present history

I wash myself with the warm morning sun
Herding the punks off to school
Through palace doors
Over marble floors
We do things like take out the trash
Well child check-ups
Shoe laces tied in double knots
Mop up milky cheerios
And shake the sand out of our shoes
Shuttered charm and markets
Sustain the modern buzz
of iPhones and pilates
Tempering it well with organic sustenance
Feeding that part of us that we didn't think we needed
Like the dust from backward small towns left behind
Italy doesn't give you that option
There's no leaving behind, no forgetting
And the whole of time stays with you

a little space please...

Personal space is an interesting thing. This invisible zone that no one is allowed to enter except for a very brief greeting. The zone reserved for only the most intimate of our relationships. And the vast majority of people get this. Is it something hard wired in our brains? Or is it cultural?

I've come across arguments for both. In the Smart Guide to studying in the USA site they explain personal space as a cultural difference and advise new comers to avoid closing the gap when someone backs away from them or touching someone during a conversation.

I know for certain that this personal space is a much smaller area in Italy. Almost non-existent. It is standard practice to lean against the person in front of you while waiting in line. If you inch forward they just slide right up on you. Or they will be so close that you're certain they're trying to smell your neck or rob you.

And while you (ie, me) are freaking out, they think nothing of it. Not a synapse of alarm or seduction or malice fires in their brains. They're just standing in line.

But then I read a study published in Time that found that the personal definition of personal space was controlled by a portion of the brain called the amygdalae. The found that people with healthy amygdalae had a personal space of about 2 ft. while a woman who happened to have severe damage to this region of the brain was comfortable with half the distance.

Does that suggest that cultures with little or no sense of personal space lack developed amygdalae?

Maybe we could add it to their milk... like vitamin D. Sure would make buying tickets for the movie feel a lot less like going to a rave.

On the other hand, it might be nice to not be bothered by someone's arm around your shoulder, or being able to speak more discretely with the people around you. Huh... I wonder if this is why Americans are so loud.

gelato returns

What a beautiful place, this northern Italian city... where you mark the passage of time by the opening and closing of the gelateria. With carnival and the promise of spring, they open now after a four month hibernation. One by one, day by day you spy the random person walking down the street sucking up the sweet nectar of a drippy cone of gelato. And even though it's still cold, the four of us went out for our inaugural treat Monday night. We arrived a bit late, the doors having just been closed, bins being put away. But the gelato lady saw our four pairs of wide gelato eyes staring through the window and waved for us to wait, she'd let us in. Four delicious cones served up and she even knocked a few euros off the price. And we walked that slow lick by lick walk through the quiet streets. And a cold night somehow seemed warmer.

lo stesso posto

My young brain
Young, naive, American... I'm not sure exactly in which way it is best described...
Perhaps simply "mine" will suffice
My brain does something strange when attempting to comprehend the passage of time in this place.
This place being Italy.
When thinking about the things that have come before.
What has changed
And, I think, more importantly... more significantly... what has remained the same.

For example, in a film,
You see a young man in trouble.
He's running through the streets of Rome.
He's running through the streets of Rome of 90 years ago.
And the only props needed to make the scene are clothes from the era.
Same walls, same streets, most of them made in just the same way as they were then.
And you rush through time in "lo stesso posto"... the same place...
Indicated only by graffiti, the sound of traffic...

And 90 years is yesterday. This place marks the passage of time in centuries, not decades.
And much further into the past.
My past begins 200 years ago. Maybe 500 if you count Columbus sailing the blue.
Dinosaurs, Cave men, Columbus then the declaration of independence was signed.
If something was put down in 1200, I'd suppose it was put down in stone.

So you can now imagine, now that history is expanding, ever further illuminated
Like taking a ride into Seuss' snowflake.
World upon world keeps opening itself up to me
And it hurts my brain a bit.

I can sit in the square for hours getting lost in my thoughts, trying to pull myself through the history of the place without skipping too much. It's a fun yet tiring exercise. It makes you feel small... l you can see your exhistence in this place shrinking away into nothingness as the time line unravels for miles behind you. Everything before building building building until it swallows you up into an atom of a molecule in the air of the last fart it just let pass.

