It is now absolutely pouring and I love it.  The water is cascading down off the awnings on the terrace and washing all the grime off the plants.  It's the first good rain since we've been here.  The air had gotten so heavy and foul that my eyes were exhausted and red by afternoon.  This will give it a good cleaning.  Unlike the air in my room right now.  I made the mistake a making cauliflower along with the roast this afternoon.  GP is on his computer researching intestinal gas.  After a particularly bad episode he quoted Dante.  "Tromba di culo, sanita di corpo." Translated as "Trumpet of the bottom, healthy body."  That Dante.  And I though he was so boring and glum.  xxoo me

Just finished napping after finishing dishes after finishing lunch.  Best I go back to hiking weekends.  xxoo me

Well the Italian government has fallen - AGAIN.  It won't affect our daily lives so it's no big deal.  I just find it funny that an entire congress will just throw up their hands and say, "That's it!  I'm outta here!"' and walk out.  Oh well.  We went to dinner at some friend's last night and though much of the conversation was politics, no one was at all worried about the prospect of not having a sitting government for the next who-knows-how-long.  I have no idea what it's all about.  There are so many parties wrestling for power and so many different high government offices, I can't keep track.  And to be totally honest, I don't really care to.  I am certainly not going to vote here because it would be a blind, uneducated guess.  I'll leave Italy's future up to the Italians.

Our dinner was marvelous.  Gianni works for the telephone company but would love to be a gentleman farmer.  They have a hilltop house with a vegetable garden, fruit and nut trees.  They make as much of their own food as they have time to do.  Last night there were vegetables they'd grown, bread and gnocchi he'd made, a nut cake from their own hazelnuts.  All they need is to be making their own cheese, (they had some made by a friend in Sardenia), and they'd be all set.  Everything was yummy and I ate too much.  It is now 9 a.m. and I'm preparing a roast for Sunday lunch with the grandparents.  Such decadence. 

Sunday mornings are the only guaranteed quiet time in Italy.  It's because they're wedged between two big meals.  Saturday night is the evening when friends get together, which inevitably means dinner, and Sunday lunch is the traditional family time.  Right now everyone is either sleeping off last night or preparing for today.

It finally rained last night and has cooled down some.  There is the slightest change in color on some trees.  I do miss our brilliant Maine autumns!  xxoo me

There was a teacher's workshop yesterday so I skipped school and drove into the city to have a haircut and to go to the market.   I'm not sure I was allowed the day off.  I guess I'll see if I still have a job on Monday.  Grace and friends went in for the day as well.  I dropped them off and went right to "Mario" my hairdresser.  A teacher at the school recommended him last year and referred to him as "super Mario", which he is!  He's adorable and pocket sized.  We should all have one.  After my appointment I met a friend and we went off to the market to buy fruits and veggies.  I left with four bulging bags filled with huge porcini mushrooms, plums, peppers, apples and a big cauliflower.  All for about $10.  I forgot my nice market bags so I had to tromp back across the city with the vendor's plastic bags cutting off my circulation.  My pinkie is still numb.  I'm cooking for the grandparents this weekend so have to be prepared.  Today I'm home and seriously considering a nap.  It is oppressive weather.  It's still warm enough to be summer but it's tired.  Everything is dry, dusty and floppy, (rather like me).  The forecasters have been talking rain for a week now but like everything else in Italy, short of the driving, the weather is very slow in changing.  A rain takes ages to build up, getting grayer and heavier by the day.  As I haven't done much housekeeping since I've been here, I'm hoping it does rain so I have an excuse to stay home and not do one of our tremendous walks.  Too draggy.  Speaking of housekeeping, the woman upstairs from us is seriously nuts.  She's been vacuuming for 2 hours.  2 hours of non-stop vacuuming, moving each and every piece of furniture.  The apartment is the same size as ours.  I haven't accumulated 2 hours since I got back.  Maybe there was a freak Saharan sandstorm or an Okie dust storm while I wasn't looking.  Tonight dinner with friend's at their place.  I have made a killer plum upside-down cake.  Hope it tastes as good as it looks!  xxoo me

The biggest pain in the arse here is dealing with problems there, while here!  We are in the middle of a big mess with our accountant who is conveniently out of the office or with a client whenever I call and doesn't answer his e-mails.  I'm too far away to drop by the office and finding a new accountant from this distance won't be easy.  Anyone have someone good to refer??  Preferably who knows something about taxes!

