my eyes

i have been having trouble seeing lately - but then again, it has been smokey. for days now i have been cleaning the heck out of my glasses ... but this didn't seem to work. i was about to go to costco and demand new lenses when i remembered i have had this condition before. i called kaiser....an appointment was made for this evening - yeah, halloween night.
i'm still fairly new to kaiser and can't quite understand why i need to see a GP first before seeing an ophthalmologist. but this is how it happens.
at the GP's office i was asked to read a wall chart. i did OK, i think.
the GP asked me a few questions then asked me to wait while he called the ophthalmologist...i waited, it was nearly 8 p.m he came back and said the eye doc was on his way to see me.
"from where?" i asked.
"from his home" was the answer.
i felt squirmy about this as i hated to be responsible for bringing in a doctor from his warm hearth and home.
(none of these doctors were my trusted dr. hot, BTW ( see previous posts, months back, regarding hurting feet, etc)
i was also advised to go to the lab for blood drawing. not the kind of drawing i like.

so i had the appointment with the eye doctor - turns out i have iritis - the inflammation of the irises-- pretty dangerous ailment. i could go blind. but i won't cuz i'm being treated.
the scary thing about the condition is that it usually means there is an underlying problem, an autoimmune problem. last time i had this, the underlying problem nearly killed me - it came with acute kidney failure, my body was rejecting my perfectly healthy kidneys....why? god knows. it is autoimmune - that's when your body attacks itself. some doctors or medical scientists think i happens because of a T cell going whacky....from a bad infection at one time, maybe. or perhaps stress......everything is due to stress.

but anyhow, this time i know the drill. i will have to be aggressive about followup, making sure the doctors understand my weird ailment. i will probably have to educate them - the thing i had last time was a very rare condition. i wish we had stayed with scripps....oh well...... this all makes me so very sleepy. i better go to bed now...after some nice hot and cozy sleepytime tea. .... nighty-night all.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

headache

ugh! i have the worst headache....i have had to take a couple of steamy showers to try to lift this one...it woke me up from a sound sleep,er, not the shower, the headache. although the shower would have awakened me too.
i will write later........nasty. my head hurts so much, it affects my vision.... must be the air quality.

miss bernice.....

the piece is entitled "Introducing Miss Bernice BeNice"... this is a painting of my friend annie's mother-in-law, Bernice. she was young and innocent at the time of the photo. she is still youngish and innocent -only as some good mothers can be.
anyway, i thought i would name MY new GPS system after her.
(YES! i have succumbed to getting a GPS system for the Prius, even after the huge ordeal i wrote about in a previous post entitled "my husband's lover". that post featured the true story of our personal horror of "pong" driving throughout Florence, Italy).

so, this is how i ended up with a new GPS system.....it went like this:
last week, me: "i wish my prius had burnt up in the fire". (i realize this is an awful thing to wish for when many people did have their cars burn up last week....)
gastone: (suddenly hysterical) "what the ??? what??? why? i just bought you that car? what's wrong with the prius? i thought you loved that car....!
me: "oh yes, i really love the prius, that's why i wanted it to burn up"
Gastone: "are you being sarcastic?"
me: "not at all"
Gastone: sputtering "but, i don't understand..."
me: (kinda like gracie burns) "well, you see, i love the prius so much i was hoping it burnt up so that i could get a new one with an upgrade"
gastone: "what upgrade?" starting to understand my logic as only a husband of many years of fine tuning can.
me: "well i was thinking i would like better upholstery and a navigational system."
the words "navigational system" really turned bells on for him.
Gastone (blowing out his words in relief): "OH, well baby, i can get you a new navigational system if you want one, they are cheaper now than they were a year ago...."and then, "blah, blah navigational system, blah, blah, i will order it online, blah,blah,blah..."
next morning, he was already taking the new system out of the box he got in the mail and explaining to me how to operate it.
me: "how did you manage to do that?"
gastone: "do what?"
me: "get the navigational system here this morning after talking about it only last night?" i was wishing i could see that kind of action out of him - leaving for work each morning....
gastone: "i don't know, pretty good, huh?"

