In Love with France, At Home In Italy

I'm still trying to figure out how to write this story. It's especially hard since I am still right in the middle of it. Maybe the place to start is with a few photos. Who knows? Perhaps you can even figure out the story from them. Here we go. In keeping with my France /Italy theme, I'm recalling a French film that I found very funny: "The Tall Blond Man With The One Black Shoe." Maybe we could do a remake and call it "The Tall Tanned Man With The One Left Shoe." #1.Check out our shoe mat. Never mind the cute little flowered garden clogs. We're talking about the two giant non-matching clodhoppers on the left. Now why would anyone have two left shoes, and even go to Rome with just one left sandal? #2.If you read the   ON BEING A PRINCIPESSA (OR IMAGINING THAT YOU ARE)... post from August 2011, you know that this Louis Ghost chair belongs in front of the dressi...

Looks like paradise and a great place to have to oneself for a few weeks, no? Well, it pretty much is. But only by day. The other night I went down to turn off the light in the kitchen only to find that it had been taken over by flying and crawling aliens. They were everywhere, and I had to jump out of my delicious torpor and into a killing frenzy. Last year’s invasion of the flying ants had resumed! They had made an initial appearance the other day, but I had taken what I thought were definitive extreme measures to reclaim my turf. (Just goes to show that the Ancient Greeks did not have a monopoly on hubris.) I had removed all temptations from the counter and ferreted them out of the most unexpected places. I think the other members of the family might be surprised to know that they are not the only ones in the house to love coffee. The biggest swarm of them was on top of and under the machine. But there were some tea-totalers, too, who had decided to set up residence in the...