And I suppose you could do this anywhere. But for some reason the presence of man made things makes it easier for me.

But fortunately, we don't live for all that long
And we count off the time in weeks
Days if you're a wee one.
And look at all we can experience in this small insignificant space?
Growing ourselves, careers, families... to each his own ways to spend splendid days.
So spend them on something grand,
Something that brings you joy.
You know, those smiles that you can feel in your rib cage.
That's what I'm aiming for
To saddle up and ride it with all I've got.

Yee Haw ;)

oh yea... TV

I've been living without TV for nearly 3 years now. We watch DVDs but TV programming has been absent from our house. I like it this way, but in one of my efforts to improve my Italian, I started wondering if a little TV might do me some good.

That said, I thought I'd share the prime source of Italian TV programming on the web. Click on Rai.tv and you have immediate access to dozens of channels. They even have a cute little remote that pops up on the screen so you can flip through the channels.

Warning: The vast majority of Italian TV is crap. Talk shows, talk shows, more talk shows. The format is basically a circle of people all talking/screaming at each other at the same time with the random scantily clad woman in the background.

But I do like the RAI scuola channel. They have a series for foreigners in Italy to help them (us) both learn the language and a little bit about different regions and programs in Italy. Cool beans.

brought to you by illy

I like to dwell at the cafe'
To sit down and sip, listen, read, think
Maybe chat a bit with M
And I have a bookstore cafe'
The perfect place for this

In this cafe, this morning, in the piles of pamphlets on a side table
I found a stack of journals
Heavy stock, the kind that give a paper cut to the bone
But nice to feel and read through
Issue 27 of Illywords
The Culture of Listening
Full of beautiful graphics
Prose
In Italian and English
For free... so I took one


And found the following quote
of Yoko Ono:

"Especially after
You spent a lot of years with it
Because then
Life becomes like a lover
You have been
Close to
You know him so well
And yet every day
He gives you
A surprise"


Interesting. A lover you have been close to, you know him so well, yet, every day, he gives you a surprise... Really? Can we know someone (or life) so well, and still be surprised everyday? Could someone be so wondrous?

I think there is truth to this. I think my doubt might arise from my own perception of this someone (or life), a perception defined by some preconceived criteria, fulfilled, and now, limited. But if I let these ideas go, and listen, and see things again... I can imagine that I might discover something new. And be surprised.

Can you?

let's zap their brains

The punks and I had a really wonderful walk home from the dentist today. The temperature has dropped dramatically in the past two days. So cold, my nose hairs are freezing up and Punkette retrieved a stick from under a pile of leaves that had patches of frost on it. She was delighted to discover how cold it felt. What a goofball, that one.

Our walk from the dentist takes us first along the river. The Alto-Aldige. I think you can see blurry bits of it on the side of my background image. Yea! Did you know that was an actual map of my surroundings? Pretty cool. Anyway, the Alto-Aldige is a big rough looking river. The kooks around here have raft races down the river in the early summer, right when I'm sure it must be at it's most dangerous levels. Now it's at least 5 feet lower, and still has some pretty nasty looking currents.

But it's a wonderful walk. Lots of trees and the sun coming down into the valley. It's our last half-day off together before Christmas break so we decided to go somewhere special for lunch. Chinese. Just over on the home side of the river.

Lunch was uneventful other than that we ordered from their Sushi menu and it was DEEE-LICIOUS and I adore the family that owns the restaurant. They always take the time to chat with us about how we're adjusting to life here. One of the women even taught the kids how to fold the napkins into sailboats.

From the restaurant our walk wanders through downtown toward where we live on the other side. People are returning to work and shops are opening up after the pausa. We're window shopping for gift ideas. This included a drool session over where they have the 480 euro Lego Death star. I swear it was only 450 last time we saw it.

