LIGHTENING STORMS AND ILLNESS SUMMER 2009

Finally I have an opportunity to sit down and write and my excuse is not because I have a baby or two businesses but because Yet again, a big storm hit us, because The Villa is on the side of the mountain, we are in a prime spot to be hit by Lightening, ('Egors' would love this house) So we have no computer, I’m still using a friends one. Ours blew up in one of our typical (all or nothing) storms. The weather normally as you know is always awesome here but as the saying goes, when it rains it pours, like you wouldn’t believe.

Now you would have thought we’d have learn’t our lesson about unplugging phone lines etc, when these storms come in, as we can normally see them on the horizon over the sea and if you recall this has happened to us another 3 times before, when the lightening has blown the computer and phones but just the modem blew those times. This time it came out of the blue and struck the house and we didn’t even have enough time to dive for the plugs, in fact they actually jumped out of their sockets in a terrifying way and the computer went bang, as loud as the thunder clap. Ah gawd What drama, another thing to fix.

So we're really in difficulty without one, trying to run Villa Silvana and Michael’s property maintenance work by going to internet cafes and using friends computers around there houses, trying desperately to concentrate on replying correctly to the right clients, about the correct dates and bookings and enquiries for Michaels availability, while having friends blabbing on in Italian to you with the baby howling. Assolutamente Troppo stress
Its only really starting to sink in now, how different our lives are, not drastically, unpleasantly different but I didn’t really realize how set in my ways and selfish, I suppose, I was. Only now can I appreciate how spontaneous I was, how relaxed and free everything was and how all of that has changed.You see, even being unwell seems to be a big deal now, before the bubba I could just sleep anything off or take loads of medicine and fight it off but I still can’t take anything as I’m continuing to breastfeed.
Anyway the various specialist’s and tests have finally found out that I have hypothyroidism and now I’m going to see another specialist for that, and I hope he can sort me out, you know what its like it takes so long for anything to happen here. For me, despite the fact that my symptoms were caused by my thyroid

Well I’ve just had to leave a lot of things because i've been so ill and therefore we’ve lost some bookings and everything has been a real mess but at least things are kind of getting more organize ever day. Jez! Grande culo as they say over here- when you feel the weight of the work load is to much (which translates as heavy arse)

During this time of sickness and stress, (boring), I have however, found myself some fabulous friends and people to help us out(Grazie Dio) and we’re really getting a great close nit bunch around us now, I don’t know how much we fit in as I think we’ll always be the foreigners, ‘The British’, but we do have friends and they do seem to like us (who knows what they say behind our backs, as they do talk, we know) in fact they’re really big on the gossip, I remember that from filming Pinocchio and I’m sure we’re a great source of amusement and typically they are constantly telling us how to do everything, and I can’t overstate that enough, in fact I’m sure they’d tell us how to scratch our arses if they could.I need to find this delightful Italian trait amusing, which is hard because I don’t.

Oh dear how appropriate that film lost in translation is, its not that we can’t make ourselves understood, its just that however we would respond, no matter how tactful, would come out rude probably, even though a few harsh words wouldn’t probably be a bad thing.

Strong personalities is an understatement for the italians, I thought actors were bad enough.

Also we still seem to have lots of local friends who pop around nearly every day, so that helps keep me sane, some days we can have around 20 people arrive over one day, amazing how friendly they are, they really would do anything for us, they are so generous in so many ways.

So Apart from us trying to acclimatize to the Italian way of life, it really is still beautiful here and we do love it and remark every day how lucky we are, I’m starting to feel better and of course little Isabella is adorable, they go mad over her and she really does get compliments every time we go anywhere, the women coo and even the men go gag gag and come up to us to play with her, Oh imagine when she’s grown up, uh oh daddy’s already worrying about her future Italian boyfriends.

She’s now eating solids and feeding herself and is crawling and adventuring all over the house, “Danger will Robinson!” we also have found her a little friend in our village Georgia, who is exactly the same age and its lovely when they play together, as I didn’t think I would meet any other mothers stuck out here on the mountain, so that’s lovely company for her and you never know maybe one day Michael and I might go out for the night for dinner.