The joy of life

Celebrating someone else's 25 years of existence is so much more fun than your own, and I am speaking from experience here.  I mean, for me, 25 years seems like a long time; I was born, grew up, experienced some difficult milestones and unnecessary curve-balls, thought I fell in love a few times, actually fell in love and found my soulmate at the age of 16, graduated high school then college, got married and moved to Italy.  I mean, that's a lot.  And not that growing old scares me, but the thought of what happens after old has come and gone is what gets me.  So basically, a birthday is a traumatic event.  Not to mention that it only reminds me that my parents and brother and husband and other family members are aging right along with me, which is a whole other can of worms.  But to the point... our good friend and co-worker of the hubs turned 25 yesterday and we celebrated his birthday last week in a way that I, being a grown and mature woman, could never get away with - we went to the adult version of Chuck-E-Cheese oddly named "Colorado nonsolobowl" (what the hell does that even mean?  Freaking Italians).  Needless to say, I had a blast, as did the birthday boy and everyone in attendance, and it was nice to actually enjoy a birthday as an adult acting like a kid... it was fun to just forget that I'm edging closer and closer to death.  Yes, I know - I'm so morbid!  Anywho... live vicariously through the photo replication:
 

Party Animals :D

Playing some futbol while we wait for grub!

 

Dance Dance Revolution baybay!

All sweaty after DDR competition in which I lost horribly!

 

Me and my lover <3 

Mechanical bull time!!

 

Ride em Cowboy :)

LASER TAG!  This chic came in 3rd!  Woot Woot!

We won the mega jackpot (well the hubs did)!!!

Countin' em up!!  We ended up with 2200 tickets :D

Goofballs!

 

Such a sexy man!

Yep that's right - my only strike of the game!!

And the birthday boy beat us all bowling like this!

We had a pretty awesome time and I hope we'll go back again when we need to blow about 60 euro and just be big kids!  I'm pretty sure the birthday boy had a great time and hopefully it'll be the one he remembers when he looks back on his time here with us in Italia!

Until next time...

Castelfranco, AKA Ghost town

On the 23rd of Feb, some friends and I got together and decided to go exploring.  It'd been a bit since we'd last been out and about, and as far as I could tell, our choice was relatively inexpensive - so the hubs and I were down.  Our exploring took us to a place called Castelfranco Veneto located in the province of Treviso... about an hour and a half from our little neck of the woods.  I was expecting this huge castle on top of a hill surrounded by trees and moats and walls, but it was quite different.  Castelfranco is more or less a small, music-oriented community that resides within the still standing castle walls of a long ago fortress.  The city that is inside the castle walls is technically referred to as Cittadella.  There's a quaint park that falls right outside of the city walls and a cool moat that separates the park from the main road.  To get inside the city, you pass under one of the four tunnels dug out of the historical walls and eventually find yourself in the center of the town surrounded by random shops and a few restaurants.  The main attractions of note are the duomo and the small museum that share the history of the area and also focuses on the life, work, and death of the painter Giorgione, as he was born in the area.  We were ready for everything, but we were hungry, so we stopped off in a little bistro, got some sandwiches and ate some peanuts (go figure), and then we hit up the duomo first.  It was rather bland compared to the other cathedrals we'd been to recently, but you're still able to appreciate the beauty and phenomenal work that went into constructing it.  Then we hit up the museum; it was nice to see some history, but it left me rather lacking.  It was only two floors, and as I said before, they primarily focused on the single painter Giorgione since that's who their area is famous for. They had some frescoes and a few paintings of his, along with remnants of etchings and sculptures that survived the many years of war between the beginning of the small town up until now.  Since we pretty much did everything within 30 minutes, we decided to wander, and that's when I began to really enjoy myself.  We hit up every street within the walls, going on deserted side-streets and seeing old, run-down buildings that still held a peculiar allure.  We heard piano playing from a small, two-story building in a far corner of the city, and as we walked and the music died out behind us, we were hit with someone belting out opera from a home on a hill.  It was then that I began to notice the posters for singers, advertisements for bands, playbills for upcoming attractions plastered to temporary, plywood walls surrounding construction sites, and on the brick exteriors of the back-alley homes and apartments.  We eventually ran into a small theater and as we made our way out of the walls and into the park surrounding the city of Cittadella from the outside, we heard a saxophonist street-performer floating toward us over the water.  We came to the conclusion that this was the place to come for all things musical.  It was very cool, off-the-beaten-path, interesting, weirdly attractive, though my companions favored "creepy" as their descriptive word.  It was my first day using my new camera outside of the house, so I tried to go all "artistic photographer" with it... my intention was simply to capture our adventure.  Judge for yourself...