then the training period continued and before long we ended up going on a test drive in my prius with the new system talking our way to college grove shopping center via the freeway and home again, a route, i have to admit, i had never dreamed of taking in my life. gastone was as proud as the day we brought rosie home from the hospital, or perhaps, as proud as the day we brought dempsey home for the breeders. "pretty good, huh?" he repeated.
and that was our conversation for the next 2 hours, "pretty good, huh?" and me "yeah, pretty good". "isn't it an amazing thing?" and me "yes, it is a pretty amazing thing"...

so i named her bernice. i took bernice for her first drive today with kathy - we went to stampington (somerset studio magazine) in laguna hills and back. within 8 minutes, i was ready to toss bernice to the floor - which i did - while kathy has screaming that we ought to not treat her that badly since she knows the way.
the trouble with bernice is she talks all the time -- she tells me to not turn off on roads, like every road, that ever comes within view. what kind of moron wants to take every single exit?
she tells me to kept left and stay left. you know, not drive off the upcoming exit. do you know how many exits there are between here and laguna hills? i don't know either, but i will count them.
anyway, it was getting to kathy too. she finally said, gawd, if you keep left anymore as bernice wants you to, we will end up on the oncoming traffic side of the freeway and then end up driving in circles. i had had enough.
but didn't know how to turn her off. i made kathy put bernice in her bag on the floor - away from me. we could still hear her muffled voice telling me to keep left and stay left. my muscles in my shoulders were beginning to tense up - to the left.
i just knew i would be walking with a left tilt by the time we reached laguna hills.
kathy thought we ought to train bernice to repeat to me the word "no". so that i would learn that word. kathy has been tryin gto train me for a few years now to just say "no" to new volunteer spots.. i didn't see in bernice's instruction book how to get her to repeat that sort of training for me, but thought it was a pretty good idea.
oh well, its getting late. i will tell you about our laguna hills visit another day.

in my dad's life

today kathy and i went to the studio to pick up my paintings. i have to hang a show thursday night at bard hall in north park.......(the first unitarian universalist church. i will be showing with long time artist chuck macpherson. I also have a day show and sale at a home in La Mesa this Saturday during the second annual Historical Home tour. so it was important to go get my paintings this weekend).


cough, cough, cough...it is still so smokey and what a horror to see the gutted homes, just off hyway 15. i have lived in san diego since birth (except for the 3 years i lived in england during the early 1980's)i have seen 3 big fires now. this one, 2003 and 1968.

during the fire of 1968, my dad bravely went on our wood shingled roof to water down our home in lemon grove that edged on spring valley...my mom didn't want him up there, but knew he had to do it.
it was evening....i still have a vision of him on the roof, his figure silhouetted against the orange raging mountain. the pepper tree next to our house instantaneously caught fire from drifting hot ash from san miguel mountain. the same san miguel mountain that was burning earlier this week. my eyes nearly bugged out of my head to see that. i screamed.....to look out. my dad being very brave and calm for our benefit told me there was really nothing to worry about it was only a maverick spark causing the tree fire. i was thinking our wood shingle roof was a worrisome problem. my mom, normally a woman of steel nerves was semi- hysterical and shouted to us to get in the house that minute. i was frozen....i didnt know if i should go in the house that could burst into flame like the tree i just witnessed or stay outside to help my dad if he needed me and possibly risk my clothes catching fire... it was a big scarry thing for me, well, for everyone. i finally chose to go on in the house rather than risk getting the back of my head slapped by my mom.

luckily a couple of hours later, the fire department had it all under control.

that was a dilly.

but not like the real dillys we have had lately. if my folks were alive for either of these new millinium fires...well, it would have killed them.

today...

meredith cummings came over to play....i haven't worked with her for ages, my dear friend meredithy - i have been out of town and having company and, well, you know.
meredith and i usually work together on art every other friday. i was soooo glad to see her again.
we chit-chatted forever! its so nice to have her around. we even did a few ATCs - almost.

