Something has happened to my internal clock, and to the internal clocks of my students, and my husband, and my poor children, who usually hop out of bed pretty wide awake every morning (my kids can go from asleep to awake in .2 seconds). Every day this week I've surfaced painfully from a deep sleep and every day this week I've had to drag both L. and T. out of bed. Even the dog has a hard time getting up. She follows me downstairs in the dark, but races to her second dog bed--the one in the office--to catch a little extra snooze time while I blow dry my hair.

If you ever find yourself on the island of Lefkada, in Greece, and you happen to be wandering around the center of town on a sun-soaked afternoon--maybe on your way back from the beach, or on your way to dip your feet into the crystal blue water, you might stumble upon a particular sandwich shop. It doesn't look like too much from the outside (or inside, really).

Quite a few years ago, when I was in high school and my sister and I were in Greece for the summer, we took a train to visit an aunt-by-marriage and her son (our cousin) in Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. When I think about the many stand-out moments in my life so far (and there are, fortunately, many) I always think about that particular trip and about the time we dug out hollows in the sand on the beach, wedged our sleeping bags into the cool spots and spent the night under the stars.

This is what you feed your kids for dinner when they had scones and cream and jam at a tea house at four o'clock, washed down with tea and enough sugar cubes to make you pucker, and then you had the bright idea to take them into an old-fashioned general store--the kind with big glass jars filled with candy--and then you had another brilliant idea and give them 25 cents a piece to pick out candy, which they ate before you even make it to the highway:

Sunday was a grumpy day for all of us. It poured icy rain all day long. The kids alternately moped around, pestered us (play with me! play with me!-Or-I'm bored! I'm bored!), or fought and bickered about every minute thing possible (She breathed on me! He touched my arm!). We had family visiting for the weekend, and when they sped off on Sunday morning, in a whirlwind, we were left to pick up the pieces of two kids grappling with a healthy case of post-visit, post-spoiling, cabin-fever-induced, flat-out grouchiness.