I have a very strict rule about travelling light, developed from hard experience when the children were young and it seemed that we were always going somewhere: I must always be able to pick up all of our luggage and both of the boys all at the same time and still be able to run.

It is harder now because the boys' combined weight is well over 300 pounds and also because they vocally object to me trying to carry them around. But the rule served us in good stead on more than one occasion -- most memorably one time in a train station in Cairo when Tris was about five that I still don't like to think about.

So we went off the live for a year on Rarotonga with just one shared carry-on bag and a sock monkey named Jonesy for all three of us. We had basically no possessions at all (Jonesy being not so much a possession as a member of the family) for an entire year and I think we were mostly very happy. We had the sea and the beach and the coconut trees and library cards and a black-and-white cat named Pussy and each other. It was more than enough.

So I am a true believer in the Church of Travelling Light. You can imagine, then, my incredible conflicted guilt when I went on a three day buying spree last week. I don't know what came over me --maybe I was possessed by visions. Or maybe I have just somehow finally started to come to the realization that I am not travelling any more now.

On Thursday, I bought some lovely old bone china tea cups with matching saucers and dessert plates at the bookstore on the Via Mazzini. On Friday, I bought a lemon tree in a pot at the Coop. And on Saturday, I bought a giant green glass bottle for 10 euros at the weekly market in Viareggio. Jonathan schlepped it all the way back to the car, many blocks away, in his arms -- refusing to carry it on his head, as I repeatedly advised him. 

Cristina, our Italian teacher, tells us that it is for wine and that these used to be quite common. I doubt our livers would stand for that, but the bottle is a lovely piece of this place and this time.

Jonesy, incidentally, lives with Tris in Alaska now and mostly just hangs out on the couch all day.

While Mimmo was here this morning working in the yard, Jonathan went out to chat. There are three things we can always talk about here: olives, food, and Italian bureaucracy. Usually, Jonathan and Mimmo talk about olives -- today they talked about Italian bureaucracy. Jonathan told Mimmo about how it has been almost four months now and still no sign of his driver's license. His second temporary permit is about to expire. Magdalena at the driver's license place just sighs when he calls. It is not up to her, she says -- it all depends on what they do in the administrative office in Lucca.

"Yes," Mimmo said. "There is someone sitting in an office in Lucca with a giant pile of driver's license applications on his desk. When yours gets to the top, he takes it off the top and puts it back down at the bottom."

I was inside the house, but even so I could still hear Jonathan laughing. But, you know, ruefully.

I am making a deck of Tarot Cards with Tuscan images on them. This is the Ten of Staffs. It makes more sense when you see the whole deck.

And I am in the process sending my new manuscript out into the world, poor little thing. I hope that people are kind to it. While it is busy touting itself on the streetcorners, I have begun working on a new book -- set, this time, in Boston, where I spent many years and learned, eventually, to speak the language of the natives, which is many things -- colorful, jocular, r-less -- but is not English. Here is a bit of the book:

The quickest way from Tower Street to I-95 is to go to the end of the block (the opposite one from the cemetery), turn right on Washington, and then take the first left onto the Arborway. The Arborway is a wide street that runs right next to the green and extensive Arboretum, filled with all sorts of exotic and educational trees that would probably have been lovely to drive past if I wasn’t so busy trying not to die. The fear of being slammed into by a crazed Bostonian driver took the edge off my aesthetic appreciation of the trees, one of which would almost certainly be the very last thing I saw in this life as I hurtled into it, rammed from behind by the tightly-wound descendent of some hasty-pudding-eating Puritan.

What I am saying here is that Boston drivers are crazy. I was surprised to find this out, having somehow associated Boston with decorum and grave deliberation. Ha! People who will burn their neighbors to death as witches on the say-so of a bunch of hormonal tweens will flatten your sorry ass without a second thought if you even so much as pause at a stop sign. They will run you down and will flip you off as they do it.