So the kids are dreaming up fantasy Christmas gifts... Punkone comes up with a list that would knock St. Nick back about a thousand bucks. But Punkette knocked it out of the park.

Her idea was inspired by the sight of someone tossing their cigarette into the drain. She goes into her rant... Why do they throw their cigarettes into the drain? That's for water! It's not a garbage! That's why the ocean is full of all that gross garbage! (gee... I wonder where she picked that up?)

And then the idea unfolds: I want Santa to bring me a secret zapper for Christmas. One that I can hide from everyone in my hands. Then when I see someone who throws their cigarettes into the drain I'll use it to zap their brains. I'll zap them just a little bit so that they start throwing their cigarettes into the garbage. I'll change their brains so they won't want to throw their garbage where the water goes anymore. They can still smoke cigarettes if they want. I won't zap them too much.

Now I have to admit that I'm always encouraging my kids to utilize their imaginations to solve problems. To think up crazy impossible things because someday it might be possible to invent such a thing. But, somehow I don't think mild brain alteration of litterbugs will come to pass.

_________

Dedicated to Think Green Thursday, and to goofballs.

swallowed in the sea

I have reached my capacity for things new. Just today. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day too, but I won't worry about that. It's hard to explain the depth to which you are out of your element when you move abroad. It is wonderful, exciting, educational, expansive... but I think this alien feeling must be general among people who move for an extended length of time to somewhere dramatically new. Or maybe it's just me. To find that there is a limit, and when you reach it, you just want to go "wee wee wee, all the way home."

It's more than troubles adjusting to a new language, food, or routines. It's in the undercurrent of the culture. A foundation that doesn't support you no matter how hard you try to adapt. There's no footing, no traction. I feel like I'm always slipping, sliding, floating... there's nothing solid to hold on to. And that's fun sometimes. Thrilling. But sometimes it makes you want to lash yourself to the nearest anchor and plunge yourself back to where you came from.



Just for the music... I love Coldplay these days.

Venice close ups

I went to Venice for il ponte dell'Immacolata this past weekend. We rented an apartment and just took our time. I found myself at once obsessed. The whole city was decaying, crumbling and grey, yet, these spots of color were everywhere. Maybe they stood out so much because of the contrast. The dampness that penetrates everywhere. Seeping out of the walls, over the edges, ruthlessly eating away the foundations of this enchanted place.






















How can a place be hopeful and helpless at the same time? I don't know, but somehow that's how Venice makes me feel.

growing cynical

Something has started to happen, and I hardly noticed it until one morning my dear M pointed it out to me on our way to get coffee after dropping the kids off from school. He said I was becoming conservative.

I'm worried he may be right.

We have in this beautiful city in northern Italy, just enough of everything. A duomo, a castle, a big green park. Schools, hospital, police. Supermarkets and farmers markets and even too much shopping. Buses and a train station....

We also have a complete collection of eclectics that every city needs. Musicians, politicians, artisans, hippys, punks, drunks, preps, yuppies, priests. The very rich and the very poor.

I've never lived in a city before. A real city where I walked or took the bus everyday. A city where I interact with all these different people every day. And I love it.

My concern is that there are a the handful of people that ask me for money. Every day. More than ask. They harass me. They jump into my conversations with friends, they wait for me outside of the bar, they sidle up to me at the market and whine and mumble in my ear. Tell me stories about how they just arrived last night and they can't find the friend they're looking for. They need money for a ticket. For food. They plead their case.

M noticed that I'm no longer listening. Even shooting a dirty look or two.

This hard truth makes me a bit sick. I don't like being preyed on. I know that if I smile, show a bit of kindness, or sometimes even just recognize their exhistence, they will follow me for a block.

I'm not happy with this development. This is not how I believe people should act. Problem is I only know what I don't like and I'm having a hard time coming up with an alternative I do like. Maybe I need an urban society mentor.

Is there a class out there on how to be a compassionate urban citizen?

Because there should be more than these two choices. There has to be something between feeding a bad system and ignoring it.

ode to la pausa

Now that I've adjusted to this new Italian way, I dread returning to American life. Things like 24 hours and Drive Thru make me want to run and hide. Today, for instance, is Monday morning.

