LOVE IS...

gustavo & penelope

our afternoon together...

sorry... i know it has been nearly a week but here i am to (finally!) post some photos from last wednesday (my day off & francesco's afternoon off!). in the afternoon we went by boat to monterosso (just like tourists!) & back and then we had a picnic at the beach with friends...



we caught one of these boats to take us to monterosso (the fifth village)










vernazza (the fourth village)





















us! :)























WOW! sand! we don't have THAT in riomaggiore ;)




bella riomaggiore
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chloe at our picnic at the beach

friends at the picnic (1st photo, L to R: achille, alessandro, heaven, athos, & christina, 2nd photo: francesco & julie, martha)

TGIW!

so... today is wednesday which means it's my day off! YAYAYAYAY! francesco has the afternoon off (from 2 o'clock on) so we plan to take the boat to monterosso and go to the beach there. the weather has slightly cooled so it will be my first day back at the beach in i don't know how long! when it was THAT hot the last thing i wanted to do was bake under the sun!

tonight we are having a mangiata al mare (a picnic at the seaside)with my group of girlfriends and their significant others & kids (if they have them). everyone is bringing a dish so i boiled potatoes last night and this morning i made an american-style potato salad. :) i'll try and take some photos this evening (that is, if i remember my camera which i oftentimes don't... ooops!).

i heart wednesdays. heeheehee. :)

home improvement :)

today i was feeling ambitious and decided that i needed to buy new plants for our terrace. keep in mind that i am NOT a green thumb. on the contrary, i think i'm a black thumb. everything manages to wither (or rot, depending on the plant) and die under my care. in the house i have some little cacti that manage to survive (only because i water them once every blue moon) and most surprisingly a rubber plant that was given to us as a wedding present is currently flourishing near our living room window (they must be really, really hearty plants ;) heeheehee!). so today gustavo & i went to a nursery to pick out some new succulents (in italian cacti & succulents are grouped into one group called piante grasse or fat plants... don't ask me why!). i have no idea what any of these are called other than the aloe vera plant but this is what i ended up with:

isn't the view from our terrace nice?

a close up of four of the six plants

i had decided to spend 50 euro max and i spent 52 so i guess i didn't do so bad. but are plants always this expensive? i have no concept of what the price of plants should be. hmmmmmm... maybe next time i'll go to the market in la spezia rather than a nursery (the only problem with that is that it means that i'd have to wake up early on my only day off... hence the reason why i hardly ever go!).

here's a photo of my geraniums (from the last time i was feeling ambitious). tomorrow they'll be on their way to nonna's (francesco's grandma's) because she thinks that she can snap them out of their funk. i think she's optimistic because she hasn't seen them yet. notice how i didn't even put them in nice pots? that's because i've learned from my past experiences that they don't live long enough to merit nice pots. ha!

francesco's uncles (francesco & alcide, pronounced al-chee-day) are doing a major home improvement project. they've torn down and are rebuilding a stone wall down near the gate at the bottom of the house. the wall they tore down was a dry stone wall (which means that no cement was used when it was built) and it was there for who knows how many years. the one they are putting up has cement between the stones and shouldn't risk collapse like the other. francesco's uncles never cease to amaze me for both their hard work and their handiness. zio francesco is out there every morning with a hammer and chisel and he "sculpts" the rocks into the perfect shape for the wall(!!!). talk about patience! they are reusing the original stones from the old wall for the new stone wall (i think in the states we would just buy new ones so i admire their eco-friendly approach).

here's a photo of penelope that i took today on our way back up to the house after her walk (that's our building in the background... we're on the tip-top floor, which i think is out of sight!)

goodbye gizmo :(

my mom called this evening for our weekly chat and it wasn't long before she broke the news that she had to put gizmo to sleep yesterday. i had hoped that he would hold out until we're home for xmas but he couldn't make it.

ciao ciao gizmo. you'll be missed. and i hope that my mom will hang in there because he was her shadow, just like penelope & gustavo are for me.

i love you mom. i love you gizmo.

HAPPY!

HAPPY! attack of the alien!!! heeheehee. this picture cracks me up.



francesco & happy


penelope had 8 puppies in october of 2007. the puppies found homes all over italy (genoa, milan, florence, terni, etc.). of the eight puppies one stayed with us (gustavo) but up until a certain point we had kept happy as well as he was meant to be chiara's. chiara had picked him out of the litter the moment she saw the puppies (it was love at first sight) and she picked out his name, too. we ran into a bump in the road when chiara & francesco's dad (beppe) decided that there were to be no puppies in the future for their household. we kept happy with us for a few extra months in hopes that beppe would change his mind but the answer... in short... was no.




happy found his home with a family that lives in the countryside outside of milan and he couldn't be better. he even has a big fenced in yard (which is a luxury for italy!) and a playmate (they have another dog). we've kept in touch with his owners and they came last year for the 1st birthday party that we threw for the puppies (yes, i know, call me crazy for throwing a birthday party for dogs) and then just a few weeks ago they came and stayed four nights in riomaggiore to come see us! it was so good to see him... he has a really neat personality and he's very outgoing with people. i even hung out with him one whole afternoon while his "parents" went to the beach (because dogs aren't allowed to go there, it's one of the very few places where dogs aren't allowed in italy as you can take them into stores, restaurants, bars, offices, public transport etc. etc. with you).



amy & happy (in case you didn't notice he's a "floppy" because his ears never rose)



family relations weren't so fantastic as penelope merely "tolerated" happy while the two brothers just simply didn't get along. too bad... at 1 year they were best buddies just like when they were puppies together.



tonight i'm having dinner at the bar in biassa with my friend christina, her family & her best friend from england (& her family). francesco won't be there because he doesn't get home from work until 9 o'clock and reservations are for 7:30 (rather early by italian standards!).

H-O-T

it's not hot... it's sweltering. the last time i remember it being this hot was my very first summer in italy (2003). we have two big problems regarding the heat: 1) it's really, really humid here and 2) a/c (for the most part) just doesn't exist. i can't tell you just how happy i am to have a/c in my smart... today i went to la spezia not because i really needed to but because i knew i'd get to spend more time in my air conditioned car. ha!

penelope & gustavo are coping with the heat but most of their time is spent sprawled on the tiled floors (at least we don't have carpet here or it would be even worse!).

here are a couple of photos i took of penelope & gustavo yesterday. they've learned this new trick to burrow into francesco's part of the closet where he keeps his sweatshirts and fleeces and they cozy up in there. it's like a "where's waldo?"... can you spot gustavo? heeheehee! i think they're crazy because it's hot enough as it is...

and just in case you couldn't spot him before, here's a closeup...

here's a photo of penelope that i snapped last week:

isn't she a princess? sheesh. in italian they have a saying vita da cane (a dog's life) which implies that life is tough. not so in 2009 i'd say... (wink, wink)

now i'm off to take penelope to the vet because a few days ago she scratched her cornea (i'm assuming with her dewclaw?). let me just tell you that she does NOT like to have her eyedrops or her eyes checked by anyone (especially the vet!). it's quite an endeavor. we've been having to give her drops 5x a day and it has been a nightmare.

on the way home from the vet i'm picking up pizzas in la spezia and we're having dinner with francesco's cousin (sara) & her boyfriend (giancarlo... he works for the fiscal police which is italy's version of the IRS with guns... YIKES!). should be fun...