Christmas Greetings!

 Tiny family Christmas again.  Lunch with MIL, dessert with Aunt and cousin, home to an alka-selzer cocktail and an evening on the sofa.  In two days Grace is off to visit a friend in Finland for a week and GP and I are following her the 29th for the New Year.  We'll be in Helsinki to see in 2017.  I'm packing the long-johns!  Merry Christmas to you all.  xxoo me

Cute!

GP and Riccardo corking the bottles

Here we go a wassailing  bottling .......  Last night GP took me along while he went bottling with some friends.  As a group they had purchased 4 demijohns of Nebbiolo from an old farmer, (for all I know he's 60 but so pickled looks 80), who produces in very small quantities.  He doesn't have automatized  bottling equipment so the guys had to do it in the good old fashioned way.  I went along "to document" the process.  And drink some wine.  And eat some food.

Old guy with demijohns and stacks of bottles

A tube is used for filling the magnums.

It starts with the demijohns that hold 54 liters each.  A bottle is .75 liters so that is a lot of vino.  We should have had 144 magnums, (1.5 liters or two bottles), but came up short as there was a wee bit of pilfering going on.

After filling the bottles, they are corked and then the label goes on.  Our friend Riccardo had these adhesive labels made up.  It's a picture of (or by) Teomondo Scrofalo, an unknown artist whose painting has been reproduced and sold in poster form to a million bars and hotels.  It is also the name taken by a famous and foolish Italian comic which is why they chose it.  By coincidence, Teomondo Scrofalo also looks just like our host!

Boxing ém up

It was colder than a witch's t** in there so we were all bundled up and had to warm the wine up with our hands before drinking it.  Most irritating but we managed.  We had a little buffet on an old wooden bench with cheeses, salamis, ham and raw sausage.  Yes, they eat raw sausage.  I, however, do not.  I made up for it in bread.

Food!!

By the end of the night things were getting rough.

I'm glad I went to see the process but it's definitely a boys club.  I was in fact the only woman there.  They pretty much ignored me which was fine as they were doing all the work.  Next year GP can go without me.  I'll stay home and warm and await the delivery.

criminal evidence

The night ended with the "breaking of the sealing wax", which means our host, (never did learn his name), brought out a magnum bottled a few years ago.  The wine we bought should be aged a bit before we drink it.  We'd been sipping at it all night but was a little too "fresh".  I forced myself.

The last hurrah.

GP drove home.  xxoo me

Gah!  The Yahoo hacking incident has hit home!  One of GP's accounts was hacked and messages were sent out to many contacts on his list.  They were sent Christmas Greetings and a link to open.  GP's elderly aunt and uncle got one of these e-mails but as it was written in English they didn't know what it said.  They are, as GP calls them, "pew lickers", meaning very devout and involved with The Church.  The evening they received this e-mail they happened to have their parish priest over for dinner.  He told them he spoke English and could translate this lovely holiday message from their nephew.  It was porn!  xxoo me

Friday night was our annual Christmas Dinner with the school.  They go all out and take us to a lovely restaurant with a good meal, wine and a grab bag exchange of gifts.  It's always fun. This year the restaurant they chose is in the low hills in a very exclusive but busy area.   GP and I headed out fairly early because being Friday we knew there would be a lot of traffic.  We were bumper to bumper on a main road for a good part of the way and it being Italy, many drivers had made the road a two laner instead of one lane, pushing and passing to get ONE space ahead.  At one point we had to move to the left because we were coming up on a line of cars parked on the side of the road.  A big Chevy Suburban, (ridiculous in urban Italy), wouldn't let us move over and honked and pushed by us.  GP got rightfully pissed off, opened his window and explained in no uncertain terms,"it was a one lane road and he had no choice but to move over to avoid hitting the parked cars and had she, (because it was a she), a brain in her head she would have noticed that in fact all of the cars ahead of us were letting the drivers on the right in".  He may have added a few choice words in there and a few comments about Italian women drivers.  Anyhow, she pushed passed and we ended up behind her.  We started joking saying wouldn't it be funny (not) if she was from the school!  But then we came to our turn off and she turned.  And then we came to the restaurant and she slowed down and I started to panic.  First she parked illegally in front of the police station, but decided that wasn't a good idea and backed out.  We whizzed past hoping to hide our car far away so she wouldn't see who got out of it but as we were turning into a one way road to park in an empty space we'd seen, she came driving up the road towards us the wrong way and took the space!  All the while I was saying, "shit shit shit, hide the car hide the car"!  It was like a Chevy Chase movie!  We found a place to park quite far away and GP took off his hat and coat before going into restaurant.   I hadn't seen her face to didn't know who it was and GP just kept saying she looked like Morticia from the Addams Family.  I was REALLY hoping she hadn't gotten a good look at GP because he had been quite explicit about what he thought of her driving, (and to give him credit, after watching her parking I agree).   So we went into the restaurant and found friends at a table in a far corner where we could be inconspicuous.  GP scanned the room and found the driver, a lovely woman who teaches ESL, and has always been more than polite and friendly.  This solidifies my long time theory about Italian drivers.  The minute a person gets behind the wheel of a car in this country it's like Jekyll and Hyde.  They become hideous, arrogant, rude and egocentric.  I have seen the sweetest most ladylike women flip people off as they pass them for having the audacity to be driving to slowly.  Fortunately, I don't think Sara, (for that is her name) recognized GP but I guess I'll find out Monday!  (And she does rather look like Morticia...).   xxoo me