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and xmas tags........

i feel my blues lifting a bit......

tattooed shoes

my favorite pair is the one with the tattoos, bottom pair.

rosie's magazine piece

advanced issues

this week i receieved the advanced issues of "altered couture" and "somerset studio". the reason i recieved them in advance is because i have art and articles in them.
in altered couture, i'm proud to say that my daughter, rosie, has a few pieces she created showing in the gallery section.
check out my tatooed shoes too.
the article i wrote in somerset studio has to do with creating homemade christmas cards that tell a family story (seen here).

its been very depressing lately because of the fires and poor air quality, so i'm thankful to have recieved these magazines. they have helped to lift my spirits some.
i am especailly impressed this time with Somerset Studio, definately worth buying, there are some different and very interesting how-to articles in there and good art to boot.
Altered Couture makes me want to take every item of clothing i own and re-make it.

studio news

the studio made it through the fire without harm. it is positioned across from pomerado hospital which had been evacuated. more importantly, my dear friend joan irving's home was spared, although her neighborhood was not. joan and family returned to it today.
renee richetts and mary jo are still displaced. they heard their house is standing, but no other house on their street is. the worse is victoria - she lost everything: home, studio, her art and her art collection.

The Home Front- still a few bottles on the wall.....

we were worried about rosie missing a couple of days of school because of our trip...now turns out there is no school or swimming for all this week at least. i suggested to my family that we go on another trip, but they brutally and emphatically screamed NO. no more travels for awhile. we have been on the road a lot lately....but i m hoping that that's just the jet-lag talking. i don't see the point of breathing this nasty air.
we stayed tuned to our TV all day as everyone did - well, those who had a TV to watch, to see, just to know which way the wind was blowing. another time, another life, just watching the way the wind blows would be an idle and leisurely afternoon. an afteroon spent in the umbrian hill, perhaps, while lying in grass and munching grapes....but not here!
the wind powered raging inferno started to threaten our neck of the woods yesterday afternoon. ...well it came within a few miles as the crows flies which spooked me, but was really nothing compared to some of some families on our swim team who not only evacuated their homes to a "safe" high school but like a very bad nightmare of an unrelenting monster, the wind changed and the fire raged at the school's door steps. they were destined to be stalked by the fire.

luckily the fire department had a wild card to use...i'm still not sure how they performed it, but somehow, they created a massive back draft and veered the fire out of harms way, right before the shelter victims eyes. an old guy was interviewed...clearly shaken, but also was awed filled. he said in an uneven almost hicup-y voice that he had never in his entire life (which looked to be a long one) had he seen anything like it, and probably never would again...boy, lets hope not!

with all this going on, i forgot to mention that my house was unfamiliarly clean and clear when i got home from the airport....(see previous post). i must make things up to brookie for all the things i thought. she and "carlos" did a fantastic job of looking after our house and possessions. so i called up brooke yesterday.."hi momma" (she has my number on her cell- each time i am surprised at this) "how did you know it was m.....oh yeah. hey brookie what are you and "carlos" doing? wanna come over and play scrabble?"
"er, we are working momma.... (oh yeah, i thought, damn jetlag)...she broke into my thoughts," can i call you ba...."
to the point, i asked......
"well, where are you brookie?"
"i'm at qualcomm stadium,but can i call you ba....?'
i interrupted "who are you reporting for?"
..(uhm, i'm not supposed to give out call numbers in my post) but just let's say "CNN", "NPR", "SCPR", "NYNews" and about 10 other national places she rattled off, fast as lightening including live interviews for vancouver, sidney, australia, and various other countries..... then she was saying "but, momma, i really need to go...."
"do you get pay by all these entities?"
"YES!" oh, i'm so pleased with her.
"so, what are you doing right now? i want to give you and "carlos" a present each."
"That's very nice, momma, but i have to go because i'm on the air."
"what?!?! right now?"
"yes!!!"
i had just noticed she had been whispering.....
"OH GOD,RIGHT NOW, like right-this-second? with katie couric and arnold?"
"yessssss. momma."
she gave a loaded sigh that was whispered. (she's very professional)! tee-hee, so proud!

