Finding Leah

Slept at Pippo's but forgot to turn off my cell phone alarm clock, which electronically plays 'ASIAN TUNE', a particularly fastidious sound which is why I use it on my alarm..I'll always wake up to turn it off.
At 7 AM sharp it brutally woke me, only today I didn't NEED to wake up at 7 because Gillian spent the night at her friend Charlotte's house and so I didn't have to wake her for school. I couldn't go back to sleep after this starting episode so I lay awake in bed until 8:20.
Leaving Pippo sleeping, I returned home.

The elevator broke while I was inside alone.
It stopped somewhere between the first and second floor and my view was of a concrete wall with a gap of 6 inches of hall space. Fortunately, the yellow bell alarm button worked and equally fortunately, it was still early in the morning so the portiere, Gianna, was up and atom and heard the alarm. She even knew it was ME inside the elevator.
Cursing all the while, she attempted to keep me calm. The elevator fix it guys had just fixed it a few days ago..I wait, and wait, and wait. I didn't know how long I would have to wait, so I didn't know whether I should sit down, though I certainly thought about it, but I also thought sitting down might somehow add bad juju to the trauma, so I didn't.
Gianna had to turn the electricity off to fix the elevator, so then I got to wait enclosed in darkness.
Finally the elevator slowly rolled back to the ground floor and I was freed.
Now I know for a fact that the anticipation fear of getting stuck in elevators is worse than the reality. The reality ain't no great shakes either, though.

Five floor walk up the stairs and into the apartment and I turn on the computer.
I've been wanting to write about the Leah connection all morning BUT my computer doesn't connect, why? The telephone doesn't work. I use my cell phone to call telephone co.#1, after the usual 10 minutes of eardancing with robots an operator tells me that as of last Jan.6th I no longer have a telephone acct. w/them. I call telephone co.#2, another 10 minutes of robot eardancing and they tell me TODAY my old acct is being switched to my new acct and it will take a few hours.

I go up the street to the internet café. Their computers can't log in to LJ.
I go back to Pippo's because I don't want to go home until the elevator is fixed and I have a telephone.
Pippo is awake but we fight. I'm calm voiced and nice, he is aggressively hostile.
I return home.
The elevator is ok, the phone is ok BUT I still can't connect w/the computer because my old server acct. doesn't work with my new phone acct which exclusively uses their own servers.
ELEVEN robotic eardancing operater waits later and three calls to the techies and I'm up and running. But soon I'll have to change my acct. again. That's my blog purge, apologies..

What fun. There was a darling little square brown package with postage stamps of Snow White+ Dopey, that mermaid what's-her name- playing her harp to a fish, Asian Flower's Kiss Candy wrapper sealed, waiting in my post box this morning.. with 'Gals sing out' CD inside, which I'm listening to presently..MUCH nicer than the Herb Albert and Tijuana Brass CD I thought it might be..Thanks Shermie!...and I was afraid you'd never visit this blog again because of the format...
Think Gillian and I have found a someone to sublet our Rome place this summer. I gave him the link to this blog, so if anyone wants to describe our Rome apartment in their own words, please do in the comments section...and yes, I plan on dong the dishes before he arrives. He's a grad student at Yale studying European History, and will be attending Latin lessons at San Pancrazio this summer. Rosalyn, he's another glutton for Medievil stuff and has his MA in Religious studies, I told him about 'Memoirs of a gnostic dwarf' but what's the author's name please?
New students this afternoon and tomorrow too-to plummet with diagnostic evaluations, I'll try to remember to smile.
Anyone have great ideas on best way to find cheapish tix to ABQ for April and June?

Billy's back in town, Gil beans, beano, bean cake, monkey..
After kissing hugging and sniffing one another in our mother and child reunion- and after her jet lag post airflight nap I asked if she was hungry.
Yes. What would she like? Pasta. She was tired of Mexican because she'd eaten it every day in CO. Her stepmother was indulging a new gastronomic passion. Burro parmigiano is Gil's comfort food, my little Romanina...

Rosalyn, aka Nevicatosotto is back outtatown, back to bloody snowy cold Cambridge MA. It was way fun to see him again and we had a couple of great sunny Roman days walking all about and learning that we could visit rooftop museum cafes without having to pay admission to the museums themselves..you know, 'when in Rome...' and in fact, while tourists were trying to decipher the labels on sculptures and painting, the decked out Italians were admission free winter roof sunbathing with espressos in hand. Didn't stop Ros from feeling a touch of Stendhal Syndrome though-must of been the city sea view of domes. Or the ancient ruins and foundations with medieval rebuilds next to fascist architecture near Teatro Marcello we explored. Or the fact that he'd let his soul breath in the Alps the day before. I'm going to make sure that GB always has plenty of peanut m&ms in his pockets when he tours Rome, because he's got Stendhal syndrome potential.