These people don't have road signs!  I was TRYING to get over the hills, from the city to the villages behind them, but missed my usual turn off so took one of the other roads up.  The hills here are as high as many of our mountains in Maine and are covered by literally hundreds of narrow, twisting roads that are just as likely to turn back on themselves or dead end or become impassable as they are to actually take you where you want to go. GPS doesn't work up there because IF there's coverage, all you see is a mess of lines with NO NAMES and they don't have ROAD SIGNS!  Honestly, I was driving around for 45 minutes, up and down past farms and high stones walls that practically scraped the sides of my car, into private driveways and out again, and do you know where I ended up?  Two blocks from my place.  NOT where I was heading.  That was Saturday.  Sunday GP dragged me off to climb another damned mountain. 

Yup.  There I am.  As beautiful as the mountains are, I would much rather be on a beach.  I hate getting up early in the winter when it's cold and dark.  I REALLY hate wearing all the necessary clothing that one has to because they're soooo comfortable and flattering.  And it simply kills me to go uphill at those altitudes.  Yesterday I wheezed and panted and clutched my chest.  I had to stop to catch my breath and stop to keep my head from spinning.  I had 90 year olds passing me in sneakers and walking sticks for Chrissakes.  And they looked at me in pity!  Between my low blood pressure and shallow breathing I am not meant to go much above sea level.  I'm smiling in this picture because I was heading DOWN.  If I had any money I'd swear GP was trying to do me in.  xxoo me

It's a four day weekend!  Yesterday was Immaculate Conception Day or some such foolishness, but it gives me days off so I don't care.  It is pretty funny though when considering how much Italans go on about the separation of Church and State here.  Every Tom, Dick and Harry is a Saint and gets his day, many of them are National Holidays.  Speaking of senseless, last Sunday I voted for the first time here.  It was for the referendum that would have streamlined the government, reducing the number of seats in the two houses and cutting all sorts of other waste. (Italy has about 950 parliamentary members to our 535, with a forth of the population).  It didn't pass.  Why would it?  It makes sense.  I give up.  I'm still on no news mode though snippets do sneak in.  They are all terrifying so I'm going to keep this up as long as I can.

GP and I took MIL out to lunch.  Monday is her Saint's Day (Patron Saints are more celebrated than birthdays), so we went for a drive in the country and to a lovely restaurant in the wine region.  I was gluttonous and ate and drank too much and now feel like crap.  At what age will I achieve self-control I ask you!!??  I spent all day on the sofa reading and doing online crossword puzzles.  I am a bum.  Tomorrow I'll make up for it by being very productive!   My bed is calling me....I must obey....  xxoo me

Ah geesh...someone let him use the phone?  See what happens!  And not even president yet.  This is why I've given up the news.

View of Cerisola

Looking towards the sea

Cerisola has two Roman bridges

Their pride and joy

On our wander

Last weekend GP and I drove and hour and a half to a tiny village called Cerisola in the Maritime Alps to help a friend pick kiwi and persimmons.  Her husband's family is originally from the area and still has property and vacation homes there.  Unfortunately the decrepit great uncle who owns the fruit trees forgot to tell her that he had had them pruned way down last fall and this would be a "no fruit" year.  We took the opportunity to wander around.  The village is mostly empty now with only 80 full-time residents.  It sits on the Mediterranean side of the mountains, tucked into a crevasse shaped valley.  In the summer it's a haven for people escaping the heat on the plains as it's high and gets the sea breezes but winter must be pretty bleak.  All of the residents seem to be ancient and yet they still survive with few modern conveniences.  There are no shops, actually no businesses at all,  little TV or internet reception, and if it snows, the road in and out impassable.  They still grow much of their own food, heat with wood and make their own entertainment.  It's like stepping back in time.  We came home to a wonderful lunch cooked by C's husband and then took a long nap!
                                                                                                   xxoo me