"OH well can you say "hi" for me? and can you get one of those cute little firemen outfits? for halloween, you would look so cute...."
"I GOTTA GO". i was cutoff.
"OK, talk later. love youuuuuuu. kiss, kiss"

she hung up on me while saying she would call me back........
i beamed, i'm so proud of her.
she works very hard.
i know she will call me back, cuz she always does find time for her momma. what a great kid!

WHAT THE FREAK?????

WHO STARTED THIS FIRE WHILE WE WERE AWAY?
i left my daughter brooke and "carlos" in charge of the house and dog and cat.
last night we when landed in JFK, i called her to tell her we were coming in at about 10 p.m..
"how's everything brooke?"
"oh momma, are you still planning on coming home tonight?"
i was afraid of this question....and i knew the question very well....i have raised a few kids through their teenage years and i myself went through it. i always hoped my parents would come home a day or two later than planned so that i could "clear out and clean up".

"what do you mean brooke?"
"momma, i think you ought to stay away from san diego for at least three days if you can...."
three days?!?!
still not knowing the news....holy shit, what happened now??? i asked, "uhm, brooke, what did you do? is something wrong? damn it, you have to tell me what happened." (i have to admit that i forget how old my children are all the time, i think they are all about jr. age. sorry brookie.)
my brookie has been working as a major news reporter now for over 10 years - i still haven't gotten used to the idea.
"momma, don't you know that san diego is on fire?"
"WHAT?!!!? OH, GOD, brooke, did you leave the stove on?" i envision this happening to myself all the time.

no, momma, .....and then she rattled off all the incomprehensably awful news...."worse than the cedar fires," i heard her say. "the fire deptartment is scared..." "evacuations in escondido (holy crap my studio, i had an instant flash of all my paintings now ash)...."the enitre town of ramona...." NO, not my friend in ramona!!!!! and i began to think about the horses and livestock too and everything that was a horror 4 years ago, now back in full.
when i got off the phone, my husband and rosie didn't really believe me. why? because it is hard to believe.

i called kathy.....she was wearing a mask, she said. for some reason this first bit of news made me giddy.....but i quickly pulled myself together, as it is a very serious matter. kathy lives in chula vista, there was a nasty fire raging in her area....she told me that people were told to hunker down and wait for instructions. i asked her what she was doing....she said she was eating at chilis, then going to costco!!!! that's my friend kathy, nothing stops her. another time i giggled...but was nudged sharply by my daughter who thought it couldn't possibly be funny. she was rioght.
anyway, kathy told me what i wanted to know, should we come home? she said yes, by all means, because we needed to look after our home. hmmm, i got scared.

as we flew in from LA at night, we could see it from the air. everyone had their noses pressed to their windows. wiggly worms and rings of fire. no one could speak, exactly, only in hushed somber tones.
once home, we looked around. our house is safe, lots of ash everywhere and our umbrellas are in the pool. lots of wind damage, ripped our screens off, etc.

but we are HOME.

but i am uneasy today, i want to hear from my ramona friends to be sure things are OK. SO RaMONA if you are out there, please give me a holler.