The duomo of Cittadella

Outside of the "Casa di Giorgione" Museum

Notice the bits of glass embedded in the concrete... what kind of town is this?!

Clock tower that we walked under to get inside

Street art in a back alley that had been painted on
plywood walls surrounding a construction site

 

All-in-all it was a good day and we had fun the whole time, even if my cohorts thought it was creepy!  Other adventures await, so keep reading.

Until next time...

comforter

          She sat curled in a ball under the heavy, coarse comforter that they'd bought together a few months ago.  It was a comforter she hated, one she only pretended to like because he loved it so much.  It was a comforter that made her hate the look of their bedroom.  It was a representation of what their relationship had become: a compromise, indifferent acceptance.  The realization that he was everywhere was something she'd never be able to escape.  In a fit of irrational recognition, she flung the covers off and across the room.  With a small amount of adrenaline coursing through her, she leapt from the bed, craving that feeling to take over completely.  She ripped the sheets from the mattress and aimed them in the same corner.  She closed her eyes and reached within her, gulping up her renewed strength, even if she did know it was only fleeting, fueling her like a drug; her chest heaving, her body shaking, she quickly surveyed the room for other signs of him.  The picture of them together when they spent a summer on the beach lay just within her reach.  She snatched it up and threw it against the wall, the glass shattering in a high-pitched, succinct melody, the frame in splintered pieces - all of it a perfect reflection of what had become of them.  She reached for another frame, of them at her parent's house for Christmas the year before, and she heaved it at another wall, the wonderful noise resonating for only a brief moment.  Again and again she destroyed every image that captured a time when things were happy, orderly, sublime.  She tore at the posters on the walls, of bands they both loved, and shredded them into bits, her bare feet treading dangerously close to the shards of broken glass as she made her way around the entire room.  She was clueless to the hazard, overtaken by the need to cleanse herself.

          But that wasn't enough for her; destroying his memory was something that could only be done on the outside, to physical objects.  He still remained inside her, and for all she knew he'd never go away.  Wild-eyed and frantic she darted around continuing to demolish his existence in every space of her surroundings.  But no matter what she got rid of, nothing seemed to fetter or extinguish those images in her head, those memories in her mind, those feelings that had become second nature.  She fell to the floor, surrounded by all the things that had once been tidy and placed in their rightful places and were now an unconventional way to decorate a space.  She tore at her hair, yelled to the empty apartment, let tears flow freely down her already raw cheeks, and rocked herself, whispering for some higher power to take away every thought of him.  She knew that if someone walked in on her at that moment, they'd have her committed; this was not how a sane person reacted to a situation.  She let out sobs of anger and hurt and after hours of this, she gathered the last remnants of the previously abundant energy and padded her way back to her destroyed bedroom.  She stared at what had become of it.  After a few silent and still moments, she walked over to the corner.  After bundling up the comforter in her trembling arms, she walked to the bed, laid down, covered herself up with the blanket and fell into a much needed sleep where she dreamt of happier times.

Updates

Whew!  It's been so very long since my last post and I apologize to those of you who enjoy reading what I have to share.  Life.  That's all I got.  Things happen and other things get pushed aside for the sake of adaptation and adjustment.  Honestly, I know I could squeeze in more writing and notifications and endless streams of my conscious thoughts, but I'm quite lazy these days.  I've never realized how easy I had it in good ole TN in terms of weather and climate change.  My house stays at a constant 20 degrees even when it's warm outside.  Let's just say I don't get out of my p.j.s or from under my comfy blankets much.

