The best laid plans....

.......may work IF YOU READ THE SMALL PRINT!!!!
They don't do cards in Italy - well they do but people don't generally send them so as a result the ones you can find in the shops are either really really tacky or ok but over priced. For years I have made do but last spring I decided to become super organised and order a load of cards to see me through the year from cardsdirect - they have lovely cards which are really good value and by buying them all in one go I felt pretty chuffed with myself - until yesterday that is - it is my niece's birthday in September so off I went to my stack of cards to get the 'Happy Birthday you are 4' card - and then I remembered ....she is gong to be 3 - than I looked at the others that are still there wating to be used, "Happy Birthday now you are 14" - ready for Leo on October 27th - and "Happy Birthday now you are 17" -ready for Thomas on October 7th - the card for Thomas is blue but no, I didn't read the small print......"You're seventeen! Have a shiny happy birthday, Glitz and Glamour all the way, cos you're super special birthday girl and today's your special day"! AAAAghhhhhhh

UFOs Italian style

I snapped this photo with my phone as I was lying on a sunbed at the beach yesterday and uploaded it to Facebook - a friend in London (a very rainy, wet, cold London right now) saw it and said that for a moment he thought I had taken a photo of some flying saucers.....even though he has just come back from a mega holiday in Texas I 'm guessing he has already forgotten what blue skies look like. How is it possible, and no I am not asking for a geography lesson here, that we are only less than a 2 hour flight away but we are all 'suffering' the weather in different ways - back in the UK rain etc and here we are dying of the heat (when I took the kids to the station on Thursday to travel down to see their Dad in Rome it was a constant 41° - with the car in the shade!) - I have seriously had enough - give me some cold, give me some rain, let me cook, let me eat, let me clean the house, let me do anything that can be done when we are not cowering from the sun....

Over for another year

Leo is back from Scout Camp - and it has seemed like such a long 2 weeks. No Parents' Day in the middle this time - they were up in the Dolomites about a 5 hour drive away - the Parents' Day would have been last Sunday, 14th August, the middle day of the big Summer Bank Holiday weekend so the traffic would have been really bad but more importantly no one could find anywhere to stay up there as hotels etc were only accepting bookings for a week or so - to be honest I had found a solution - we were going to stay in Bolzano (2 hours away) so that on the day we could drive to the camp, spend the day and then face the 5 hour drive home happy that we'd seen the kids but....I didn't go the pre camp meeting - it was put to the vote and Parents Day lost - by 2 votes (Nicoletta wasn't there either and she, like me, would have voted for the Day) - oh well, you live and learn and I have definitley learnt that that next time I will go to ALL the meetings. They came home last night after a terribly long journey - the contro esodo - it must have been a shock to their systems as they had left the mountains where for the past two weeks temperatures have been between 6 and 20° to being back here where at 9.00 last night it was 32° - but Leo (and his pals) did get to sleeep in a bed last night, use a toilet and drink some coke - happy days. ps hope you can see the video and that it isn't private again.......

So Italian it's not funny - or maybe it is....

Tonight at dinner.....

"Thomas did you see that I got you some new deodorant?"
"Yes, but it's the wrong one - I have some sort of reaction to all the spray deodorants"
"Damn, even the Nivea one?"
"Yes, the only one I can use is the one Dad got me at Chirstmas - the Gucci one"

My son thinks he can only use Gucci deodorant - you have to be kidding me!!

Summer recap....so far....

No summer is not yet over - and with the temperature set to rise to the upper 30's today and tomorrow there's no way I am going to forget it. Despite the upset with losing Bonkers we've had a good summer so far - enough work for me not to panic about all jobs drying up (it is August and it is Italy so of course most offices are closed) but enough free time to enjoy summer type things - we've had days in the country with family/friends, my first visit to the opera (Rigoletto in the Sferisterio of Macerata - a kind of smaller version of the Arena in Verona - amazing), a holiday in Slovenia, sun bathing and swimming off our (for 3 days only) private terrace in Trieste, Steve Wynn in Brisighella and generally a good time being had by all .........there have been a few 'tense' moments with Thomas - boy is it hard being 16 going on 17 yet still having to stick to family rules and it is hard wanting to do so much but not actually being able to do everything (because your parents so inconsiderately butt in all the time - long story but here's an example.......10 days working as an English interpreter for a national beach soccer football team for the Beach Soccer World Cup being put up in a 5 star hotel in a VIP resort sounds great to a 16 year old - not so great to mum and dad - especially when the organisers chose not to speak or contact us, the parents, were only going to pay €30 a day (because yes, 16 is underage) and he was supposed to follow the teams every move - where they go, he was supposed to go .....so what about the nightclubs?, the bars? the lack of supervision??? ) all in all he has had some life lessons to learn this summer - we hope he has learnt them - who knows - only time will tell - here's hoping.