Thanksgiving Day was terrific because it was the first time in almost 20 years that our nuclear family had been able to sit down together for a proper meal in a home with lovingly prepared food. All present were healthy and my son’s family is beautiful in every possible way…
Moving should be about adventure and excitement — visiting new places, trying new foods, making new friends, reacting to the changing of the seasons, reinterpreting the sights, sounds and smells of a country that are different from what they were (or what I remember) decades ago.
But I have been…
Good things come in threes, the saying goes, and so does the bad stuff. The latter was in full swing last week, when we received notes from our Italian bank, car insurance, Telepass (like EZ Pass in Virginia), and utility company. …
Oochie is a strange word for my stranger-than-life situation. Oochie started out as a slang word for alcohol. Thanks to a once-popular song, Oochie Coochie aka Hoochie Coochie, it became a synonym for sex. It can also mean a thin man or a woodcutter (in Yiddish), someone who is unique…
It’s the never-ending story of my horror move. EIIIHH.
My sons and I have personal items languishing in a small storage unit in Los Angeles. No one lives in LA anymore so — after five years — it’s time to pull the plug. The idea is to ship these items…
Today is my grandson’s birthday so I made a Bundt cake for him. I had an old, much-loved Bundt pan in Italy but left it in storage there and bought a spiffy new one on Amazon for the occasion. …
October is the month of spooks and goblins, vampires and werewolves. And ghosts, including the ghosts of my move. It’s been 3 ½ months and ghouls lie in ambush on both sides of the ocean.
In Italy, we have received no less than five raccomandate (registered letters) containing invoices for…
Limbo is a good word to describe my current circumstances. Not the limbo of Catholic theology, or the Jamaican dance with its laughing crowds and ever-lowering pole, but the limbo that –ironically — comes from a Latin word meaning “border”.
Limbo is a state of uncertainty or a place of…
Monday morning. Fresh start to the week. Today I was determined to resolve the ongoing issue of my husband’s unfilled prescription for FreeStyle Libre (glucose monitoring) sensors, an issue that has been dragging on for 10 WEEKS.
At 9 am I call the doctor. They say that the prescription was…
Indian Summer is upon us so the days seem warm and languorous, but summer technically ends on September 21. That means I can no longer pretend to myself that WHERE I am living and HOW I am living is the equivalent of an extended summer vacation. When you rent a…
