Well here I am.  Presently parked on the MIL's couch trying to keep my eyes open.  Got in late Sunday as our flight out of London was delayed by 5 hours!  But it was worth it to have the chance to see Grace for a couple hours.  She already seems more grown up!  This week has been a blur of work and unpacking.  I can't wait to have a day to sleep in and putz around the apartment.

While we were gone, our neighbors to the right have also put in bars.  And a fancy magnetic lock cover for their front door.  (Unfortunately every time she tries to open the door it sets off an alarm so we're jumping out of our socks a few times a day.) There is a type of key used by our eastern European thieves called a Bulgarian key.  It can open most of the complicated locks over here so people are taking all sorts of evasive action.
 We also have a hotel full of newly arrived Eritrean refugees.  In the industrial area not far from us there WAS a Holiday Inn Express that had already lost a lot of business due to the Nigerian prostitutes who hung around nearby, keeping warm with fires in big metal bins.  They look sort of like a bizarre turn on the photos of bums on street corners from the depression era.  Only these gals are very black and mostly naked.  Anyhow, this Holiday Inn has now been occupied by Eritrean refugees.  The owners of the various businesses in the area are not particularly happy.  I find it all so sad until I have to wrestle my shopping cart back from some guy trying to get the half euro coin in the return slot

Work has been hectic.  Missing a month does that....  But having fun setting up my library and reading with the kids who remain equal parts adorable and annoying.  Being with all these little critters all day long makes it easier to come home to an empty apartment...sniff, sniff.

As GP says, MIL is beginning to "skip a beat".  She is, after all, 84.  She keeps speaking to me in Piemontese, the local dialect that even after 30 years I haven't learned.  She'll start out fine then switch on me so I'm getting about half of the conversation.  I predict the day will come when I never understand a word the poor woman is saying to me! 

More later, me