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A family downstairs recently moved, and for some unfathomable reason…oh wait, they’re hideous, that’s why…they left behind their couches. On Saturday, Giulia (my landlady), Salvo (another neighbor) and I hauled these relics up one flight to my apartment. I am indebted to my neighbors for their charity, and as I am furniture-challenged, I’m lucky to have them, but my oh my.
The above photo does not do them justice. I have temporarily covered them with white sheets. Without the sheets they are far, far worse.
Fear not! These couches are lemons, but baby, I’m making lemonade. I went to Ikea yesterday, and bought yards and yards of dark blue fabric. I’m no seamstress, but I can drape with the best of them, and I own a glue gun!
Soon I’ll have those couches looking..well, probably only very slightly improved….but baby steps is what it’s all about.
This morning I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed…I had a headache and I was unmotivated. When I did decide it was time, I got up and quickly realized the electricity was off and there was a commotion outside.
A ‘wonder what’s going on’ peek out the window revealed a fire truck parked in the street in front of our building, and a gathering crowd of bystanders.
Now that I have a blog, firetrucks and bystanders are fodder, so I grabbed my camera and went downstairs. I was a little surprised to see firemen going up as I went down, but they didn’t seem in too big a hurry, so I sauntered outside.
There I found my neighbors all gathered in the shade, commenting what had happened. Apparently the lady on the first floor had gone to bed the previous evening with a gas burner lit on her stove. The fire had gone out, but the gas kept coming.
Firemen in Italy live a very different life from their American counterparts, for two main reasons: very few wooden structures here, and no 9/11. In other words, that don’t have much to do, and they don’t get much respect. They do, however, have enough charisma that on the rare occasions we see them, they draw a crowd.
Happily, the place did not explode, no one was injured, and all is well.
It’s not uncommon to associate the color white with hospitals. White hallways, white nurses’ uniforms, white linens, white food…
Huh?
What’s the deal with Italians and eating in bianco (‘in white’) when they are under the weather?
I know some artificial food colorings can be carcinogenic, and some foods can be hard on a person’s delicate digestion (broccoli, for example) but surely there are foods found in nature which are both colorful and good for you. Carrots, for crying out loud. Bright orange and absolutely harmless.
Is it any wonder Lia looks so glum? We were at the hospital 3 days and two nights, and every single meal (for both of us, as I was provided with an equally appetizing trayful of splendor) was as monochromatic as the one pictured above.
And the cincher? Neither one of us was ill! She was there for tests, and I was merely there to keep her company.
Tonight for dinner I’m going to make something Mexican, or possibly Chinese. Doesn’t matter as long as it’s really flavorful, and most importantly…COLORFUL.
These two characters remind me of my best friend Barby and me when we were the same age. They have become best friends since we moved into our apartment, and play, fight, and then play again, all day long.
This picture was taken this evening at the “Grest” party at the Parish. “Grest” stands for “Gruppo Recreativo Estivo” (Summer Recreation Group) and is the summer activity organized by our local church. We have so few day-care options in this country that during the summer, we all become devout Catholics if only to have a place for the kids.
Alex and Lia go to Grest every morning, where they play, spend a little time being indoctrinated, and then play some more. It’s risky, I know, but it’s the price we pay.
This is one good kid, let me tell you.
The EEG technician told Lia to sit still with her eyes closed, and that’s precisely what she did. She looks like she’s sleeping, but it’s actually just a Zen state of meditation.
I was very proud of her, of course, but then she outdid herslf by staying completely immobile during the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) as well. That was the one that had me worried, not so much for the potential outcome, but because they had planned to sedate her. In the end, they decided to try it without sedation, and Lia performed like a little champ.
The results of both exams show that she does not have epilepsy (not that we feared she did) and no brain damage despite the complications surrounding her premature birth. I’m honestly not sure what comes next, or what these results will mean to the doctors trying to determine why a bright, deaf seven year old who has had speech therapy since she was 6 months old, still speaks so little.
“Are you happy with the results?” I asked the neurologist.
“Yes, I am,” he said, “but I don’t know whether or not Lia’s other doctors will be. I’m happy because there’s nothing there that needs the sort of help I can offer, but that just means the other doctors still have a lot of work to do to figure out what’s wrong.”
