Some updates:

Moroccan Salt-cured Lemons: Coming right along!

Jonathan's Driver's License: Still MIA.

Italian Post Office Efficiency: Birthday card mailed to the US in the beginning of March (March!) has not yet arrived.

Moving Document Hell: First completed batch sent off yesterday, awaiting further complications.

Snakes: A notable lack of mice and other rodents around the house. Local cats looking nervous.

I have always loved beach towns, with their atmosphere of sun tan lotion and ice cream and indolence. Now that the summer weather has arrived, we have been going to our Beach Club to loll around and be healed of all our ills -- physical, emotional, spiritual, etc. -- by the sunshine and the lunch. This plan is working better than you might have thought. By September, I will probably be practically perfect in every way. Something to look forward to.

Having decided to move our belongings from Colorado Springs to Pietrasanta (the complexities of getting it all the way to Capriglia are completely beyond us), we have unleashed upon ourselves a whole fresh document hell. The customs people, for instance, want a complete itemized list of everything we are bringing with valuations and, if possible, receipts. The receipts for a lifetime of treasures. The drawing of a sunflower that Tris made in second grade and that hung on the wall in our kitchen for almost two decades? I have no receipt and no rational valuation. Zero dollars? Priceless.

More lemons have come our way -- it seems that all of Tuscany is inundated at this time of year. Fabio and Luciana, our neighbors, gave us a big bag and Barbara and Sara gave us even more. I made lavender-lemon marmalade and now we have begun the process of making Moroccan Salt-Cured Lemons. I have never tasted Moroccan Salt-Cured Lemons and have no idea what we will do with them once they are ready, but it is comforting to know that we will never die of scurvy.

This morning when Jonathan went out to hang up the laundry, he heard a great rustling noise from the woodpile right next to the clothes line. Given the recent goings on here, we have determined that it is, in all probability, a snake. And, given the volume of noise, not a snake of modest proportions.

We have evaluated the situation and decided that these are not our favorite clothes anyway and that we can get along without then until the cold sets in this coming fall. There is no need to go near the clothesline for a while. We are prudent. And naked

Quite often, people ask us why we haven't travelled around more from here. The problem is finding a time when it is not heartbreaking to leave lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea. At the moment, we are awash in poppies. The olive trees have begun to bloom. The cherry tree is filled with cherries and the persimmon tree is loaded with baby persimmons. The birds have lost their minds with joy for it all.

 

Today for the first time in weeks, Jonathan and I are having a quiet day at home, just the two of us. The sky looks stormy in between moments of chiaroscuro sunlight, but the rain is holding off.

I am spending the day researching international movers. The political news from the US is so frightening and the Magats seem so violent and deranged and bent on the destruction of everything that we fear complete chaos there by the time the fall election arrives. So we are going this summer to begin the process of shipping to Italy the things that we left in storage so long ago in Colorado Springs.

But, of course, we are leaving behind Aiden and Tris, who are all I really worry about in the US. But they don't want to come here with us -- at least not now. So I comfort myself by believing that I am building a safe haven for them here, if they ever need it.

In the meantime, we have been hosting guests -- five groups so far in the past seven weeks, staying anywhere from two days to two weeks. And we ourselves went last weekend to visit a friend near Milan. We went to Lake Como, where I had never been before, and even more excitingly, to a lovely pastry shop in Monza where we walked in and ordered "one of everything." Then we ate them all over the course of the next two days. That is the sort of thing I wouldn't have dreamed of doing when I was younger and more sensible. 

But I am older now and more rash and much more aware of the brevity of life and of the certainty that many, many chances will never come again.

We have started going to our beach club now, the Bagno Internazionale, even though the season doesn't really swing into gear until the beginning of June. There is just enough activity that some beach chairs are out, but not enough to scare away the sandpipers and the feeling of fathomless aquatic serenity.

I am in limbo, waiting to hear something good from some publisher about my book. I have been waiting for what seems like a very long time. Jonathan gave a talk in Italian at MUSA about Artificial Intelligence. The boys at the pub have moved outside to the terrace on sunny afternoons, but are still drinking red wine, not having made the jump to summer prosecco just yet. 

I have discovered absinthe-flavored candy for sale at the store where Jonathan buys his coffee beans and am now a lost soul. 

Flush with the sugar high from all the pastries, I made an obviously foolhardy decision to try to mail a present to a friend in the United States. The extraordinarily dour woman at the shipping counter -- ensconced behind about a mile of yellow crime scene tape covered with signs saying "Keep Out" -- demanded to know what we were shipping and then told us to fuck off. It's nice to know that in this world of dizzying changes and rapid-fire transitions, that some things never change. We can always count on no success of any kind regarding the mail.

Mimmo came across and dispatched (I assume -- and hope -- with great rapidity, although I was fortunately not there in person) two very large snakes living in the grass near our front gate. The wisteria is over for the season, but the poppies glow like pocket sunsets in the grass everywhere.

 

We have had lots of visitors for the past month -- four batches so far since the beginning of April and three more sets to go in the coming few weeks. If you have a house in Tuscany, you will never be lonely in the springtime. The sun has been lovely and golden, but interspersed with days of unseasonable cold and rain. This weather pattern has been perfectly coordinated with our visitors. Unfortunately, it has been a negative correlation. It is sunny and beautiful until people arrive and then they sit and shiver while the rain pours down outside (and occasionally inside) and Jonathan and I try to convince them that it really was quite warm just yesterday. They do not believe us.

Last night the choir from Capezzano Monte performed at one of the big marble sculpture studios in town, Franco Cervietti and C. Our friends Claudio and Valerio from the pub are members of the choir, which Nonno actually founded fifty years ago, so of course the whole pub crew (along with a couple of hundred other people) went to watch the performance. It was surreal and beautiful. One of the things that I love most about living here is that spaces, ordinary spaces, work spaces, even industrial spaces, are made beautiful on purpose and people recognize that and appreciate it and use it. I made a little video that I posted up above and here are a few pictures. 

P.S. Still no driver's license. The website where you have to register to get an appointment for the next step seems to have some sort of bug/error that makes it non-functional and the office where you can make an appointment in person was closed despite the sign on the door saying "Open". It's nice to have little things like this to help us fill our time.