Monday morning when the shops are all closed. For no reason that I can find other than the desire for more time... to do something else. Need more time? Learn from the Italians and Take it. There are the bars if you want a cafe, and you'll see windows are open. To air out the pillows and blankets. But Monday takes on a slower pace, and extension of Sunday. A gift of more time.

I find it so ironic. That so many things I used to think were convenient, there to make life easier, actually do not. Malls and super stores and pharmacies with 25 aisles...open everyday and night. So much choice and FREEDOM! Because we can go and do and rush and cram more and more and more... we do. We must. There is not time to waste.

But here... It was hard to adjust to this new hum. A new pace spotted with empty space. Everyday there is a pause and everyone goes inside. From 12 to 4, give or take a half hour or two, the shops close their doors, seems there's nothing to do. Then on Saturday you see and incredible bustle, because we pause again on all day on Sunday. Sunday carries on through to Monday afternoon... 3 pm!

When you're not used to these times, it drives you nuts. You'll find yourself eating cans of beans for lunch. What a pain in the ass are the hours. But eventually you learn, when and where. There's less to choose but this is often much better, less time to take deciding! You learn the art of good enough and that's just fine. And you find so much time... to do other things! Yes, there are other things. These islands of time when you can just relax and be you.

smoke

When my kids were young, one thing I was really good about was getting them comfortable with their health care providers. The doctor and dentist office was a place where we went to get taken care of and received trusted advice. They were good people we could talk to. We never had any problems going to the doctor or dentist. Even when faced with scary problems, my kids knew that they were going to get good quality care.

That all changed when we came to Italy. I'm sure part of it is my fault as the kids must sense my own uneasiness and troubles trusting a system I don't understand and struggling to communicate with doctors who don't speak my language. But a part of it is also the fault of the doctors.

The case in point is my Punkette and her dental issues. She had several soft spots when we left the states that were likely to become cavities. They did. I got her to the dentist. She went voluntarily, had a cleaning and it was confirmed that she did have cavities. An appointment was made to fix them, FOUR MONTHS later!

We survived until the appointment, but things are worse by then. But she's still cooperative. She allows them to drill two of the smaller cavities out without any medication. When they tried to fill the holes, they jabbed a plastic spacer and this caused her a lot of pain. She refused to open her mouth for them after that.

This is where the core of her problem starts. Not one, or two, but now THREE different dentists reach a point with her where she refuses to cooperate and they just give up. They come to me and say, I'm sorry, I can't help her, she won't cooperate. I've been in the office with her, I've made her go in alone. They all ultimately hand the decision over to her, saying, "Do you want your teeth fixed or not?" Her answer, "No." And they give up.

Finally I had some hope with this last one. We had scheduled several appointments for Punkette just to get comfortable. Just cleanings and sealing the molars. The first visit, all she had to do was open her mouth. Finally, this dentists laid down the law to my very determined punk. The dentist told her what was going to happen that day and she couldn't leave until that was what they did. It took her an hour to open her mouth. A f@#!ing hour, but she did it. The next appointment was the cleaning. Half an hour, but again, she did it.

I thought FINALLY we are getting somewhere.

And they just friggin flushed it away today. Today was sealant. The dentist needed to use a few more tools for this. Punk didn't like how many tools were going in her mouth. TODAY, dentist made the fatal mistake. Put the damn ball in Punks court. Punk said no. Dentists looked at me in defeat, said, "lets cancel the next three appointments and have you come back, end of January."

So I'm fuming. This makes no sense to me. What happened to no way out? Cause if my Punk knows there's a way out, by all means, she's takin it. What happened to working her through this. If three tools is too much, isn't there a way to compromise. It may take longer, a lot longer but you can't just give up. I thought this dentist would be flexible and do what ever it takes to help this kid. The suggestion was that I punish her in some way so that she cooperates next time. I just can't imagine a scenario where this would help. She needs to be in that chair, letting the dentist work in her mouth. ARGH. They got her to the cleaning and now were back to zero.
ARRR!!!!!