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and my rosie-too

rosie wrote the last post - at least the story about the boy with freckles....she knew the story because it is family folklore.

tomorrow we leave for the states. i hate to leave italy. we left gubbio yesterday and are now in rome. we all cried like babies to leave one another, my in-laws and us. i love my in-laws. heavy sigh. over time we tend to forget how awful it is to live apart.

my brookie-poo

that was great storytelling that brooke composed, but i need to make a couple of corrections, er, ok, comments...
first of all, she used the words "practically married" to describe her relationship with , let's just call him "carlos". i don't know why they don't get married already...they are two people who are very tightly bound to one another and STILL claim to be "committment phobes". i'm not buying it. and neither is anyone else that knows them. i love my "near son-in-law" and i think he is a perfect fit for brookie. i have not met his Mexican mother, but can't wait.

now for correcting other details of her post.

i thought i asked that cute boyfriend of brooke's if he was sure he wasn't a family member because he at one time lived very near my cousin. maybe he was related and thats why he took off. next, when I showed the picture of me in my bikini at dinner time, I did that because I was sure he was interested in knowing just how foxy i was, and the final guy was gay.

she didn't mention some of the beauts she brought home. she went through as phase of talking to anyone on "chatboards" on the internet. occassionally they would show up at the door. One guy that showed up had piercings. he had piercings all over his head, plus he showed me his nipples that were pierced. Brooke indicated that she heard that he also had his private parts pierced. I asked to see it . . . but he left.

once Brooke was talking over the internet with this boy who she was very fond of at the time, she was only about 12. Anyway, they set up a play date and so I was forced to drive to this 12-year-old boy's home. As we pulled up, the kid was waiting out front, I had a bad feeling all along. Anyway, I asked brooke at that time if she had seen him before, and of course the answer was "no", she was kind she tried to keep a straight face, but as I dropped her off and started to drive away, she clung onto the window as I drove away. I guess she wasn't attracted to a boy who was a fat butter ball with orange hair and freckles. Clearly she was his type, I returned in an hour and she was waiting in the front, with a pale look on her face. she couldn't get away fast enough. she was horrified. I guess that was the end of blind dates for her. So I guess the moral of this sad humiliation is "live and learn".

Filling in

Hi everybody. I'm Brooke, Lisa's daughter. She asked me to write a little blurb in here while she's away in Italy so people don't lose interest in her. Fat chance, I say. But now I have all of you captive, so when I finish laughing evilly, I will try to think up a good memory about my mother.

Oh, I have a good one. When I was younger and before I was practically married, I had quite a few would-be boyfriends. These hopefuls would come meet my mother before I would, you know, deign to go out in public with them. I figured if they could handle her, an older and therefore far more concentrated version of me, they could handle me. She would inevitably say something outrageous and scare them off.

"Oh, errr, I like your mother," they would say skittishly to me. "She's very... unusual." I would laugh as I always did and know that the relationship wouldn't live much longer.

One guy did a vanishing act after she said to him, "oh look how handsome you are! You must be related to us."

Another would-be suitor vanished after she showed him some old snapshots of herself at 30 or so in a bikini. "Oh," she tittered, "I was much thinner then." He laughed nervously.

The best one of all was a young man she decided was gay. "You're gay, right?" she kept asking. "Aren't you gay?" He demurred thirty or forty times, but she was bound and determined to extract the truth from him until she ran upstairs and came down with a pink feather boa that she draped over his shoulders before stepping back to admire the effect. "There," she said, smacking her lips in satisfaction, "that looks perfect on you!" He didn't last long after that.

I was amused yet horrified as a teen and twentysomething, but now that I am thirty and just about ready for kids of my own, I keep thinking about her antics back in the day and laughing to myself. It gets funnier every year. I can't wait.

Of course, it helps that the man I am now with has a mother just like mine, so he knows how to handle it all. For every time she's cracked a Mexican joke, his mother has made fun of my white-girl accent when I nervously try out my bad Spanish on her. For every time my mother regales him with an embarrassing story from my childhood and brings out the naked pictures of me, his mother tells me some tidbit of information that is usually mortifying to him and hysterical to me that I am too nice a girlfriend to repeat here. So we are each uniquely equipped to deal with each other's families.

