Who the Hell Drank Half my Wine?

I know what you are thinking. I am a whiner. POOR little sad grunt, this girl who is in Greece, for heaven's sake, and acts like it's Armageddon when it rains on Santorini.

Yeppers, that would be me. I blame it on my mother. Have you noticed a trend here?

My mother has always been this freak optimist. I mean, this lady has had cancer more times than I can keep track of and she just whistles through it, pouring wine and figuring out what she can do to make someone else feel more comfortable. It's totally awesome but dang, it's just not fair to the rest of us humanoids with fallibilities to spare.

So the world's greatest optimist gave birth to...the girl who always sees the glass--that half-full one--and screams highway robbery.

The last 7 hours I had on Santorini were perfect. The sun was in full glory, the sea shimmered and I ate fish just off the boat with my fingers and it was the best damn thing I've ever put in my mouth. EVER.

And I can't wait to tell you about it. But it's gonna have to wait, because I walked about 8, yep, 8 miles yesterday, half of them uphill. So (wah) my legs are screaming and I have to go (wah) soak in the jacuzzi. At this really nice hotel in Crete.

And as we are on the ferry to Crete, after the most perfect day on Santorini, what do I say to my husband?

"Santorini is a seductive sadist of an island." Say that three times fast; it's hard. But I meant it. If the weather hadn't gotten gorgeous, I wouldn't have known what I'd been missing. But I saw. And I didn't want to leave because it was before tourist season (when the whole place, according to my mother, smells like steaming donkey shit) and I'd had a perfect day. And anyone with children or a job or a life knows that perfect days happen once in a million.

Glass half full? You betcha. But Crete has its charms too, and a jacuzzi is waiting for this whiner.