Ok I'm done. I'll get Think Green up right quick. Thanks for listening.

edited to add:
I blocked comments because I was too mad yesterday and really just needed to vent. All better now. I'm ready to jump back into the fray.

a well worn path

Did you know that the floors in my home were put down in the mid 1700s? They're made of wood. They don't make a sound when you walk on them. Not a creak. A few of the rooms have newer ones that practically squeal when you touch them, but these old ones in the library and my bedroom might as well be bedrock. Amazing. And beautiful.

Sometimes, just to make my head spin I try to think about how many people have lived on these floors. What were they like? Did they play music? Knit? What did they read? What did they dream about? What were they afraid of?

Considering that this palace was in Austria back then, they were probably afraid of Napoleon. Perhaps their greatest fear was that their palace would some day be inhabited by a bunch of foreigners.


This is the picture that I put in my background. It's in Rome. I thought I would post it in case not seeing the whole thing was driving anyone crazy. It's bad enough that I'm making the local nobility roll over in their graves.

the american version

I'm no gear head. I don't particularly crave certain cars (although my Dad has a few tasty classics in his garage) and generally speaking, I try to figure out how to live my life without the buggers... but I must admit I fell in love with Fiat's Cinquecento (500) the first time I laid eyes on it.

image from Fiat 500, The Best Car

A new version of this cute little number will be coming soon to my fellow patriots. With one key modification (there are actually several differences, but this one is key). The American version has cup holders.

When you think about it, this seemingly trivial detail says volumes (well, at least a blog post worth) about the difference between Italian and American culture.

Walk into any coffee shop in the US, what do you get? A large paper cup of pipping hot beverage... coffee or a latte? Generally about 16 oz. worth and hot enough to carry you through half an hour of your commute. Or if you're thinking green, you might bring in your own travel mug. But in either case, it's to go. You grab your coffee and hit the road, enjoying the warm tastiness on the way.

And the forgotten supporting role in this scenario? The cup holder.

On the other hand, in Italy, the coffee shops are called bars (you can in fact add a little extra zip to your morning btw) and what you get is something completely different. First off, no paper cups. Nada. Zilch. Nine (no, not 9, the german zero). Second off, it's a bar. At which you stand. Thirdly, anything you order can be finished in at most, 5 sips. No matter how many times you say grande, what you will get will fit in a tea cup. How long were you planning on standing around anyway? So you get your little cup of cappuccino, swirl the sugar around, drink it in, oh, 2 minutes if you're really dragging it out, pay your bill (sometimes you pay first) and leave. Perhaps in your little Cinquecento. Sans cup holders.

Can you imagine if they tried to sell a car in the US without cup holders?!?! It'd be like offering a car without a steering wheel! How could you drive the thing?

And at the same time, going anywhere with a travel mug in Italy might raise enough suspicion to cause an evacuation.

Brilliant. The cultural implications of the presence/absence of cup holders! Wonder what it would take to get the automotive industry to apply this level of genius to the problem of pollution?

reptiland

After our walk in Riva, we went into a reptile house. Yes, the town is deserted, but Reptiland was open for business. Everyday from 11 am to 8 pm (closed January when they pack up the whole brood for holiday in South America). I guess you might have to live in Italy to appreciate hours like these. A woman opened the door for us when she noticed us loitering outside. Punks 8 and under were free, so it was just 6 euros to get in. She called out to someone and took off around some partitions. The man that she had apparently been calling for appeared from the other direction and they circled each other for about half a minute. This couple finally took our admission fee and then swiftly disappeared, leaving us to ourselves and three rooms of venomous snakes and spiders.

We took it slow. Snake by snake, we identify it's name, where it's from (by identify I mean reading the card taped to the tank) and what it prefers to eat. It's all written on the side of the tank in three languages with a colored world map, so that was fun. Some of the snakes move. Most don't. But it's all terribly exciting for the kids. I'm milking the situation.

