8.12
Snow is all gone on the sunny slope and mostly gone on the shady slope -- it's nearly 40 degrees out and strong sun, so no issues there. Not supposed to snow again for at least 5 days. We've brought in a bunch of wood so it can dry out -- Roisin insists that a fire in the fireplace will warm the upstairs significantly, but it's all so wet at the moment that we are unable to assay the experiment.
Aurora decided that really, more kids at a party is better, so she invited the whole lower school (I had given her a couple extra invites for her teachers, and she gave them out to 4th and 5th graders instead). UGH. Oh well, I remain hopeful that only about a dozen total (of the originally 17+4 teachers, now 23 because there are some siblings) will actually show up. Her favorite teacher has already told me she will be here, so that's good -- the art teacher went to school in London and speaks perfect English, and is very approachable as well, so Ro is very fond of her. We'll make cookies and construction paper xmas decorations, eat the cookies and kick them all out. It'll be fine.
11.12
The snow that fell Friday is almost all gone. Only the shadiest places still have any. One section of road down to Pellegrino was a little slippery yesterday morning, but today it was 50 degrees out at 1 pm so the roads are now completely clear. Except for being a little earlier than I expected, this conforms completely with what Roisin said about the winter -- snow, warms up and melts, more snow, more melt. (No snow is currently predicted for the next week. The less the merrier!)
Santa Lucia arrives tomorrow night. I believe she will be leaving the girls a letter explaining why she didn't bring a lot, but definitely things they had said they wanted. We will leave her a sandwich and her donkey a carrot so they will be well-disposed toward us. Babbe Natale (Santa Claus) only brings stocking stuffers on Christmas eve, and Befana the witch brings candy on Epiphany (6 Jan), so the holiday madness goes on and on. Plus we had latkes and homemade applesauce last week. Lots of celebrating!
The blood test results became available today. I may have to go to Parma Thursday so I will pick them up then. The permesso is still in limbo -- I called one office today to try to get some information on what's holding it up, and she was incomprehensible. I found the phone number for the other office late this afternoon and will try them in the morning.
Getting ready for Aurora's Christmas party on Saturday. Elise will not have to deal with a zillion small children in the house -- she has been invited to go ice skating with the other girls in her class on Saturday afternoon. I am hopeful that this will be a breakthrough in her willingness to stay, but I am trying to stay low key about things. She is still talking about wanting to go home, but beyond investigating the school situation a little we have not made any firm decisions.
I've finally put up my spinning wheel and have made some inroads into the big bag of alpaca fleece that I brought. Elise is also interested in spinning now, and has been working on the drop spindle. She's taken to it much faster than I did -- her yard is already looking pretty reasonable! She wants to crochet a scarf with it. I have a nice pattern that is pretty simple -- we'll see how it goes. She plied the two spools of yarn I finished over the weekend and rolled it into a ball for me, so she's getting a good sense of the work involved. It's nice to have something we're sort of working on together.
13.12
We left a sandwich for Santa Lucia and a carrot for her donkey, and she was sufficiently pleased that she left us a 3D puzzle of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a Roman empire version of Risk, and lots of warm fluffy socks. Satisfactory. Aurora is very concerned that Santa won’t be able to find her here, and now that Santa Lucia won’t be able to find her in Boston. I opined that Santa is pretty much on top of things, but that indeed Santa Lucia seems to be a purely European phenomenon and so we probably won’t see her in the US. And Befana only really brings candy. She’s not going to make it to Boston, I can tell.
14.12
Went to Fidenza to get blood test results – not going to Parma yet. Small happy things that happen: as I was getting out of the car, a young woman walked up to me and asked if my errand would take longer than an hour. I said, no, probably about 30 minutes (since I didn’t know where the building with the results was). So she handed me her parking slip, which still had an hour and five minutes on it. It’s one euro. But hey, why not use it?
Turns out I needed every minute of it, because I couldn’t pay for the results at the window where the envelope was. Had to go find a bank to pay, then come back with the receipt to get them. Italy has an odd approach to paying bills. You can almost never pay the bill to whomever it is you owe, but you can almost always pay either at a random bank or at the post office. Which is, depending on your situation at that moment, either great or a serious hassle. So I had to hoof it down to the business district, find an open bank (as it was noon by now and most banks close around then), wait FOREVER for the person in front of me to go through an entire file folder of bills to pay, get my receipt and sprint back to get the envelope before my benefactress’s parking slip died. Made it back with two minutes to spare by the dashboard clock.
As far as I can tell, the blood panel results say this patient is type 1 diabetic and not much else, but I will send them to Dr Wolfsdorf in Boston for confirmation. God bless him for taking care of us while we’re overseas, and more to the point, not paying him.
It started to snow on my way home and is now fairly white out. Remaining hopeful that it stops soon so Aurora’s party doesn’t have to be cancelled.
15.12
Aurora's Christmas party was a great success. We had 15 kids, in spite of some staying away because they thought the roads would be too icy. Yesterday the snow stopped by late afternoon and it immediately warmed up to almost 45 degrees, then dropped again overnight. This morning everything was COVERED with ice. However, it was 42 degrees out by noon and the ice was falling off things in big chunks. I'm told the roads were terrifying at 8 am and practically dry by 1. The kids made some Christmas ornaments, a bunch of gingerbread and sugar cookies, played outside, and went away again. Aurora's art teacher came and brought little headbands for the girls to decorate. The boys made cookies for a while then took off for a snowball fight. Everyone seems to have a good time, so we're calling it a success!
Getting ready for the Christmas concert next week. Aurora will be singing a solo of Silent Night. It will be an adorable, if less than tuneful, rendition – hoping to get decent video of it. And to be able to compress it enough that I can send it to the grandparents.
No comments:
Post a Comment