Our first gorgeous summer-like day.  Blue, blue skies, lamby clouds, soft breezes and everything in bloom.  It's marvelous!  And yet.....major freakin' tragedy in our house and that of millions around the world.  Ask any teenaged girl and they will tell you the sun will never shine again.  One of the members is leaving the boy band One Direction.  Grace is a mess.  You would think her grandfather had just died.  Oh wait!   He did die and she didn't take it half this badly!  I remember the depth of emotions at that age, (just barely), and understand what they're going through, (just barely).  Sunday is an official day of mourning for the daughter and her friends.  They are going to gather, cry, listen to music, cry, eat junk, cry and then they are going to cry.  Hopefully she'll get it out of her system and not walk around looking like someone just ran over her dog.  On the plus side I have put out the table and chairs on the terrace and dragged the BBQ up from the garage!  xxoo me

Oh what a year to be in Italy, in Torino, a Christian!  (Unless you're in Libya.  Then it's not a good year all!)  So many exciting events are coming our way.  First the Pope has declared this a Jubilee year.  The opportunity to have all of our sins washed away and to start life again with a clean slate is upon us!  I looked it up.  There is way too much repenting and attending masses etc.  I'll hold onto my sins.  Then there is also the viewing of the Shroud of Turin from April til June!  The actual Shroud, and not a duplicate, is only pulled out a few times a century.  There will be possibly millions of tourists from all over the planet coming to Torino.  The lines will be epic.  I am not going.  However, sometime during those 3 months The Pope will be coming to Torino.  I would like to go see him.  He's lovely.  He evidently just performed a miracle in Naples.  The Patron Saint of Naples is San Gennaro.  A vial of dried blood, (creepy), belonging to this saint is kept in one of the city's churches and on January 1st of each year the blood miraculously liquifies.  Yesterday when the Pope kissed the vial during mass the blood partially liquified.   Bingo, miracle!  I wanna see that!  Add to all this the World Expo in Milan starting this May, (being in Italy, the theme of course is Food), and the hotels will be packed and the streets impassible.  Torino as the nearest city will get all of Milan's spillover.  We'll have to hide away in our burb.  Just thought I'd fill you all in.  Off to clean bathrooms.  xxoo  me

Holy Hitch-hiking Hookers!  No really.  Yesterday I passed two hookers hitch-hiking.  It was raining hard and their fake tans were probably running.  I was returning from a doctor's visit in Carmagnola, a town about half an hour from here where for some reason I had to go to see this guy about insides falling out.  (Don't ask).  The appointment only lasted 30 minutes but it took most of the day.  I left work 45 minutes before my appointment to give myself time to get there and find parking.  Then I had to find his office in the ancient maze they call the hospital.  The building is very cool with inner courtyards and towers and arches.  I don't know if it was originally built as a hospital but I doubt it.  Too regal.  The receptionist directed me to a door where someone then directed me to another, then another til I ended up back in reception, having done a complete circle.  This time the receptionist WALKED me down to the correct area and pointed me to the correct desk.  The receptionist at this desk asked to see my receipt for the payment of my "ticket".  (Sort of a copay.)  I didn't have my receipt because the machine one uses to make these payments asked for an amount and I didn't know what to pay until I'd had my appointment.  Heavy sigh on her part.  So she told me what to pay, some amount with 27 cents or something ridiculous, and then I had to go back to the original entrance, and my friend the first receptionist, and pay my "ticket".  Back at the doctor's office I was ushered in to find him texting someone and his assistant, who types up his diagnosis for him, on the phone.  They finally got around to me, I had my humiliating check-up, (no details), and then he told me that I will need to have 8 sessions of therapy to learn how to do certain exercises to hold my insides in but that these sessions may not start til next autumn.  Or next week.  He couldn't be sure.  Aging sucks.
 xxoo me

Alsatians ain't got nuthin on my daughter.  I spend all my time wiping up clumps of blue tipped hairs off the floor.  The toilet in our bathroom looks like some nasty creature has curled up and died in there.  That's where she cleans her hairbrush every day.  Yuck.  There is just something about other people's hairs.