After about 20 minutes, we're roughly half way through the house when the the male proprietor comes in the room and drops a tension bomb. He's sweating slightly and short of breath. And starts pacing between the backroom and one of the tanks. He looks agitated. He's carrying a pole with rubber hooks on the end. You know, one of those things crazy people pick up snakes with.

It looks exactly like he's lost a snake.

Punkette, bless her soul, continues her oohing and aahing over the creepy crawlers. Punkone and I are looking at this guy with restrained panic. Keep in mind that we've just spent 20 minutes massaging the creep centers of our temporal lobes.

Assessing the situation, I quickly chill about the white walls and the ceiling, but the damn floors were covered with persian rugs. What the hell? Who lines the floors of a snake house with persian rugs? A tiger could hide in that room.

So, I'm stepping lightly, and, logically, we head over to check out the tank that the guy seems to be so nervous about. It's a venomous something or other. It's occupied (whew) and it's got a mouse in it's mouth.

Ok. This is cool! Education. We've just been discussing what and how snakes eat and now the kids can see this snake swallow a mouse. We watch and watch and watch, but it doesn't seem like the mouse is getting swallowed. It seems the mouse is doing a good job of gagging the snake. It's sideways in the snake's mouth with the head sticking out one side and the butt out the other. While I think, survival of the fittest, having known other devoted snake owners, I wonder if this is what the guy's so upset about.

Who knows. The guy continued pacing and mumbling and sweating like a maniac and we didn't stay much longer to find out what the problem was. We quickly finished the circuit and got out of there. Dude was creeping me out.

party time

I'm looking over the guest list for our Halloween party this weekend, thinking up the menu, and starting on a shopping list... when it occurs to me that once again, I will never learn.

In fact, it's no longer a sneaking suspicion. Despite the periodic ranting of my dear husband (who is obviously just making stuff up) I maintained some glimmer of hope that I was being driven by something good within me, and not just simply making the same boneheaded mistakes over and over. I now have the hard evidence that I never learn. Documented by yours truly in this blog.

It was nearly one year ago that I started blogging, and my very very very first post was about me getting ready for what turned out to be an insanely wild Halloween party. Fortunately we kept it just shy of caving in the floor and killing Marchesa.

RTT: just smile and wave boys, smile and wave.

I need to work on my "I don't understand a word you're saying" look. Yes, I'm trying to hammer this language into my bowling ball head and Yes, I get the general gist of things and Yes, you are SO SWEET to make the effort to communicate with me BUT could you please slow it down just a tad... the trying expression on my face does NOT mean I've got gas.

I miss my dryer. I KNOW I harp on about how great and environmentally righteous we are to not have a clothes dryer, but when it's friggggggin cold and you haven't figured out how to turn the heat on yet and punkette insists on continuing to sleep in just her underwear and although you clearly explain that it is her own fault that she's a human popsicle in the morning... you've run out of blankets to pile on her bed during the night and you are grinding down your teeth as you smile and warm up her clothes with the hair dryer in the morning... a clothes dryer would be nice. 1. For the fresh out of the dryer warmness and 2. the plumpy softness as opposed to the cardboard stiffness that is causing Punkette to boycott clothes in the first place.



Cabbage is my new favorite food. Since the days of school evacuation due to the stink of a nearby cabbage field, this is a dramatic swing of opinion. In the past three weekends I have made three different cabbage based dishes that have all gotten rave reviews from the family. Yea. I'm glad I gave cabbage another chance.

Pass the Pigs. For once I am not talking about bacon. It's a game that the punks got from Grandma and Grandpa and it's just oodles of fun. It's like dice, but instead the die are pigs. Here's how you score: You toss two pigs and you get points based on how they land. You can roll as many times as you like, accumulating points, but risking to loose them all if you get Pig Out (pigs lying down on opposite sides).

