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.