I hope you're asking at this point, what IS Stendhal syndrome?
It's an affliction that strikes mostly innocent Americans when they travel to Older European cities that have lots of art and viewable history. They become overwhelmed and begin to faint. To rehabilitate these poor souls they sit them in front of Tv sets with reruns of Starsky and Hutch and feed them junkfood from KFC. No joke.

Touring Porta Portese market on sunny Sundays DOES NOT CURE IT, and may make it worse. AMAZING the sheer quantity and variety of junk Romans can pile onto a 3 mile stretch one morning a week, amazing too, the VOLUME with which they shout and advertise their wares.

The prez of my neighborhood assoc. in ABQ has lost brownie points for not responding to my email. I'll write him again and ask him what were the results from the fate determining city meeting on Werner Gilchrist yesterday.

Good music is what Rome lacks, so I'm back to Ms. Gera now...toodle-oo

The station was scary New Year's eve..I'm usually a bit tense there anyway, what with the lines and hustle bustle of trying to find and catch trains on time, but Dec.31 was particularly bad because morons kept lighting firecrackers and their cousins-firecracker boomers. Everytime I heard them unexpectedly blast, the fear of gunfire or worse made it's way to my brain.
Seeing Rosalyn again was so great- and he was so happy to be here, that we hardly sweat discovering that while I was at the station, my car (and the other ten or so cars parked near it) had been towed away. Fortunately the tow truck people were still in the area so I asked them what I should do, who should I call, where should I go? Maybe they felt sorry for me, having ones car towed away on a pissing rainy New Year's eve is no great shake..BUT they were al remarkably friendly and kind. They gave me the address where the car had been towed, called the deposit to check that I could pay for the car with my credit card, so Ros and I took a taxi straight there, got the car back and drove home. (Ros lent me 10 euro for the fare) It was as hassle free a hassle can be. Even the taxi guy was sweet, merry, and fairly charged us. Really, having impaired visibility driving because of the rain, was the worst part.
We went to our New Year's gatherings, ate, drank and came home. Driving home was scary cause of all the drunk crazies. Drunk crazies are the scariest on roads IMHO.
Yesterday we had big lunch at Pippo's granny's. I have had big stomach aches everytime I eat lately and so I I'm going to get some antacid tablets at the Farmacy and just eat special digestive yogurt for a while..until all this holiday feasting is out of my system.
Because I didn't have many clean clothes, yesterday I wore a long wooly black skirt and black sweater and old lady black shoes with scratchy looking tights, all covered by a long black old leather coat. When Ros and I crossed the Piazza parking lot near my house leaning against a tree beside a fair sized debris pile was a city of rome broom stick. The old style city of rome broomsticks are being abandoned for the new city of rome broomsticks. The old broomsticks have bamboo handles and are made of twigs gathered togethor with rusty iron. they aren't u shaped like USA broomsticks but round- We took the old broomstick, walking down Via Fonteiana I TOTALLY had the witch look going..In one of my witchy books I learned that witches actually do use brooms..not for flying, but for sweeping energy around...SO I'm looking forward to 2006's magic and am going to bother trying to learn some cool invocations..Tidings for the New Year folks..

Never thought I'd love injections, yet here I am looking forward to the next one.
I'm rereading 'The last Unicorn' by Peter S. Beagle. It's a book Bill loved. Fairy tales aren't really my thang but this one is written very sweetly.
Pippo and I played Chinese Checkers tweeshay, once with 2 teams and once with 4 teams. I won both times.
We didn't play 'Giotto' or 'Jotto', a mastermind like word game involving the use of five letter words. Basically you try to discover the other person's five letter word by suggesting other five letter words that might share some of same individual letters in the same position, as the secret word. When we play Giotto Pippo INSISTS that we use ONLY Italian words, despite his English being nearly as good as my Italian. He has never beat me at Giotto anyway...
When it comes to mini billiards, we are evenly matched. Of the 234 matches we've played, the present score is 115-114 , and neither one of us has ever won more than 7 games ahead of the other. There was no predicting this when I bought him the mini billiard table he had fallen in love with, we'd never played billiards togethor before.
I think we're more or less evenly matched throwing darts as well.
I feel very lucky that people nearby; Ross, Gillian, Pippo, Pippo's Mom, Brett my neighbor, Vassilis the Greek photoshop guy are all being so kind and helpful.
Apart from getting the drugs at the Pharmacy, Gil hung the laundry,washed the kitchen floor, got my cell phone accredited and bought me a newspaper. Pippo washed the dishes, made pasta, gave me injections and played games. Ross did grocery shopping, extracted me some cash from the ATM, kept me company while I watched dvds of shoddy musicals I'd borrowed from my friend Deb and brought me numerous glasses of water and tea.Vas lent Gil some cash for the meds ( Ross hadn't come back with my card quite yet and the pharmacy was closing.) Brett and Pippo's Mom telephone and offer me any kind of help I might need.
A friend of Pippo's and mine, Christian, came home and found his partner Sissi in bed with a lover. Pippo and I kept saying horrible horrible to each other.