Onto a lighter note.  I just read that Italians have been voted, (by whom?), the best dressers in some poll.  It's true.  The average Italian puts so much care into what they wear and how clothes fit.  Women spend an exorbitant amount of time and money on hair and make-up.  They clip clop around on heels along the city's cobbled streets without breaking an ankle and ride bikes dressed to the nines.  I wake up in the morning and groan at the prospect of choosing an outfit.  I just want to be comfortable!   Why oh why can't GP be Jamaican?  xxoo me

Our cow

The hills are alive.......

site of recent avalanche

Our host (with the glasses)

I forgot to mention the spider.  At a certain point GP, who was sitting beside me, jumped up and tried to climb into my lap.  With eyes showing all the whites he started gesturing wildly and tried to croak out Riccardo's, (who was standing up beside the piano), name.  All that came out was a loud, "Ric"!  There was a spider on the wall behind our host the size of a salad plate.  The body wasn't much bigger than a dime but with it's long black legs it made quite an impression.  My courageous husband is as fond of spiders as I am.  We make a good pair.  Riccardo turned around, lifted his foot surprisingly high considering how much he'd had to drink, and squished it.  It left a huge smudge on the white wall.  Ugh.

While Grace is off in Monte Carlo scouting celebrities, GP and I finally got around to our anniversary dinner Friday night.  (Only 2 weeks late.)  We went to a restaurant in the hills that's below a monastery for Cappuccino monks.  Cappuccino means "hood wearing" and the cream on top of a cappuccino coffee I suppose is like a hood?  The monks are famous for their singing and practice most evenings, with their Gregorian Chants echoing out over the gardens where the restaurant sits.  Alas Friday night they took a break.  I was disappointed that I missed the singing but dinner was good and the view was great out over the city.

It's just about a year since the huge night celebrating our friend Riccardo's birthday that wiped me out for a week.  Last night we were back at it but this time I took pains to be prepared.  We got up early yesterday and went for a long walk in the mountains.  I thought the fresh air and exercise, followed by a nap, would help with the late hour I'd be getting to bed.  Once at dinner I placed two bottle of water in front of me for easy access and alternated water and wine all evening.  The food this year was yummy while last year I didn't like the menu, so this time around I had enough in my stomach to absorb most of the alcohol.  Alas not enough.  Woke up with a headache this morning that even with 2 aspirin, a pot of coffee and some dry toast is only now, (noon), going away.  How do these people do this?

Let me first tell you about our day in Pragelato.  This is the place where we go snowshoeing and Grace skis.  The town borders a national park call Val Troncea.  On the way up in the morning we stopped in one of the little mountain villages to get some breakfast, (coffee and hot, sugary apple turnovers).  There were 4 old guys in the bar drinking God Knows What at 8 o'clock in the morning. They reeked of alcohol and cigarettes.  There was a little display of magnets with Piemontese, (the dialect spoken around here), sayings on them on the counter.  One I especially liked was "A piss without a fart is like a violin without a bow".   These rural folk are a classy and gentile people....

The day was bright and warm and so our walk was wonderful.  We were practically the only people there as we only passed others in the very beginning and very end of our trek.  The high fields were speckled with cows and old campers where the cowherds live when they take their animals up to their summer pastures.  There was one very frustrated cow blocking our way at one point as she wanted to follow the hiking trail but it was blocked by a temporary fence to keep the animals in.  She stood there and mooed and mooed.  These are LARGE cows and I wasn't sure we'd get by.  Finally she got bored and wandered off giving us a mournful parting look.  We also saw a bunch of marmots hopping in and out of their holes.  They are so cute!  So we walked for about 3 hours up and one plus down, stopped to buy some local cheese and were home to nap and shower by 3.  It is very nice to be so close to the mountains.

