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.