Monday July 13

It’s a low key day here in CVS. It started with Jim chasing the man who collects the organic waste down the street. He had missed our house, because he had not realised we were here. He will not come again until Thursday morning. The organic waste can include meet and all organic waste. It would be gross if we had to have that in our house until Thursday. There are recycling bins down the street and we have one small bag of trash a week. 

We had the usual terrifically, juicy, peaches (one squirted me in the nose) and the most flavourful cantaloupe that only seems to exist in Italy. You can guess that from there we went up to the piazza for second breakfast. Yesterday the new employee at Bar al Kaffe did not give us the usual service, but obviously Salvatore talked to him, because today we got plates for our pastries and a tray to carry it out to a table. I even got chocolate on my cappuccino. Our friend Paulo paid for our breakfast. He is the person referred to as “our saviour” in previous years because he fixes every problem we have in our house. 

Most Italian men get their pastry in a napkin first and proceed to eat it before their coffee comes. Note I said men. Most women do not appear in the bar. They are probably already cooking lunch, the large meal of the day. Or they are cleaning up from how dirty their house got over night. By the time we get up they have already hung the laundry. I am proud to say that we have had laundry hanging for two days (not even the same laundry) and I have swept all the floors. It is amazing how much dirt there is and amazing how much the tile hides it. 

Moving on. After second breakfast Jim went to the store and I went to one of the shady places I had scoped out the other day. I was so excited to paint the bell tower on the church of San Francesca. As my friend, Linda said they have not seen it for seven years since the earthquake and I have never seen it. The drawing was a nightmare and then the colour and the value were a nightmare. I kept drawing the church too big and the house too small. Then it seemed that as I looked at the scene that every single thing was the same colour and the same value whether in light or shadow. I will have to work on it again tomorrow, but by the end of the morning I felt there was hope. If you compare the two pictures you will no doubt find some big drawing mistakes, but I am not a camera, right? On the way home I discovered some other spots that are still in shadow at 12 noon. 

Lunch was yummy pizza reheated on the grillino. We had potato and red pepper pizza and there is a NEW shape of pizza at the bakery: round. We added fresh mozzarella to the round, plain, pizza rosa (pizza with red sauce) and it was delicious.

It is wicked hot here so we are taking naps now at 1pm.