In Love with France, At Home In Italy

I am thinking about endings as I stand here in 2012 making myself some very fancy French cocoa that had an expiration date of "best by May 16, 2005." I have been known to do stuff like that, especially when the expiration date police are not watching. This particular brand of cocoa, a requested birthday present of some eight years ago called La Parisiennne, is described as "silky swirls of cream gliding, intoxicating and arousing." According to the blurb on the fading package, the maker of this sensual product product trained at the Cordon Bleu where her responsibilities while working at the Hotel Crillon in Paris included making this ambrosial drink. And here she is having created in the spirit of this memory, "a Parisian style of chocolat chaud for those who want to bring a taste of Paris home." Well here I am in my kitchen channeling my inner Proust, and something has made me reach for this box that has about two more servings of this transfor...

Planting season is here. Birds chirp. Sun beams. Can there ever be a day too radiant for an implant? After my first dental implant, I said "never again," but here I am at number three. Despite my maniacal 12-step, multi-tooled plaque-attack that requires at least a half hour per day of my life, I am back in dental doodoo. Apparently there is no cure for the double whammy of having the gods of dentistry failing to smile you, and no access to fluoridated water. My mom tried her best to convince the town that fluoridated water was NOT a communist plot, but since this was the 50s, she was lucky not to have been ridden out of town on the rails. (full disclosure:at a wrinkle-free 87, she is a veteran of 9 implants and has the best smile in the family) In my neck of the woods in America, an implant will set you back $2250, and there's no tooth to go along with it. That would cost you another two thousand, none of it covered by insurance. I had been strongly...

 (THIS IS PART ONE OF TWO) Water, water everywhere BUT in our water tank! Mirko and Diego contemplate the problem They decide to consult our dog Murray who is an expert on making water Mirko looks temporarily stumped, but these things cannot be rushed. After all, this is Umbria, the land of S-L-O-W cooking and "slow" everything else. AHA! Well, here are our two brilliant electricians solving our water problem--for the moment, that is. They have just installed a new "Made in China" sensor, all the while saying somewhat admiringly how "furbi"/sneaky those Chinese are to be manufacturing everything nowadays. It seemed to work great until shortly after their departure. On exiting, Mirko had said confidently, "just call me if there's a problem." Love those Italian phones! Easier said than done. He has a special phone that will not take messages and that has the world's worst reception. He can't bl...

(This is Part Two of THE MIRKO STORY, IN WHICH MIRKO REVEALS ALL) As much as we love Mirko, we were hoping not to see him again quite so soon;however, it was just a day later that the changeover to the Made-in-China sensor did not result in telling our well it was time to send more water to the holding tank. The first indication was an unsuccessful attempt to flush--not such a happy way to start the day. But Handy Hubby had previously figured out a solution for that: go out, open the top the the tank, reach in for the sensor, and give it a good JIGGLE. Or two. Or three. Unfortunately, despite its cheerful color, the new sensor seemed not to have gotten the message that this was how it was supposed to behave:Jim jiggles, and il sensore swings into action. We began to be nostalgic for the old sensor, which at least had known the drill. Time to try shouting into the phone again to get Mirko to return. Mirko's next visit revealed many new wrinkles, both about sensor...

While puttering around the kitchen, I often have music in the background, usually of the soothing classical variety. But when I came in from outside on this brilliantly sunny summer day in the Umbrian countryside, I was met by the unmistakable, raspy voice of Leonard Cohen singing “Suzanne.”  What could he be doing here? Fish out of water? My awareness of Leonard Cohen came late in life. One day his “Halleluiah” sent me reeling. I found myself trying to sort out the words amid the mystery:the danger of David gazing at Bathsheba and going for broke. In fact that last is a key word It’s not a cry you can hear at night It’s not somebody who has seen the light It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah Our place here was a total ruin, broken beyond belief, but we fixed it, and it seems to have had a similar effect on us.  I usually only turn on Cohen’s music when I’m in a particularly sensitive mood, and I would not have guessed that today would be a day that he would ...