Anywho... let's stop the rambling and get to the good sheit.  First off... in the past ummm... 31 + 22 = 53 days I've spent a lot of time catching up on my TV shows from the states that they don't broadcast on AFN here and then also added a few other shows (AKA Gossip Girl, Smallville, Supernatural, etc) that are either off the air altogether or have so many freaking seasons I'll be well into summer before I'll need to search for new stuff to fill the void.  I saw my Patriots lose their chance at another Super Bowl appearance, made too much food for a Super Bowl party in which a win for neither team would've impacted my life in any real way, and I TURNED 25 BABY!  My husband is a gem, just in case you didn't catch that in other hundred or so posts I've made.  He not only organized and pulled off a very sweet and fun surprise party including my nearest and dearest here in Italia, but he orchestrated the donations of funds from family and friends and purchased me a BRAND NEW DSLR CAMERA (Nikon D3100).  I am totally in love with it.  I spent a solid four hours reading the manual, googling, messing with settings, shooting, adjusting, cussing at the complexity of the contraption, smiling with joy when babe figured out the problem and calmly showed me how to maneuver... yeah it was quite the learning experience.  And don't get me wrong, four hours of practice does not a pro make... however, I now understand the basics of adjusting aperture, exposure, shutter speed, manual vs. auto and can genuinely say the rest is all about getting in there and taking pictures and continuing to learn.  I just gotta get out of these p.j.s and into the outside world!  :D

In the past 53 days we've also been blessed with the outstanding performance of the base on the most recent "inspection" (which was a HUGE one) which means that there will be no hold on taking leave, babe got switched to 8 hour days instead of the usual 12's, and plans that we have set in motion for a few months from now are a total go and I'm so stoked.  I can't say what yet but keep reading, hold your horses, and sit back and watch awesomeness ensue!  Another notable occurrence was the awful discovery of mold overtaking our home.  Yes these old Italian homes are cement quarters of death in case you were thinking about owning one.  The humidity is INCREDIBLE and mold can form anywhere there is condensation that goes unaddressed.  I just happened upon a lovely and scarily large patch of it directly behind my dog's kennel!  I was and still remain extremely paranoid that we're all going to die in our sleep.  I've bleached the ever loving crap out of most walls in our home and continue to spray (almost daily) those spots where I've seen mold with Lysol to keep it at bay.  I mean, what the hell else can I do????  Even in the dead of winter, and it being -10 outside (okay not really but c'mon it's effin' cold!) I air out the house for at least a few hours each day, and yet here we are - infected.  I've told the landlord and her only suggestion was to clean it with bleach as to where I'm more inclined to KILL IT WITH FIRE, but I do rather enjoy my belongings and don't want to have to file a claim with our renter's insurance.  So we'll just make due until either one of two things happens, we move out in three years' time and check this off the list of things that we've unfortunately had to undergo in our lives, or we discover black puss-oozing sores have overtaken our body and our lungs are filled with poisonous, toxic mold that has developed into cancer and we die.  Moving on...

of course Valentine's Day happened.  It was fantabulous!  I got an amazingly cute idea from pinterest called "The Game of Love" - go google it and maybe you and your loved one can incorporate it into your next valentine's day or birthday or whatever.  It was totally fun and kept us from spending a bunch of money out at a restaurant (and the opportunity to be comfy in our home).  The hubs was quite pleased - truly enjoyed the game and the time spent with one another.  He got me very cute daisies and a rolling pin which I have been DYING for since we moved to this little place, and I got him new comfy isotoner slippers and a few other little surprises (not really gonna go into detail here people!  Use your imagination).

All-in-all this time we've spent apart from one another has been mostly uneventful, but not unenjoyable. I've spent some time with friends, had people to the house for dinner, cut down on the usage of electricity after getting a $1000 bill for 2 1/2 months usage (YIKES!), spent lots of time with my hubby, and  continued to discover many more things to add to my list of why I miss 'Merica!!

We have some inexpensive yet fun things planned in the upcoming weeks.  Tomorrow we're going on a little castle trip with some friends where I can't wait to put my camera to good use.  Then next week I'm thinking about hitting up the zoo in Verona with a few more friends, though the hubs has to work so he'll have to live it vicariously through my awesome photographs.  Then if the hubs has off mid-month (and his tourist passport has arrived by then - it's in the works finally YAY) we may take a trip to Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich Germany.  It sounds uber depressing, which I'm sure it will be, but very historical and informative.  I think it's always important to know the history of our world and to gain a deeper appreciation for the lives we now are blessed and lucky to have.  Okay, mini-rant over... but seriously, I'm looking forward to doing some fun and inexpensive things... cause ya know I mentioned earlier about a secret happenings in the works, well let's just say we're saving up for that!!!!

Okay, well enjoy these photos I took with my camera my first day with it.  I know I went a little Lucy pooch crazy, and I know I have a lot to learn (not that I"m trying to be Professional Polly Photographer or anything), but they turned out pretty darn good I think!

 

 

 

Toodles
Until next time...