We left for the evening at 5:30 because we had to stop and buy some wine for the grandparents who are running low, God forbid,  and a couple bottles as a thank-you gift to the friends who took Grace with them for the weekend.  We met up at the restaurant at 8 and knew we were in trouble when Riccardo brought in 20 liters of wine.  That's about 26 bottles.  He had booked a room in this place and there were 18 of us with others popping in and out.  I don't know most of them and as they speak Piemontese when together, I don't understand them either.  I was sitting by Riccardo's girlfriend though and she's from Milan, (practically a foreigner), so I talked to her before the music began.  Riccardo considers himself a musician.  He plays the piano and the accordion and his buddies play guitar and and piano and they all sing.  They get together and sing traditional Italian and Piemontese songs and have a grand ole time.  The only song I recognized was "Volare".  With everyone singing and holding up their glasses, rocking side to side I felt like I'd stepped into an old Italian movie.  At about 12:30 we left and they might still be there for all I know.  These dinners are a weekly occasion for all those people.  Why the aren't dead is beyond me.

My headache has now subsided enough for me to go do some pruning in the garden.  GP thought it would be very funny to use the power hedge trimmer right outside our bedroom window earlier.  It wasn't funny.  xxoo me

OH MY GOD I’M TIRED!  I’ve been working full time at the school and haven’t stopped for a minute.  I still haven’t seen a contract, the schedule is only now getting settled, we have 400 plus i-pads to enter into the library on-line catalog, teachers keep asking us to pull stacks of books for their classrooms I'm teaching and prepping for 11 classes a week and I’m old!  I was feeling like I needed some exercise and alone time so this past Tuesday I went to a trial session at a yoga studio not far from our place.  It is not Romi’s yoga!  Evidently it is a progressive sort of thing where you start easy sessions in the autumn and slowly work up to the sort of stuff I’m accustomed to by spring.  We spent a lot of time “breathing deeply” and “holding our big toes”.  The older couple who run the place are something else.  She must be well into her 70’s and has a killer figure.  She can do things with her legs she shouldn’t be able to do.  Looks like one of those contortionists from the circus.  He looks like Gandhi; tiny, bald, brown with wire-rimmed glasses.   I haven’t decided if I’ll go back.  Though it was very relaxing I don’t feel it has much in the way of exercise for me.  Plus everyone was taking it a bit too seriously.  I went with an Irish girlfriend and we had a hard time not laughing.  Especially when we were told to stare “meaningfully at our thumbs”.  (later that same evening...) I went back.  I decided to give the other instructor (him) a try.  It was even more of a waste of time.  A few stretches, lots of talking about our inner energy and third eye, then a full 15 minutes sitting cross-legged listening to a recording of a guy saying "oooommmmm".  After a while I lost the feeling in my foot and had to stretch out.  I took the opportunity to peek at everyone else in the studio.  The instructor, who taught the whole lesson with his eyes closed, had put on a white hooded sweatshirt and was sitting cross legged on a little platform.  He looked like Yoda.  I don't think I'm going back.

Last night we had our first dinner at the Grandparent’s house.  Sadly my mother-in-law, always a very enthusiastic cook, is losing her touch.  While in past times her dinners were appetizers and salads, 2 or 3 vegetables and a meat, last night’s dinner was all protein.  There was salami, sliced ham for appetizers and sausage and stewed beef for the main dish.  There was a tiny bit of spinach and a couple peas.  Very strange.  I think they’ll be coming to us more and more.

Grace has another exciting adventure coming up!  She is going to Monte Carlo with the same friends who took her to Switzerland last winter.  They leave on Friday after school and return Sunday evening.  I’m spending the weekend gardening, cleaning and hopefully walking.  GP and I are going out to the wine region for dinner with friends Saturday night.  This is the annual dinner that wiped me out for a week last year.  Think I'll try to behave this time.  I'll skip the Limoncello.  xxoo me

Argh!  MY Fruit and veggie guy has closed and I had to find a new one who is not conveniently located at the bottom of our road.  Unfortunately, even here where food is everything, more and more mom and pop stores are closing as the big supermarkets and chain stores move in.  It's very sad.  There were 3 greengrocers down on the main road when I left in June and now only one is left.

