In Love with France, At Home In Italy

La dolce vita here is just what the doctor ordered. Our big news is that after an Italian-style long wait and many false promises, our pizza oven arrived. If it had come at any other time, the company that restored our house would have put it together and built the surrounding structure, but now we are bumping up against a holiday, when no self-respecting worker will do anything. Ditto for every saint's birthday, and believe me, there are plenty of them. So all fantasies of baking delicious stuff will remain unrealized for a while. Apparently once the thing is revved up, it takes about 2 minutes to cook a rustic pizza. The recent delivery plan was quintessentially Italian: first, we were told it would be all set up when we got here. (not so much!) Next, we get a message the day we arrive, saying, "it's coming this afternoon at 4. Please be home." (ha!) Then they called to say that they were on their way, but once they saw how bad the road was, they turned around and...

Epiphany! Tomorrow is Epiphany Day here. That means that everyone is entitled to be home waiting to have one. Of course it goes without saying that you and I have them all the time, and don't use that as an excuse to do niente. But as my mother put it so UNpolitically correctly, this country is full of "those lazy I--talians," so what can you expect? To answer your question about whether we made it to any wild boar roasts, nobody invited us to any boar-related events. But then again, they didn't shoot us, either, so I am grateful. And unless I have any epiphanies tomorrow, I won't be eating Bambi's mamma, or any hares or bunnies or squid or little game birds or duck, with the exception of the occasional piece of foie gras. Spoken like a true hypocrite, no?