The key to understanding this behavior is that all Boston drivers want to be first. They want to be the car that is first – the car that is in front of all the other cars ever. You could try explaining to them that there really is no such thing as “first” in general city driving, but they wouldn’t hear you because they would be too busy honking at you to drive faster and then flipping you off. It’s the “can do” spirit that is to blame for so much of American history.

Here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea, when we talk about "snout to tail" cooking, we are not being the least bit metaphorical.

Thinking it was pasta sauce, I inadvertently bought a jar of pig lungs. Sort of thing that could happen to anyone.

The bad news is that I now own a jar of pig lungs. The good news is that I am therefore completely prepared to serve dinner should my in-laws visit again.

 

Later today we will go down to town to buy some vegetables at the Frutta D'Oro, which is my favorite store in Pietrasanta -- more so than the art galleries or the upscale bespoke clothing shops with fantastic dresses made of velvet and heavily embroidered silk. More so even than the shops that sell old china and ceramic tiles and strange objects made of metal and blown glass. Quite often at the Frutta D'Oro, there are unusual vegetables that we have never seen before, things that look like Dr. Seuss made them up. Jonathan knows not to immediately eat anything when we get home before I photograph it.

We normally do our vegetable shopping first thing in the morning, but today we are holding off on the chance that Jonathan's new glasses will also be ready to be picked up. They were promised for last week, but we only halfway believed that. Today is the next day held out for possible delivery and we halfway believe that, too. Eternal optimism is one of our best shared traits.

Still no driver's license or visa, btw.

I sent off the first draft of my new novel manuscript to two different professional editors to get feedback. It went about as well as I should have expected -- their advice is completely at odds with each other, almost comically so. A passage, for example, that the first one specifically mentioned as one of his favorites in the whole book, the second one advised me to delete entirely. The ending that the first one said was "awesome," the second one likened to torture. He actually used the word "torture."

So I have begun re-writes. It is a gloomy process and I will be very glad to take a break later on today and go look at outlandish vegetables in town. 

 The truth of the matter is that I mostly live in a world that I do not understand. But it is a beautiful world nonetheless.

Lately, some sort of animal has been coming around at night and digging up the turf underneath our big maple tree. The boys down at the pub, without ever seeing the evidence, thought it might be a wild boar.

Today while Mimmo was here working in the yard, Jonathan asked him about it. Mimmo said it could be a badger or even a baby deer.

"What about a wild boar?" Jonathan asked.

"Oh, no," Mimmo said. "You'll know when it's a boar causing damage, because if it's a boar, you'll be doing this."

 

It is a blustery day and from where I am sitting, if I turn my head I can see the waves breaking in frothy white rows at the beach.

We spent New Year's Eve at the pub -- a more melancholy evening than it was a year ago. A year ago, Mirio came to our table and joined us and welcomed us to the family of the regulars. That night we first met Almo and finally learned Renata's name and a man that we had never seen before -- or since -- grabbed Jonathan in the sort of passionate and loving embrace that betokens many, many bottles of wine.

But there has been much death and other sadness in this past year and, for all the food and wine and fireworks, the party was a subdued affair. Daniele and Allice were long gone before midnight came.

And now January is here. We have yet another rental car, but still no driver's license for Jonathan or visa for me. The police will supposedly do a surprise check to see if I actually live here, but since we don't know when they are coming, we don't have any way of making sure that we will be home when they do. But I guess one excuse is probably as good as another for them to get out of the office and enjoy a ride up the lovely Via Capriglia.

We went into Firenze on Wednesday to go to a van Gogh show and then to lunch and then the Palazzo Pitti.

But we spoke only Italian to each other at lunch to keep from interacting with the loud English-speaking tourists seated next to us. For now, it feels like all we need is just the two of us. We hibernate together up here in our aerie, watching the surf break and the lights glitter down below us on the plain. At night, especially, it seems like we are very high up in the air.

I have taken some pictures of some of the doors here at the house. It seemed seasonally appropriate.