We woke at 6:15 to howling winds and the sounds of the compost buckets rolling down the street. It was hot and humid, but cold rain was being blown deep into our terrace. Jim went downstairs to clean up the mess the dogs had made of our compost and the elderly neighbor's. He had to chase the emptied buckets down the street. Two nights a week we put all our compost in a special bag in a special container and the town picks it up. One night is trash and everything else goes in the recycling bins down the street. This is great until the dogs discover your compost. From now on we are going to hang ours on our door handle. I need to try to tell one of the neighbor’s children about the problem so Jim doesn’t have to clean it up every time. The wind was blowing so hard that I took down my CVS banner and moved the giant class bottles to the back of the terrace. They are made to go in baskets and the bottoms are not completely flat. The next thing was that the toilet was spewing water down from the tank. The toilette and the tank are not connected. The tank is up high so it can use gravity and less water to flush. By 9:30 when we planned to take the bus to Sulmona things were looking much better.

First stop, Sulmona. Excellent coffee and pastry. Amazing.

During the winter I did a slide show for the Paletteers in Barre. They had a sale of art books and Jim and I picked up one on model ship building. The guy that runs the art store in Sulmona makes the most beautiful and intricate model ships. Today we gave him the book we had bought for 50c. He was so pleased. His wife went on and on about how honored they were that we had brought this present. He would not let me pay for my fixative, even though I argued a bit. It was a good feeling to see how happy he was. The first year we met him he was quite a crank to us, but no more.

This is the store, why didn't I take a picture of him?? I was flustered by the free fizzativo.

Although Sulmona is a beautiful, medieval town with amazing things to see down each alley way and the home of Ovid and Confetti candy,

the best thing today was the t-shirts! How many pictures of the Roman aqueduct do you really want to see? Ok, maybe just a couple, because of the banners of the city families hanging on them.

It is almost joust time and the big medieval festival. I really wish we could go, but it would be difficult. The fun thing would be to rent a place there for the week. Probably no one else has thought of that and it would be super cheap.

What is a "Pois Chic" and who knew the statue of Liberty was really superman.

 Don't miss the Barbie selfie shirt

Ahhh, such a sweet sentiment.

As you always knew, "I am too Vogue for you"

As usual we walked around, ate pizza and had a coke at the same old hole in the wall where we always eat, had a gelatto and took the bus home.

Since then we had coffee with grappa in it and cake at a friends house. she gave us more walnuts, picked up my shoes for the wedding, made by our very own shoemaker here in CVS, went to the supermarcoto and have been sitting on the terrace have a class of wine and watching the clouds over the mountains.

Nut crackers at work

Todays take from the Market:

1 Euro

Everything. Little paper bag is roasted chicken.

Lovely plums and grapes