The movers came a week ago and delivered all of our furniture from the storage unit to the belfry house. Since then, Jonathan and I have been carrying box after box of heavy books every day from the rustic farmhouse to the belfry house. I am too old for this.

How did I end up with so much stuff? We got rid of so many possessions when we left Colorado -- so many trips to the ARC, so many donations to the library, so much furniture put out on the curb marked "free." So much left behind -- we came here with only two suitcases and two carry-on bags. And yet I've spent all week carrying boxes of books around. I don't understand how my stuff has once again metastasized in this unholy way. It's a complete mystery and I said as much to Andrea in the bookstore when I was shopping in there yesterday.

 Just exactly how close is the Belfry House to the belfry, you ask?

This close:

I took this picture earlier today from the window of the room that will be my studio. The little bell that you can see is just one of many that are in there. They ring every day at 8:30 a.m., noon, and 5:45 p.m. People say we will get used to them and pretty soon we won't even hear them anymore.

I hope not. I hope I never stop hearing the bells.

 

At long last, on Saturday we finally signed the lease for the belfry house and paid our rent and got the keys. The movers are scheduled to come on Friday to deliver all of our old furniture and the last of the ghosts from our house in Colorado.

In the meantime, we went on Sunday to see the house for the first time on our own. The owners had warned us on Saturday that the latch to the gate to get in was somewhat broken and quite tricky to open. 

They did not lie. It was so tricky, in fact, that in the end Jonathan had to scale the two-meter-high security fence -- no mean feat -- and drop down on the inside of the yard to let me in from there.

The neighbors presumably watched all this in amazement from behind their curtains while shaking their heads at the inexplicable ways of Americans. We will doubtless provide them with hours and hours of amusement for the next few years.

In the meantime, we are celebrating the "Giorni dei Merli" -- "Days of the Blackbirds" -- here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea. These are called the Days of the Blackbirds because they are supposed to be the coldest days of the winter and Nonno tells us that when it is so cold, the blackbirds fly down into the chimneys to get warm and the soot from the smoke there gets onto their feathers and that is why the birds are colored black.

There have been special celebratory feasts every day at the pub and the big bottle of lottery wine, which was never in the end claimed by its winner, was drunk by all of us.

But the signs of spring are all around. I saw some yellow daffodils blooming on a sunny slope in the olive groves yesterday and the mimosa trees are glowing. The wolves are also flourishing and on the most recent night of the full moon, one sat right outside our dining room windows and howled at it. He was answered by friends on the next hillside. There is nothing like wolves howling literally right outside the door to make a house feel cozy on a winter night.