This too shall pass

Why is it that when it rains, it pours?
This is a difficult time for me- it started in December and I just haven't been able to shake it. I have had wonderful experiences with my family in the U.S. and with my husband and son here in Italy- we couldn't be closer or more in tune- but otherwise, things have just been going wrong for me.
I won't go into detail but it seems like things are misaligned, I'm being tested, somethin' just ain't right.
I'm keeping my head above water now. Sometimes it's hard to get up in the morning but other times an unexpected letter comes in the mail, an email arrives with good news or a friend calls me out of the blue.
I am convinced that the bad makes you appreciate the good. What you don't have makes you realize what you do have.

thursday blues

I don't know why I (sometimes) do this blog thing. In the past I have been known for entertaining and synthetic writing. Now everything I write just seems so boring.
Or maybe it's my life that has gotten predictable and boring-
(re-read post title)
It seems so romantic to live on the Italian riviera with a husband named Fabio in a 400 year old house by a stream. The floors are handmade Tuscan cotto, the windows are original, the beams are made from really old tree trunks. The floor is a bitch to keep clean, the windows are drafty and all kinds of fauna lurk in my beams. I can't control the house. It's not made for a 21st century family. I love it but it's overwhelming.
My husband's family.... well it isn't my family and I truly, dearly, really really really miss my family. Of course I miss my dad and especially my mother and I can't do anything about that except mope seeing as they have both passed away. It's all the family that is still around, that's doing stuff everyday and seeing each other and laughing and hanging out and yakking on the phone, ALL WITHOUT ME. That's what I miss. Here I don't have family except for my son and husband- they're great, wonderful, I couldn't ask for better- but I miss the extended family, the feeling that 'someone's there'. It gets me down.
So A lot is going on now. Nonna's home but bedridden and it's frustrating trying to coordinate nonna-sitting and navigating the Italian health system for her to get some kind of state-subsidized help. My sister is law is frustrated.
I need to finish the stupid Italian driver's ed but it keeps getting more and more difficult to get to class- they have it a 6 pm! William has soccer! Who will make dinner?
The dollar sucks.
The weather fluctuates between being nice and sunny and springy and horrible, wet and chilly. It plays with your head.
My haircut is still the worst in europe.
My dogs are shedding and making the whole house gross and my new vacuum works very poorly.
It cost me 45 euros to fill up the Subaru the other day with gas. That means almost 65 dollars for less than 10 gallons of gas. If you are in America, remember this next time you grumble at the pump. The minivan costs about 170 dollars for a full tank. And it runs on diesel.
Why doesn't this stupid spellcheck work?
So I couldn't sleep last night with all of this rumbling around in my head. And the thought that kept coming back in my mind was that I just wish I had some family here. I wish that I could call my mom and just talk.
In the end, my life is wonderful. We want for nothing and have been incredibly fortunate to be as happy and as healthy as we are. I really have no cause to bitch, seeing as there are people so much worse off than we are.
Sometimes though, you just have to get it off your chest. Where better than here!
I feel better already.

memory

I was walking up to the parking garage in Monterosso the other day when I caught a whiff of something- a combo of burning wood, pine trees, post-rain humidity and springtime- that took me back to when I was 6 years old on a family trip to Estes Park, Colorado. I don't think that we were actually in Estes Park at the time. We must have been on our way there or on our way back. Anyway, we were in a motel in Colorado and it was rainy and pine-tree smelling and fresh like spring here in Italy. It brought me back to an exact moment, one in which I was walking from our cabin to the lodge to play with their dogs. It started raining and I got stranded there and mother couldn't find me. I wasn't scared though. That must have been at least 30 years ago.
Another, less romantic, smell that pops up every so often is something- I have no idea what- that was used to clean the bathrooms in my elementary school in La Marque, Texas (NOT my elementary school in Galveston). Again, at least 30 years ago.
What is it about smell that so vividly evokes exact moments in one's past to present themselves with such clarity and definition that you're 'there' again.

Comfort food

So what do I do in a crisis? I cook, I bake, I clean. I turn into uberhousewife.
So, since Fabio has had his HA, I have not bought bread. Tonight's is a wholewheat, farro, kamut, grano saraceno, pecan, oatmeal and flaxseed homemade wonder.
Therefore I am tired and am going to watch tv. :)