Hear that, doctors? Get to it!
Keep Lia in your thoughts today, as tests are run (MRI, EEG) to find out what’s going on in that pretty little head of hers.
(No updates until Friday, at the earliest, because we’ll be spending the night at the hospital.)
Let’s see, the word ‘massacre’ comes from the Old French word macecle, which means ‘butchery’. Hmmm, could ‘macelleria’ possibly mean ‘butcher’? And equina…now that almost sounds like ‘equestrian’.
Huh?
While I was home (i.e. the U.S.) a few weeks ago, people kept asking me about the price of gas in Italy. I shamefully had to admit that I didn’t really know. I have selective memory and that’s the sort of thing I tend to block out, and of course it all has to be converted (liters to gallons, euro to dollars), and I hadn’t packed a calculator.
Now, however, I have that info. for you, and if your response isn’t roughly ‘Holy cr*p!’ there’s something wrong with you.
Here’s the math:
A liter of senza piombo (unleaded gasoline) costs approximately 1.54 Euro. That works out to $ 2.40 a liter because a euro is worth $ 1.56.
So far so good.
But keep in mind that there are 3.79 liters in a gallon, so you have to multiply $ 2.40 by 3.79 to discover that gas costs a whopping $ 9.10 a gallon!
NINE DOLLARS A GALLON.
Which is why, when I get home from work in the evening, I park my car and leave it there, untouched, until the following morning. Wouldn’t you?
On my last night in Kansas City, I had dinner with my brother and his family, and we watched the final round of the U.S. Open. I’d never understood the appeal of golf, particularly televised golf, but I have to admit that it was exciting. I think it was the combination of being in the presence of people (my brother and nephew) who are passionate about the game, and because so much was at stake for players Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate.
“If he makes a birdie, he ties,” said John at one point.
For the first time in my life, it occurred to me to ask “What is a birdie, exactly?”
Clay and John then explained that a ‘birdie’ is one stroke under par, an ‘eagle’ is two strokes under par, a ‘bogey’ is one stroke over par, etc.
Woods and Mediate both finished the round one-under-par, so the following day they played an 18-hole playoff. I was at the Detroit airport during much of that, so I joined a large group of golf fans standing in front of a television, watching the match. I was the only woman in the group, as it happened, and I felt very impressed with myself when a newcomer asked “How are they doing?” and I was able to explain authoritatively that Tiger was one-under having just made a birdie.
When you learn something new, you never know how or when it might suddenly come in handy, if only to impress a bunch of strangers at Wayne County Airport.
Today I learned another bit of sport related minutiae, namely that what I referred to in my last post as ‘taking kicks’ is actually called a ‘penalty shootout’. I trust Dwight to know what he’s talking about, but I’m from the Show-Me state, so I had to look it up for myself, and while I was at it, I looked up golf scoring as well. What I learned was that a ‘Perfect Round’ in golf is when a player makes a birdie on every hole. Most championship courses are par 72, so in the rare event that a player does go one-under-par on each of the 18 holes, his or her score is 54.
This fact has been developed into a motivational tool (‘Vision 54′) to encourage people, golfers and non, to pursue perfection.
I think this may be one more reason golfers love the game as much as they do. Of course I’m speaking from the point of view of someone who has never played more than golf of the putt-putt windmill and waterfall variety, but how many other sports, games, or activities are there where there is a definable ‘perfect’ score or result? Not gymnastics, where a ‘perfect 10′ is so subjective, or basketball, where the higher the score the better, with no real ceiling, or running, where the lower the time the better but you never know when you’ve gone as low as one possibly can. Or changing the arena, at work, when do you ever know you’ve done something perfectly?
A 54, on the other hand — that’s math, and math isn’t an opinion.
That’s real, and solid, and something you can aim for.
Years of indifference to golf, and suddenly I think I get it.
The locals gathered in the piazza to watch the Italy vs. Spain match on a big screen. It came down to taking kicks to determine the winner.
In the photo above, Spain has just missed a shot. It was the last happy moment for the Italian fans, as the Spaniards made every remaining shot, and the Italians didn’t.
Can you spot Alex? How about the monk?
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