In Love with France, At Home In Italy

    I actually wrote this just for myself this morning while still happily in bed, but I am also going to foist it on friends who have had to listen to all our moaning and groaning about our misadventures while under the illusion we could learn to negotiate the Italian bureaucracy. HA!    Kudos to James for coming up with the first part of this title:  SISYPHUS AIN’T GOT NUTHIN’ ON US. And be thankful that what you’re getting here is the expurgated version of the story. In the interest of fairness to all, the profanity and yelling that might have accompanied this tale are not here, but please feel free to imagine where they would be. Here goes:    I don’t usually think about the literal meaning of “buongiorno,” but it’s already a great day because we don’t have to think about whether we’ll get a message from the Motor Vehicle people about coming to Viterbo to bring yet more documents for our car registration.    Yesterday we even turned in the ca...

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...