The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Dolce Far Niente

The old adage is that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. That's rather where we are at the moment. Margene is sick and we're doing everything we can think of to bring her out of it ... short of going to the doctor, which she is still reluctant to do. It's certainly not our preferred way to spend time overseas, but it's what we've got at the moment, so the only sane response is just to accept it, make the best of it, and wait it out.

Which brings us to the title for today's post. The phrase Dolce Far Niente is from Italian and means the sweetness of doing nothing. The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition softens that a bit to "pleasant relaxation in carefree idleness." In other words, today was about sitting around the apartment doing nothing and being content with that. Granted, until Margene feels up to getting out and about, we have little other option, but we have no place else to be and nothing else that we have to do, another advantage of slow travel. Besides, you can consciously choose a particular course of action even when you don't have an alternative choice.

That said, it's been interesting to note an internal struggle to truly be comfortable with just doing nothing. I think of myself as a fairly laid-back guy, but a situation of forced idleness makes me more aware of how habit-forming activity itself can be. I often chide my readers about the trap of being busy rather than being productive. As Richard Bach once so neatly put it, "You teach best what you most need to learn."

I did go make a couple of provisioning runs over the course of the day. The Petite Casino Food Shop seems to be the only enterprise of its kind in the old town and they had sold out of quite a few essentials. Today was re-stocking day and their empty shelves were gradually refilled with a couple of deliveries over the course of the day, so it took a couple of trips before I could get some of the items we really needed. With Margene's cold, we were down to our last few kleenex! In the US, that would be a simple problem to solve. In the heart of old town Colmar, it's more complicated.

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