Today is our last day at our beach club. We don't go in August when the price and the jellyfish are both at their biggest.

Instead, we stay up here in the hills where a secret summer life happens away from the notice of the tourists.

The joint birthday party for Nonno and Celeste lasted from noon to midnight last Sunday. We all got t-shirts and there was eating and drinking and singing al day long. It's cooler under the shade tree on the terrace of the pub and laughter drowns out the katydids screaming and the heat doesn't seem quite so post-apocalyptic when we are all together.

At the house, my tomatoes are flourishing in a way that has become oppressive -- an outcome to be expected as soon as we found out that Jonathan can no longer eat anything -- tomatoes especially -- with seeds. So I have been making sundried tomatoes to try to preserve part of our bounty for the seemingly mythical cold days of winter. We have plenty of tomatoes and, god knows, plenty of sun.

 

The heat continues to be post-apocalyptic. Right now, I am sitting still and gently sweating in the coolest place in the house that I can find. The only sounds are the katydids screaming and a distant ambulance coming closer and closer on its way up the hill to tiny Capriglia. Jonathan -- whose body heat radiates in a way that makes him the perfect husband in, say, February -- is too hot to touch.

And yet, the social life in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea is in full swing. Last night, we went to see Turnadot at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago. It was a lovely production and we were gifted tickets by our landlords, whose three children sang in the chorus. They were adorable.

But for all that, it is clear that anyone who complains about the immorality, etc., of rap/rock music has never been to the opera.

And then tonight is a big Capriglia community dinner in the tiny park next to our miniature soccer field up here. Jonathan has been accepted in amongst the group of ladies of a certain age who run everything in Capriglia (except for whatever happens at the pub). He is their mascot, the only man allowed in with the women. They have a WhatsApp groups chat called Capriglia Insieme ("Capriglia Together") but that we call Capriglia Unbound. He has been getting at least a hundred texts a day in the lead-up to tonight's big dinner. His phone is constantly buzzing so that if anyone else (like, for example, me) needs to get in touch with him, the message invariably gets lost in the shuffle. Since the beasts at the pub are mostly male, we had been wondering where all the women get together. Now we know.

Speaking of the pub, tomorrow is the big joint birthday party for Nonno (93) and Celeste (1). It will last all day and most of the night. We are busy hydrating today in preparation.

For my homework this week, my Italian teacher found this video for me to watch. It's very exciting because we see overhead shots of our house in it and also some of our friends -- Luana and Ilario. Not to mention some views of the pub. Now we are all famous!