I'm baaaaaaaaack!  Was unmotivated for a long time but have decided that semi-retirement is the time to get back to it.  So here I am, snuggled under my covers at 9:22 in the morning on a grey autumn day.  I'm liking this.  Unfortunately I'm not the only one home.  Loony lady upstairs was laid off, (Don't be sad for her. In Italy you get 2 year's salary when dismissed.) and she starts with the vacuuming as soon as the kid leaves for school.  She's happily going at it now over my head.  Moving furniture, clattering around in her heels.  Anyhow enough about her.  I left the US mid October and flew to London to spend some time with the child.  It rained of course but there were glimpses of sun and I took advantage of them, walking all around Regent's Park and Primrose Hill which are not far from her new place.

Regent's Park

Being October, we went to see The Woman in Black at the theater and were appropriately spooked.  We sat in the second row, (It was a very small theater) and could reach over and touch the stage.  At one big scare a gal behind us jumped and spilled wine all down G's back.  She spent the rest of the evening smelling like a souse.  I also took a 1 night side trip to visit friends who moved to Oxfordshire over the summer.  They live very close to the village where the village scenes of Downton Abbey were filmed.  We did the Downton walk and had tea and scones in a cafe and I felt very British.

The church used in wedding and funeral scenes

I've been back here a couple weeks now and am setting up my new life.  I'll be tutoring at the school 3 afternoons a week for a family of 4 kids who have just come from The States where they went to a Waldorf school.  Don't get me going on Waldorf schools.  Let's just say they all need some catching up.  I've also signed on to teach SAT prep courses with a friend who started a business for that purpose.  I'll be spending the next four Saturdays in Milan helping students navigate the Reading and Writing parts of the exam.  They pay a lot of money for this course so I hope I know what I'm doing.  We'll do this a few times a year in various locations.  I have no idea where I'm going.  It means getting up before dawn to catch a train to Milan, take the subway and find the damned school which is located right across the road from the church that has The Last Supper.   I'll find it.... 

I've also signed up for some exercise classes to work off the poundage I put on this summer.  Beer and ice cream are the culprits. 

All of this leaves me with a lot of free time in the mornings to deal with my aging body.  I've already had x-rays for a bone spur in my heel, a check-up for old ladies, blood tests are tomorrow, a hearing test next week, and eye test coming up somewhere.  But it all gets me out of the house which is a good thing because GP and I are not accustomed to spending too much time together.  It's unnatural. 

MIL is fine though is worrying us in the quantity of food she is buying.  It seems impossible that one person, rotund though she may be, can eat all she purchases.  She does squirrel away a lot, a generational thing left over from hungry war times, but the multiple, huge slabs of cheese she buys every week can't be stored for long.  Boredom has led her to chase after discounts she finds in the various supermarket fliers she gets in the mail and she has GP drive her all over town and back at least 3 times a week, surely wasting much more in gas money than she saves in coupons.  Her "cantina", (basement isn't the right word because it is a place people store food and wine), is brimming with boxes of bread sticks and cookies, canned and jarred and packaged stuff on every shelf.  Really if there IS another war, we are all set.  There's enough for everybody.  I'll send out the address, just bring your own cutlery. 

Ok.  I have to get out of bed.  It's 10:05!!!!  Ohhh, ain't retirement grand?

xxoo me