Some would call that karma. I call that hilarious.

umbrian workshop

i think i have settled on the place now for next years workshop. it is a peace of heaven just outside of gubbio. it is a moderized farmhouse and small chapel, in a tranquil quiet spot, where God loves to be. He told me so.

there will be internet service.
each room has a kitchen. but food will be served there for the artists. the large workshop space overlooks a quiet valley of farm land. the air is clean. there is a swimming pool that's modern, tgennis court and soccer field....not that we need these things... there is an olive grove and vineyard nearby.

the weather here has been warm, it is 6:40 p.m. and i am in my short sleeves.
gubbio the medieval towen is only 8 minutes away - lots of shopping and interesting art to look at.

the end of october is a truffle faire-not chocolate, but an earthy root that is so flavorful -a delicacy. umbria is not far from tuscany but more beautiful and less tourists. we went to cortona today. cortona is beautiful too but it was full of americans doing art tours. cortona is used to the american tourists and most the shops trade upon them. gubbio is still pure.
ok gotta go.
BTW, the GPS system is still broken.
no! i didn't do it!

my husband's lover

my husband has never cheated on me, but he has a couple of lovers. his primary love interest is dempsey, our doberman pinscher. they do almost everything together. if you ask him about dempsey (or not) he will go on and on about what a beautiful dog, how well behaved his is, how intelligent his is and what a wonderful companion he makes. i suppose once upon a time, her said the same about me, but i don't really recall that....(sigh) i am used to being secondary to dempsey.
his other huge love interest's name keeps changing, as i give her different names, but she is generally known as TomTom (GPS sytem) or as i like to call her "Gladys". at home, my husband loves Gladys so much he will even use her to get to and from work....this is when i first suspected the love affair as neither distination has changed in years. i think he likes Gladys' voice.
on our trip last March to Artfest in Washington state, Gladys was there informing us the way from the SEATEC airport to Fort Townsend on Bainbridge island. i personally love to have a map in my lap, but this somehow undermines the magic for him and Gladys and i was not permitted to use one until i finally made a fit of things. as for me, i like to see where we are going and also where we haven't gone, i just like the general area of information - you know, in case of a side trip or something. but thats my personality - his is to take NO side trips - he likes the direct route -and so goes our differences in life's philosphy in general. what can i say, i'm sagitarius and he is a virgo!!!
so Gladys got us in trouble in Washington state by not sending us to the island via a ferry, instead we drove clear to the Canadian country line before looping around to where our hotel was, a four plus hour inconvenience. i felt smug, i must admit, i got to get a map and showed my husband the error of her ways. he defended her by saying it was his mistake by entering the question too generally and not asking for the most direct route. on that trip, i secretly changed her name to "bimbo".

For our italian venture, my husband was so excited to be including "gladys", he started to prepare for months in advance. he shopped on the internet and bought an european chip ($100) but began to have troubles when she wouldn't register. he spent weeks trying to straighten that out and it is still pending.
so, when we got to italy, he was forced to rent a cheap whore of a GPS system and it cost him another $100. I called her "two-bit". the slogan on "two-bits" packaging was "never get lost". Hoo-hoo what a joke!
"two-bit" refused to speak english or spanish or italian, any of these languages my husband is fluent. instead, she decided to speak to us in netherlands dutch, so i changed her name to "gretchen, the whore".
We listened to her say "linx de somethingerother" from the Rome airport to Gubbio not understanding a word. Good thing i could read road signs. (again, please with myself).
we all took turns trying to coax english out of her, but failed. Eventually and reluctantly, we began learned Gretchen's language.
But she wasn't done being impossible.
my husband gently asked her to show us the way to Ponte Vecchio, Firenze as i wanted top visit the uffizi gallery.
we strained to understand her while taking a mad cap tour between speeding wild vespas throughout all of florence, including ending up embarrassed a time ot two in the middle of a piazza. i changed her name to "gretchen, the maniac, tempermental two bit whore".
at last, after a suicidal romp through out the innards of florences my husband stopped and tried once more to get a language we all understood. thank god, he found a soothing british woman's voice whom i named simply "Kate". I liked Kate, she was serene and stylish, she was polite and seemed to not carry any weird issues about direct routes. we asked her the way to ponte vecchio and she toured us through a less populated, less frantic area, wider roads and better scenery....ahhhh, so nice was she, so dignified, so gentile.