On to other things.  Yesterday we spent the day hiking in the mountains.  We went to Colle Del' Agnello, (Col Agnel in French), the highest pass in the Alps between Italy and France.   Our German friends were driving and we'd planned for them to pick us up at 8am.  Obviously GP had me dressed and ready outside at 7:55 but as he calls Birgit a "false German" she was 20 minutes late.  GP threatened to report her to Merkel and have her German ID taken away for bad behavior. They've decided they should switch nationalities as she is always late and indecisive and GP is so damned precise.   The drive is 2 hours so we finally got to our parking place at 10:30.  We started walking at about 1700 meters, (5578 feet), and walked up for two hours to almost 2,600 meters, (8530 feet).  On the way up everyone except me saw Marmots! What I did see were lots of cows.  Lower down the cows were grazing in the forest, which seems very strange to me, and once past the treeline we'd see them here or there, alone or in small groups just wandering.  They were all wearing huge brass bells and with their names inscribed on a tag clipped to their ear.  (These are milk cows and the area is famous for wonderful cheeses that we had to stop and buy on the way home.)  We passed a Bruna  and a Laura.  We walked till we arrived at the first of a number of small glacial lakes, sunken into crevasses in the mountains.  This one is called Lago Blue or the blue lake.  The water was frigid so we didn't swim but we ate a picnic lunch and sunbathed.  And rested.  The walk up was a killer.  It took half as long to come down but hurt my knees more.  I'm getting old!!  We stopped for cheese and ice cream on the way home, shared a bottle of wine and said cheese for dinner and I was asleep by 9.  Oh so slightly sore today.  We have to go to the school at noon for the PTA's welcome back brunch and I have no desire to move from this sofa.  xxoo me 

There's my little mountain climber!

On the way up

At the lake

Bathing beauty!

The gang

Wow

Bruna

Yesterday evening I met some friends in the main plaza of our town for an "apericena" which means drinks and snacks.  We met at a bar that offers a buffet of cheeses and salami, salads and breads.  It's sort of like happy hour but at 7pm.  We caught up on summer vacations, drank a couple of bottles of wine, and then headed home by 10.  There were 5 of us, three of whom don't work.  They were making plans to meet for tennis or a walk one day or another, lunch here, shopping there.  My friend Catherine, who teaches French at the school, and I just sighed.  Someday......  I finally got my compute at school today but the Headmaster bailed on our meeting this morning.  I think he's avoiding me.

Tomorrow is Saturday and we're going walking in the mountains with our German friends.  The girls, Grace and their daughter, prefer to stay home and probably on-line all day.  Sunday is the PTA's welcome back brunch at the school.  I really need a day at home to clean and garden and organize.  Argh.  xxoo me

What a cluster**** this school is.  It is so damned unorganized.  The teachers for the most part are very good but the administration is all over the place.  There are still no set schedules for classes because somebody, (no one knows who), made up a schedule without checking with all the various people involved and it doesn't work, so it is now being redone.  The classrooms and offices were changed around to accommodate someone, (no one knows who), but of course they didn't check with all those involved and the new set-up doesn't work for everyone so now that is being reorganized.  The poor custodian is running around like a wild man moving things from one part of the school to the other.  The lease on the school desktop computers ran out and as they are going to ipads for the students, they didn't renew it.  They forgot to consider that many teachers and other employees need desktops!  In the library we are taking turns using one computer when we need two and could use three.  I'm on the list.  (The upside is that I had the really handsome electrician under my desk reinstalling my computer hook-ups because they had ordered them all taken out over the summer.)  I still haven't seen my contract because when I arrived, though the gal in HR had prepared it, the Headmaster hadn't signed it and when he finally did, (this morning), he didn't bother to read it or tell HR that I am full-time this year so the contract still had me down as part-time.  It has to be redone.  The powers that be decided over the summer that the primary school teachers should be with their students all day, including teaching their specials classes, going to recess and eating lunch with them, (some crap about "holistic teaching"). This move permitted the school to lay off all the aides and reduce the hours of the specials teachers.  Of course this leaves the teachers no time for prep work or breaks and probably violates all sorts of labor laws.  Well the teachers put up such a stink that that has all now changed, (less than two weeks into school), so now they are scrambling all over the place trying to find people to cover recesses and lunch duties and specials.  I'm hiding in the library.  I think admin should work on their communication skills...  xxoo me

