For some reason, February has been a tough month here for me which is pretty ridiculous considering it hasn't looked at all like winter. I guess I'm worried that the bulbs will all have bloomed and the blossoms will have blown off the trees before April even shows up. I think I'll spend more time traveling around Europe next winter.

Did have a kind of short-lived flu which I'm over today. Got up and vacuumed the house and waxed the cotto floors. Yesterday the vet came on a house call. She's wonderful with the wild girls, at least with Maggie since Molly managed to disappear even though I was sure I'd shut them both in the bathroom. So I'll take Molly down for her shots tomorrow.

The downstairs mini-kitchen is finished but these guys have to be kidding if they think they can leave the fireplace the way they have. It continues to be a mess and when my friend Daniele came to measure it for the stone work he will be doing around it, he told me all the things that should be done first. He also brought a friend who's going to do the garden wall for which we will need a permit to close off half of the state road during the weeks of work. Semaphores to regulate the traffic.

The best day was Wednesday, Valentine's Day. Carmela and Eugenio came to Arezzo with me and we explored the town which is very medieval in the center and looks almost Parisian in parts.


The shopping there is incredible, the best of any small city I've seen in Tuscany. Even better than Lucca. There are so many beautiful shops with antiques and Oriental rugs and original arts and crafts. It's also a big theater town. Too bad such a nice little city is in the rather ugly industrialized Val di Chiana.

We had a lovely day and did some serious shopping and found a local restaurant that looked like nothing from the outside, but was packed full of locals. The food was great and the prices were better. It was a wonderful outing. Let's see if I can survive the rest of the cool season through my trip to Barcelona and back. I can't wait for April!!!


Oh, and I've been reading banned books. The Buru Quartet by Pramoedya Ananta Toer is banned in Indonesia and I thought the author was still in jail or under house arrest, but I've just seen something by Tariq Ali who said that he died recently. He never received a well deserved Nobel prize. Its four volumes are about colonialism and still relevant today. Cities of Salt by Abdelrahman Munif is banned in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East. It's about the arrival of American oil companies in the Middle East from the point of view of the Arab population.

posted by Joanna @ 2/18/2007 11:15:00 AM