but WHAT? oh hold on, shit, Kate quietly lead us toward Pisa! What?,whatthefreak?
Yes, kate was nice and proper, but she was a control freak and we could not get her to go near florence, no matter what. as a last gesture, KATE stopped talking to us altogether in an unknown territory. never to speak again. a final, "top that you stupid humans" we were hopelessly lost and had no lap-map. we were doomed to use our on common knowledge to get us out of this fix.
my husband became dispondent. we were very weary. somehow we did get to the uffizi, but only within the last hour of it being open. we were tired and our feet hurt since we decided to chuck the car somewhere near the firenze train station and walked. it wouldn't have been a bad walk, except we were tired from my husband's lover.

i am hoping this is a lesson to all men, having a lover might sound intriguing and exciting, but in the end you will end up with just another person to deal with, one who is probably harder to please than your wife and almost always certainly dumber.

beautiful umbria

i have had a lot of trouble getting on the internet here. i guess medieval towns with giant walls built around them don't do internet too well.
we have been traveling all over, i have also been putting together a great workshop for next year. i know each and every one of you will want to come...

tomorrow i promise to write in the blog and hopefully upload a pic or two.
ciao

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traveling together

we leave friday morning...a very, very long journey awaits us. first, we leave here at the crack-ass of dawn. if you read my blog, you have probably noted that i am a night owl. the crack-ass of dawn does not work with me. sigh.
then we travel over 14 hours (one change in some weird part of the country, probably roswell, new mexico) to get to rome. guess what time we get in at the roman airport? yep, the crack-ass of dawn. after custom's routine hassle, we then get in our rental car and drive 2 1/2 hours to gubbio, umbria. its truly a beautiful drive all through tuscany, but i will have my eyes glued on my husband's eyes as i suspect he will contract "drive apnea" (i made that condition up) and we will finish our morning in caesar's hospital or some otherwise likely named emergency room hospital in rome.

if he so much as nods a hello, i plan to poke him with a stick. i'm pretty sure he has driven with his eyes shut before.
and then there is the awful horn blasting, nutty, f**k you-ing, chaotic, rule breaking roman drivers. and the incredibly swarmy vespas.
i think we ought to drive around in armour, perhaps some gladiator shields, or just pick up some gladiators. they still hang out in front of the Colosseum.

so i admit, i am a very nervous, er, neurotic passenger. i jump and shout at the slightest possibility of something going wrong, plus my vivid (and ordniarily enviable) imagination (i.e. i can imagine what the people in the car in front of us might suddenly maneuver, and yeah, i have every possible scenario in my head) PLUS i am sure i am psychic......so by the time we get to my in-laws house, i will be a complete wreck, unless we are in one first.
my husband will be a wreck too. yeah, he will try to blame me for that, even though i was only being helpful.
and rosie, well, she will probably demonstrate her psychic ability too and scream more than once. i will have to tell her she is making me nervous and she will further demonstrate her extremely low threshold for frustration and fear- only she will have to work very hard to make sure we can hear her over the full volume of her earphoned ipod.
once we get to our in-laws, they will have a ton of delicious food that my mother-in-law slaved over. i tknow this cuz she always tells me. we will have an uncanny amount of family visitors over(like the entire village, i kid you not) well into the night, none of whom have ever heard of jet-lag.
and, of course i lied in my last post, i wasn't secretly learning italian...well, i meant to, but shoot, time flew by and now i will be restricted to nodding approvingly with elbows that are asleep, while gastone's folks look at me quizzically.
oh hell, i have already tired myself out. i better stop blogging and go to bed. i need to pack in the morning. i better pack some change in my carry-on so that i can buy some vino on the plane - yeah, even at the crack-ass of dawn. do you blame me?
ciao, my bellas and bellos.

