3.9 Yesterday Gabriele and Mathilde appeared in the early afternoon (a gorgeous day after all the rain at the wedding) and hung out to play. It remains odd because no one speaks anything anyone else does, but the four of them managed to work a puzzle for a while then play Uno. Presently Thomas, the boy whose family owns the house next door, appeared and got out his bow and arrow and his Matchbox racer tracks and suddenly everyone had plenty to do! Elise has conceived a passion for archery. Have to see what we can do (if anything) to get her more involved in it. I’ve been working on her tunic for the event in Parma on the 14th but am nowhere near finished yet. The kids had a great time in the end – Thomas is quite the facilitator! It’s too bad he and his family live in Milan. I tried to get Gabriele and Elise to teach each other vocab, but they are hopeless. Aurora’s idea of Italian remains speaking English with a pronounced Italian accent. Appalling, really. Hope I can make her stop before school starts!

 Last night was a bit of an adventure. Thank the Lord for circuit breakers, since I wouldn’t be telling you this otherwise. We have a bunch of American -> Italian electrical adapters. The one in my room was charging my phone. About 11:30pm I went to unplug it to put the more muscular computer adapter in, and the outer plastic came off in my hand. I tried to put the plastic back on so I could get it out of the wall and it bit me, OW, but note, only OW, not DEAD. I tried again to get it out of the wall and there was a BOOM and then there was DARK. And remember, I live in a place without any sort of street lights. It was DARK.

I know where the circuit panel is. But it’s locked. And outside. And has 4 different spots you have to push to make it go. Hell with it, I said, tomorrow morning. Nothing in the freezer will melt by then. Elise mocked me (she was also still up) and we went to bed. At 4 Mamma got up to go to the bathroom and panicked when no lights came on, but went back to bed and managed to go back to sleep.

Me, I got up at 7:30 and went down to find the key to the panel. Found it. Unlocked said panel. Figured out which things to move to reset everything. Did that.

Nothing.

Ok, NOW I’ll consider panicking.

Happily, our neighbor Vitale was already up and dressed at this point (I could see him eating breakfast through his dining room window), so I knocked on the door. (I was delighted to see that he was eating breakfast under a fully-lit chandelier. I had not, as I had feared, knocked out the entire village. Only my house. Whew.) I explained to him as best I could what had happened. He came over and looked at the panel, then said, “Permesso?” (May I?) and went into the house. Turns out, when you pull back the front door curtain, there’s another circuit box behind it, with still more breakers that flip when you decide to blow up your house! He reset them all and POOF! Lights everywhere you look. When I just about fainted with relief, he laughed and said, “Zomtimes it is good to have a man in z’’ouse. Even a zmall one.” Learning! It happens every day!