In Love with France, At Home In Italy

I would have liked to continue the Ferragosto Holiday in Italy saga by adding   STEP FIVE:WHAT TO DO AFTER DRIVING FROM ORVIETO TO TERONTOLA TO GET YOUR MRI. But my being a Technodunce has once again gotten in the way of my plan.  I was also thinking that after not posting anything for so long, it kind of worked out well that the last post I had put up in November 2013 featured photos taken in the Sanitaria Surgical Appliance store where we were renting J's crutches and wheelchair in the wake of last Ferragosto's mishap. Husband J of the pinched nerve, who has no trouble understanding technology, says that EVERYBODY knows that blog chronology works backwards, so that what you see is the most recent, and there's no need to fret about what looks like goofy timing. OK, I'm going to try to set aside my antediluvian sense of proper order and just continue. As I said before in my two favorite languages, AVANTI! EN AVANT!  Here we go.  STEP FIVE: SHOWING THE LENGTHS ...

Glass pen purchased in Italy decades ago, along with the peacock blue ink that I have loved since 5th grade. THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING. YOU KNOW HOW YOU REALLY MEAN TO WRITE TO SOMEONE YOU TRULY CARE ABOUT,  but then life intervenes, too much time passes, and there you are, feeling very abashed?  In my professional life as a writing coach, I pride myself on being able to get anyone unblocked and over the hump. So how come I haven't posted anything since last November? It's not that I have not been writing; I do that all the time. But posting pieces on my blog site has been another story. My friend Susan who REGULARLY writes the great Half-Year Italian blog is inspiring me to get on the stick. Now if a student presented me with what I just wrote above, I would gently say, "enough with the preamble, already! Life is short. AVANTI! EN AVANT!  I would also encourage the person to omit that entire opening bit. But in the interest of full discl...

Here is a little quiz to test what you know about Ferragosto.  Ferragosto is: (Check all that apply) 1. a major holiday in Italy when most everything closes down and anyone who can, especially professionals, gets out of town 2. a very bad time to have a machine or car that needs reapir 3. a REALLY bad time to have a medical emergency 4. NO time to have a husband who had the right idea to flee the country for Ferragosto, but then managed to get into medical doodoo on Day One of our 5-day stay in the non-Ferragosto-celebrating country If you checked all of the above, you are right! And on the subject of things in need of repair, it's not unusual in Italy to encounter the word "GUASTO!" (aka "BUSTED AND NOT LIKELY TO BE FIXED IN YOUR LIFETIME"), especially on elevators, escalators, toilets, and more. WE ENCOUNTERED THIS PARTICULAR GUASTO ELEVATOR AT THE GUARDIA MEDICA HEALTH CENTER Last year, for us, just in time for Ferragosto, it was J's...