GP and I had to switch cars today as he was going into the center and mine is natural gas so can go into areas where others can't.  We met at 1:15 in front of the medical building where I had to go to the physical therapist and it's a good thing too because paying my "ticket" proved to be a little complicated.  Of course.  The machines where one pays are on the first and third floors, the first floor for credit cards and the third for cash (exact change).  Unfortunately over the summer the co-pays had changed but the machines hadn't caught up so my receipt couldn't be scanned and everything had to be entered manually.  I didn't have the correct change, something bizarre like 37 cents, and have a debit card but not a credit card here and naturally the machine would not take a debit card so GP had to pay with his Visa.  I finally got in the damned office and met with the doctor who was very pleasant and all is well.  While in the waiting room I watched a small, old man, smelling heavily of alcohol, move from person to person trying to strike up a conversation.  He smelled so awful I moved seats and pretended to be busy working on my phone, (really just pressing buttons).  He tried with me anyhow and I was tempted to tell him I didn't speak Italian but instead just smiled and went back to my button pushing.  I'd have felt sorry for him if he hadn't been there with his wife who he completely ignored.  Then there was a strange little boy who had the proportions of an adult but in miniature.  You know how children have larger heads for their bodies, well he didn't.   He kept burping and speaking loudly and walking around with his little pinhead touching everything.  He was very odd and it was hard not to stare but I controlled myself. 

Here are some pics from the weekend.  xxoo me

The hotel clubhouse

Breakfast overlooking courts

Lunchtime everyone leaves the beach!

View down the beach

Let’s try this again. 

So we went to the sea to spend the weekend with the grandparents.  They are at the same place as last year, a town called Alessio on the Ligurian coast, (Italian Riviera).  The center of Alessio is called “the bowels” referring to the tangled mess of streets that it is.  After much back tracking and swearing (on GP’s part) we found our hotel where we’d booked for the night.  Hotel is a generous word for this place.  It is called the Hanbury Tennis Club and is actually a century old tennis club modeled after Wimbleton.  The club house is a gorgeous old building with a pro-shop, changing rooms, restaurant/bar and meeting rooms.  There are 17 courts on the property and the club seems to be pretty busy.  The “hotel” part of the property is an old villa that is used as a rooming house for the kids who come to spend the summer at tennis camp.  The villa is decadent in the true meaning of the word.  It is structurally beautiful but hasn’t been touched in years.  The bathroom in our room is circa 1950 plumbing.  The wooden shutters are missing slats and hardware and may well take out somebody walking below.  It hasn’t seen a coat of paint since it was built and I won’t even bother talking about the furniture.  But it was surprisingly clean and quiet, the breakfast in the restaurant was great and it was fun watching all the players in their “whites” while we ate.

We checked in early so as to spend the day at the beach.  I mentioned the beaches last year.  They are divided into privately run “bagni” or “baths” that you pay a fee to enter.  The fee gives you a lounge chair, umbrella, showers, changing rooms and lots of extras depending on which “bath” you choose.  There are some that are more family-oriented with play areas and toys, some that have bars or restaurants, more space or less space depending on the price.  Ours was the “bath” that the grandparents and their 100 companions were using.  It is directly across the street from their hotel so easy for them all to toddle back and forth for their meals.  Consequently we were surrounded by old folks which made me feel very young and in shape until I noticed that even in old age some of these Italian women look good.  Damn.  There was one woman who had to be in her 70’s who was topless.  She was so brown all over that her nipples had disappeared!  Her breasts were monstrous and hung down to her waist.  She looked like a well fed version of the tribal women shown in National Geographic.

But I’m not complaining because it was hot and sunny and the water was very warm so we swam and swam.  I took a nice long walk and thought about how very different the beach experience is here to Maine.  Nature has very little to do with Liguria.  There are, however, sea birds that look like Dodos.  They are some sort of giant gulls with large black, down curving beaks.  They’re also sort of uncoordinated on land and waddle-run to take off for flight.  That’s about it for wildlife.

