recap for spoiled, present-day Jenny: today you were upset because your Irish twin preschoolers were fighting like rabid dogs much of the morning. Well ... they're 19 months apart, male, and quite possibly rabid, so what? This time last year you had a broken shower, a broken dishwasher, no car, no friends, almost no ability to communicate with your neighbors should there be a medical emergency (or convenient access to any medical care, actually) and absolutely no access to the Super Target which you painfully navigated for 27 minutes at 9:14 am this morning. 

I am not winning in the game of emotional maturity. Except I guess, until just now, that last paragraph up there, I hadn't actually shared any of today's shameful struggles with the internet like I would so readily have last year.

But oh the day...the day we had up in here. I mean besides the drive to Target I had to assemble lunch while they shrilly and persistently sang their siren song for "cold milk please" which I had to painstakingly fetch from my full size refrigerator and pour into their dime a dozen sippy cups which I have no problem ever finding replacements for. Also, I couldn't decide if the AC was too high or too low so I kept messing with the thermostat because those boys! They won't keep the door to our expansive, landscaped, fenced backyard shut. Also, 3 loads of laundry. Sigh.

Seriously, Italian Jenny wants to murder American Jenny right now.

I also saw my little sister for a morning visit, took my posse to the most ridiculously upgraded public library in all the land for a little literate afternoon delight, and walked 3 blocks to the beautifully landscaped public school/park complex at the end of our street which features a creek, several bridges, 3 separate playgrounds, and miles of clean, green, cigarette-butt free grassy play fields.

Yeah, my life ain't hard. I'm just getting soft.

Do you ever dip back into your archives? What do you experience when you reconnect with your former self via the written word?

P.s. Linking up with Blythe because I dug a hole in the backyard, let my 3 year old fill it with the hose, and then let him strip naked and frolic in it. It was 89 degrees so, pretty standard, textbook "hot mess."

(streaking picture withheld because his father would kill me)