Off topic.  Sorry.  GP and I went wine shopping yesterday.  Yeah!  We've found a new vintner who make wonderful whites.  Needed to stock up for the warm months coming.  And they are, the warm months I mean.  Trees are beginning to flower and the air has that spring smell.  Not that you'd know it today.  It's raining and cold.  The shopping yesterday took us into an area of the wine region we didn't know.  It's very remote and austere.  The vineyards are practically vertical.  These folks must have some serious glutes, (spelling?).

We had dinner with friends who live out there.  One of the guys was talking about all of the wild animals he meets on his walks; hares, deer, boars (scary), foxes and some kind of beaver-like critter with a rat tail.  He was trying to describe it to me and so looked up pictures of it on his iphone.  He put in the word "beaver" and got quite a surprise.  I pretended to be shocked and that I thought those were pictures he kept on his phone.  He turned every color of red.  I still haven't told him the word has more than one definition.  Thought I'd let him puzzle over it for a while.

Off to clean the kitchen.  MIL coming for dinner.  xxoo me

Argh!  I forgot to post this last Sunday.

We met the Abominable Snowman today in the form of a short grey-haired woman on cross-country skis.  GP and I went for our last snowshoe of the season.  The snow cover is already half what it was just a week ago.  We drove up early to beat the traffic and were rewarded with being the only living souls in the entire valley when we headed out.  It was gorgeous and peaceful, no one in sight.  About a half an hour in the snowshoe trail crosses a bridge,  intersects and shares the cross-country ski trail for a dozen yards or so before veering up the mountain.  As we were stomping along, enjoying the quiet, a voice behind us yelled, "Hey, you're on the cross country trail!  Get over on the other side of the river!  We pay for this you know!".  It was a tiny old woman on skis.  I told her, politely, there is no trail on the other side of the river.  She wouldn't let it go.  She insisted that we were trespassing on the cross-country trails, for which skiers pay!  (Snowshoeing is free)  Again I told her, not quite as politely, that we were following the trail markers which, after 3 years, we know well, and MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS YOU OLD BAT!  Ok, so I didn't say the last part but I wanted to!  It was crazy.  The only other person around for miles was an old guy we passed pissing on a trail marker.  She wouldn't leave us alone!  We only lost her when we went uphill on a narrow path she couldn't follow.  Thank God for Spring.  xxoo me

Spring has rolled around again.  The birds are chirping, the trees are beginning to bloom and days are in the high 50s or 60s.  With the Spring comes that other great pleasure...Tax season!  Thank Sweet Jesus, the woman we hired last summer has straightened out our 2012, 2013 taxes and we seem to be in the clear.  We owe her big time.  I suppose if she asks for a kidney I'll have to give her one.  Now we have a new issue, but hopefully she is up to the challenge.  With GP's dad's passing there are all sorts of fun forms to fill out.  Apart from inheritance, GP is now also the second signature on his mother's accounts.  The US requires him to report on any and all accounts, investments, business interests where he is a co-signer.  Some of these interests have to be attached to tax forms, others have to be reported to homeland security!  This is all part of the knee-jerk reaction that we call the Patriot's Act.  It's ridiculous and complicated and no way on God's Green Earth do most Americans abroad do it or even know about it.  GP, in his mild paranoia, researches every possible way that we could be caught out and fined.  Ever heard of the Form 8938?  This form is "to report your specified foreign financial assets if the total value of all the specified foreign financial assets in which you have an interest is more than the appropriate reporting threshold.  See Reporting Thresholds Applying to Specified Individuals, later."   Evidently we are "specified individuals."  But mind you, "Filing form 8938 does not relieve you of the requirement to file FinCEN Form 114, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR), if you are otherwise required to file FBAR.  Uh huh.  What the F does that even mean?  We have piles of papers on the table that we have had to scan and send to the accountant.  That's on top of the big fat envelope that we had V. mail for us when she arrived back in The States.  Oh the trees that we have killed!  I'm off to drown my sorrows.  Any good excuse!  By the way, Spring is also wine buying season!  Next weekend we are going shopping!!  xxoo me