For example:

trotter: 5 points

double trotter: 20 points

razorback: 5 points

double razorback: 20 points

snouter: 10 points
leaning jowler (snout + ear touching table): 15 points

total: 25 points

Then there's combos:

snouter: 10 points + razorback: 5 = 15

leaning jowler: 15 ... no points added for only one sider

this is the oinker and clearly impossible, you cheater... back to zero

I think you should get triple points for this one, but it is also, in fact, an oinker: back to zero you pig!

Look what you made me do.

alien

I pull on my jeans and a hoodie over my night shirt. My running shoes and my wool peacoat. There is an automatic easiness about this "look" that I've achieved in 1.35 minutes. Ironically, it's the same look that I see in every shop window.

And it's in these comfort clothes that I scurry the punks out the 17th century doors. They zip down the street on their bikes, closing that two block gap between now and "puntuale." Past the black heels that stop their clicking to look.

Some days I can fold myself in. Capture the notes and blend with the harmony of this city.
Make no disruption and pretend not to notice the crucifix, the thinness, the perfect urban precision with which it hums. Pretending to be comfortable and drowning myself in the beauty of a new culture.

But on days like today my 15 year old jeans and a thick grey sweatshirt will do just fine.
On days like today I feel no need and make no excuse.
For being distinctly alien.

You've traveled half way around the world to see someplace new and amazing... not some sticky kid. Hey kid! Get out of the picture!

On the other side of this fountain, today, my punks and I settled down to eat a couple slices of pizza. The best pizza in fact that you can find in Trento, from Pizza da Andrea. All the other pizza is crap. I kid you not. Come to Trentino for strudel, cannederli, or mushrooms with polenta... not pizza. How does Pizza da Andrea pull it off? Well, he's from Naples. That's how. Yea, I have no qualms giving these guys a free plug. I know I'm a powerful influence over where travelers to northern Italy are going to spend their euros.

Anyhooo... I got a funny feeling that my punks and I had become a giant eye sore, sprawled out in front of this incredible fountain, topped off by Neptune himself (because, you know, Neptune, the king of the sea, has a lot to do with the mountainous region we live in).

While we routinely eat pizza from Pizza da Andrea on Wednesdays, we don't normally plop ourselves down at the fountain to do so... it's just that today, Pizza da Andrea was packed to the gills, and since it was nice and sunny outside, we decided the fountain was the better place to dine.

So we plop ourselves down and as napkins and coke cans, straws and a big greasy pizza box are being juggled about, I look up to see a couple dismounting their bikes and taking in the view.

It is at this point that I get the feeling that we might not be adding in a positive way to the scene. Maybe if my kids wore lederhosen and pointy woolen hats, but, no, that is not the case. This lovely couple arrives here, from across the world (I don't know how I can tell, but they are US Americans), making their bike tour of the sights of beautiful Trentino, only to be met with the sight of me and my punks, and their backpacks, and bikes sprawled all over the steps of what otherwise is a stunning fountain.

Well, I try to forgive myself and soothe my worries by cutting into a fresh slice of pizza, when I hear a sweet little voice addressing me. I look up and see that it's the woman from the biking couple. She timidly asks... "Dove' Pizzeria?"

Ah my dear... this is your lucky day!

wedding photos sterograms

I have the social skills of a scientist, well, probably because I am a scientist. What is it about scientists that makes us feel so out of place around other people? It's almost as if we are trying to entertain a pack of chimps. We don't know whether to shake hands or kiss their cheeks, at what time to serve the soup, and whether or not it's okay to break out the wedding photos.



Well, I learned that it's NEVER okay to break out the wedding photos. Not ever. No matter how cool you think they are. Even if they are 3-D sterograms (sorry, couldn't resist... aka View Master slides), they are still, at the abrupt end of the day, wedding photos. And nothing says good-night like some other chimp's wedding photos.


It doesn't matter that I'm not joking about these being sterograms. HOW COOL is THAT I ask you?!? Who else has wedding sterograms (doesn't that just scream geek)?!? But the taboo on wedding photos still applies. It doesn't matter that we have three little view master thingys and it always seems to me like a fabulous idea to show them to our guests. And I don't think I'll ever learn...