It was nice to see them, but Sicilians (or at least the ones I'm related to) have a tendency to crowd you, grab at you (Liborio, the guy in the middle, sitting at the table, kept pinching both my cheeks really hard and it was really painful. I'm also 28). They wanted to have loads of family around the whole time were were there, and so I had loads of elderly Sicilian ladies - and especially Zia Concetta who looks like a pug and has the constitution of a pitbull (and I say that lovingly, of course), and speaks Sicilian, rather than Italian (most of the family speak a confusing mix of both) would be right in my personal space, yapping questions and not very impressed that I couldn't respond.

As much as possible, I kept ducking into my copy of Nerd Do Well. It was enormously overwhelming.

I like your imagery of the pill capsules, by the way. It's like something out of a modern fairytale. Almost Pratchett-esque.