sports, saved by a great fight

there was one great sporting event on september 29, which gave my husband some reprieve. it was the middle weight championship match between black Jermaine Taylor vs. very white man, Kelly Pavolik. it was hosted in Youngstown, Ohio, a very excited, eager town. this was real boxing like the old days when great writers like AJ liebling followed the sport. i didn't watch the first two rounds - but caught them on replay....after solid hits without rest flew back and forth, taylor looked to be the hardest hitting one to me. the "less (in size) than great white hope" pavolik was pummeled to the ground in the second round. within 2 more rounds, the aggressive black fighter had spent himself and began to show it. the "less than great white hope" clapped him a few good ones in the corner until Taylor's face reshaped itself a couple of times before he slumped to he ground and the match was called. turns out pavolik has a damn hard hand.
that was a real boxing match ( a bit short) but still there was no extra pompous outrageous chest beating before hand (that i saw anyway) and the boxers wore boxers, not some wild attire with feathers or extra long fringe.

afterwards, there was no howard cosell interview (thats a bummer) just a sedate conversation between that guy who is usually drunk and the fighter. funny, i even thought pavolik was intelligible, if not intelligent. that was a nice surprise

well, i liked it....but don't mention this to my husband...its a secret. he doesn't need to know everything i do. BTW, i'm also learning to speak italian as a secret, so i can hear what my in-laws are saying about me. shhhhhhhh.

padres?

i'm not even a sports fan....BUT STILL, what happened to the Padres tonight? San Diego is suffering AN EXTRA MOTHERLODE OF humility this week. i think the suffering might last a long time.....
good thing i can hide my head in this blog.

time for a party hat!

well i got a GREAT phone call a minute ago...turns out my piece entitled "Ruby's Natural Instinct" was awarded first place in the Woman's Caucus for Art art show entitled "Women's Work in the 21th Century" which is in partnership with and hosted by the San Diego Woman's History Museum. The awards ceremony will be held at the end of the month, after i get back from italy! i love award money.

NEXT, my daughter, Brooke called me today to ask me to "guess what? (see previous posts regarding all of brooke's "hey, momma, guess what?" series. posts entitled "brooke"; 6/25, 7/7; and 7/31/07). this time i didn't have a plausible guess left in me.
turns out she starts her new job tomorrow in L.A. at a national public radio station. it's her dream come true. i thought she started later this year...but i was mistaken. for now she can work parttime because of school.
i am very happy for her --- again. she is still working a another major radio news station, let's just call it CNN (again, as she worked for CNN, Atlanta before er, or other major radio news station with world coverage in atlanata - i mustn't give out true call station names in my blog - could get her fired - so i'm told) at this time too. Mostly she is excited that she is plowing through college classes at jet speed aiming toward getting a degree within a year. also she keeps busy working out, walking her pitbull (see post "my only grandchild" 6/22/07 and painting of him 6/23/07) for a couple of hours a day and writing articles for a local newspaper.
where does she get all that energy? she was like this in the womb.....i kid you not. she was the embryo that constantly did flip flops, had hiccups many times daily while turning head over heels.
when she was a young girl, about 8 years old...she was known to most lemon grove on broadway shop owners as the cute little girl who walked the entire length of the boulevard on her hands!! (see previous post as to why i worried brooke would join the circus, post entitled "speaking of babies in swings..." 6/26/07).
yes, she is really somethin'. very friendly, always smiling... i'm totally proud of her....uhm, in those days, i did have to remind her to wash her hands before dinner though. BUT, what mom doesn't?

birthday smiles

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOoooouuuuuuuUUUU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR KATHY (my industrial strength friend)....HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU.

aren't you glad i didn't call you up this morning to sing that?

and a day late big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Mary the gatorwoman!
wow, two powerful friends with birthdays together!