Are you Behind? I’m Behind (Day ???)

1,227 words.

Sometimes its the strangest little things that feel like they set me back.

Like the sound of massive hail striking my balcony just as I sat down to write.

This is the sort of hail that can dent cars and bruise human skin.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about climate change. Strangely, it is not the heat, per se. Unlike the UK or France, Italy is set up for heat. It is other things, like the migration of Tiger mosquitos to Italy, and these more and more frequent afternoon thunderstorms. Luckily no wild fires *yet* that I’ve seen, but my weekend hosts reported seeing one just the other week on the mountain behind their house.

Before the hail it was having to go out and buy a keyboard and some other computer peripherals (a laptop stand and mouse) to make using the new external key board more feasible.

Why would I need such strange things? My space-bar on my mac book stopped working. I do almost all my writing (even WhatsApp messages) typing on the computer as I’m a fairly fast (or at least efficient) touch-typist.

Spaces are essential. Even if #NotAllGreeks thought so when they carved their stone inscriptions. At least the Romans developed the interpunct to separate words.

I’m happy with my tech problem-solving.

Yesterday, I lost the afternoon to some much needed napping. I underestimated the seriousness of the heat index. Such is life.

I’m now caught up reading and giving blog feedback and am trying to catch up on my own reflective writing. How can I expect you to keep up if I cannot?! I know teacher’s privilege and all that, but still!

I believe in writing as a way to make meaning from my experiences. To order my thoughts. To discover what is really weighing on my mind. To say nothing about ensuring my copious photos actually serve some purpose.

Wow the thunder is loud outside. I hope all my horseback riding students are safe. I do worry like a mother hen.

Below is a wee round up of photos from the post-lunch part of the Cerveteri excursion last Friday. I hope the students will all share more photos of the day. Maybe I’ll come back and add more from the first part of the day later.

My biggest takeaway from the excursion is that we’ll need a better transportation plan next year as busses were too irregular and the taxis not available as back up. The waiting around was, in fact, healthy for us all. It was a brutally hot day, and I think we’d have done too much and overextended ourselves without those unplanned breaks waiting for transportation.

I will also choose a different restaurant next year with AC and perhaps pre-order to ensure it does not take as long. It was delicious and eating slowly in the outdoor square was atmospheric and good for group formation, but not ideal for fitting in other planned activities. I think we also may want to arrive at the beach a hair earlier. It was still a splendid experience.

For the weekend I went antiquing on the Saturday (see featured image) and found an out-of-the-way restaurant with a great sense of humor on its English menu. I’m pretty sure that lamp below would be illegal for export given the likelihood that is a real chunk of a Roman egg and dart architrave (marble architectural fragment).

“Ancient, but not Expired” would have made a perfect blog post title. The tartare was SO good and SO huge, and the “Sad Green” was not sad at all.

Sunday I did a thing outside my comfort zone. I rented a car. And, as soon as I was on the road I wondered why I had waited 30 years to do this. It is a remarkably liberating feeling. I knew this already because more than 20 years ago I road tripped for six weeks central Turkey in a manual transmission (i.e. “stick shift”), no GPS and only paper maps (which were not very good). Somewhere in my 20s I got in the habit of letting my male partner drive and then that transferred to my husband. I let it go. So I had to learn the lesson of independence all over again. Being alone on the road able to go anywhere and stop any time and make a u-turn just to take a photo is such freedom and such an invocation of one’s personal agency. I felt intoxicated on the open road and didn’t want to come back to Rome.

The car got me to see some friends who have retired to a small village *file under goals*. My jaw dropped at the low price of the house, the charms of the village, and the incredibly views over the via Latina. When they moved in and the electricity wasn’t properly connected neighbors ran extension cords to them. The local bus driver drops everyone at their front door and older residents even has his number to check on his timing on the route so they don’t have to wait outside too long. That is community!

I got to Terracina and then Frascati for dinner before a comedy of errors in returning the car caused by my own poor language skills. I wish everyone would just give me a GPS coordinate to avoid navigational confusion.

The bench with a view made me miss my beloved husband. If he were here, I’d never have driven myself, but still I want him sitting next to me living the good life and soaking in the beauty and wonder of it all.

I loved the transparent reconstruction sign. Such a cheap and clever way to teach about the original form of the ruins.

And, I have no idea why there were women with three breasts hanging in the bakery window but I had to snap a picture.

I was remarkably derelict in taking group pictures on Forum day yesterday, but I feel I kept the lecturing pithy. We finished with enough time for me to think I was up for the Palatine and even reflect that maybe next year the Forum day will include more Palatine… maybe… Less can be more. I must not break my students.

I really wore myself out. Plenty of water and sun protection but the heat (and probably not enough calories) did me in.

Today was the Ara Pacis day and I was enjoying the whimsy of the city as I walked there well ahead of all my students. The sign regarding American breakfast (Pancakes! Scrambled Eggs! Avocado Toast!) made me so sad. The styling is supposed to evoke quaint European nostalgia in the target audience and yet nothing about this is Italian. Whereas the traveling salesman with the samples case of nicotine products trying to get the business owner to adopt new products seems the most Italian thing ever. Ditto the view into the private courtyard with spolia. I always wish I lived in a building with such a private courtyard.

At first, while I waited for the students, I resisted the cool water of the fountain, but then it was too much. I dipped my toes in. Just my toes.