For dinner we drove inland a bit to find something good and not overpriced as everything at the sea tends to be.  Liguria is notorious for ripping tourists off.  We went back into the foothills of the Maritime Alps looking for a road that supposedly has all sorts of good restaurants.  Even using the GPS we got all turned around and drove for an hour before finding anything.  I was starving!  The food was pretty good and thankfully finding our way back was easier.  Yesterday was cooler and gray so we left earlyish and grabbed pizza for dinner on the way home.

This week my tangles with Italian bureaucracy will start again as I have to see a physical therapist about my hip and try to sign up for yoga classes.  Though so much of the health care system here is great, being Italian, they can’t make it easy.  In order to see a specialist you have to get a prescription from your GP, (like a referral in the US), and have to pay a “ticket”, (co-pay), before the visit.   The problem is that in order to pay the ticket you have to go somewhere and insert the prescription receipt in some sort of machine and all this needs to be done before the appointment or they won’t let you in.  I don’t know where to find the machine in which to insert my receipt and pay my ticket!  I’ll find it….  Xxoo me

Note from the editor.  Looking back and reading what I wrote the first couple days back, I noticed that the first post made no sense and in the second I spelled "psuedo" incorrectly.  Alas jetlag is getting to me in my old age.  Now on to my weekend news.

Crap!  I just wrote an entire page and lost it somewhere in cyberspace!  Am back from weekend at the sea but too tired to rewrite everything now so will pick this up again tomorrow.  xxoo me

Well we really have slipped right back into it.  The crazy people upstairs have been at it every day with today's ruckus culminating in a loud slap, bawling like an infant and the kid threatening to leave home, (he's 10 so unfortunately that's unlikely to happen).  Then evidently he started hyperventilating because mom started saying "calm down, calm down".  I'm sitting outside contemplating my very overgrown garden.  I have hours of cleaning ahead of me but haven't had the energy to do it yet.  It's still summer hot and humid so we are going to the sea on Saturday to meet up with the grandparents who are down there for a couple weeks on one of their excursions.  As we started school the day after returning I need a couple days to just sleep and if we stayed here I'd be busy reorganizing everything that GP decided to move around (the nerve of him) while we were in The States.  Honestly, you'd think he had rights or something. xxoo me

Helllooooooo!  I'm very jetlagged and am using a new laptop so if this entry is senseless or more senseless than they usually are, I apologize.  Our trip was a trip.  Grace and I flew Aer Lingus and GP flew Air France as our tickets were the beginning of a two way back to the states in June and his was the end of a two way back to Italy.  On our flight I had a young Irish woman, a redhead in funky hippie clothes,  who after take-off immediately ordered two Bloody Marys and 3 bottles of wine.  Within a short time she was crying, followed by the meal that she barely touched, (can't blame her there), a film that she glared at while drinking the wine directly from the mini bottles and soon after she fell asleep.  There was a baby a few seats away from us that began screaming towards the end of the flight.  I imagine his ears hurt from the pressure.  After he'd been carrying on for about a half an hour at a level of sound that could puncture an eardrum, I told Grace that if she was ever in a situation where she was tempted to have unprotected sex, to think about that moment.  The drunken sleeping girl beside me sat up straight and laughed.  She said it was the best line she'd ever heard.  I thought she was dead.

We got into Milan late morning, met GP at the car rental desk, drove 2 hours home, dropped off Grace and our luggage, took the rental car back into the city with me following in my car, drove an hour out of the city to pick up GP's new car at the dealership then drove all the way back here again.  We got in at 6ish.  I ate a plum and some toast and crashed at 7:30.

This morning we started school where it looks as though I'll be working full time but this school, being run as it is by Italians or sudo-Italians, doesn't know exactly what I'll be doing.  I was in the library again today to help out the new librarian but I'd like to be teaching literacy so I'm promoting myself to all those who could possibly use my services.

I am now considering bed though it's only 7:32.

xxoo me