Life in Southern Italy

I'm the first one up. Well, not exactly the first, because my sweetheart got up a quarter of an hour earlier. Out with my dad. Those two. When energy was being handed out, they bought up the entire stock. But it's a quarter to seven, so if I'm lucky, I still have an hour without ‘mom, come’ and ‘mom, look’.

I'm hesitating to throw in a bunch of seven-minute workouts and open my laptop. Remembering last night's pizzas, I press the Complete Workout button, followed by an abs session and an arm treatment. I know that look from my trainer when I come back from vacation. A bit disappointed, you know it well. And lo and behold, they're still there. Three girls spooning, dreaming about yesterday's day.

When you vacation in a fixed place (we have a family cottage here), everything is the same and yet everything is different. The neighbors have four kittens and 39 chicks. In the cuddle pyramid, it's hard to choose for my girls. Do we want to take a few chicks with us? We do have a nice rabbit cage, right? I shake my head no. I still remember too well what happened to the contents of that cage last year. Wild dogs and tame rabbits... Not a good combination. I can still cry when I think about what happened here.

Moreover, cuddling with the neighbors every day is much more fun. I get the best coffee from the Sessana Grande, Martino points out something every day that an Italian would do differently (last lesson learned: I enthusiastically say that everything is going well when he asks me: Com’è? A true Southern Italian keeps it understated. Those kinds of things) and I come home every day with fresh ricotta that he just picked up from the farmer, a dessert he surely made for tonight's guests (they have a restaurant, did I mention that?) and I'm updated about the neighborhood again. Mimmo's brother has carpal tunnel syndrome in his hands and can't prune, and Grazio still hasn't sold his house.

I dive into our inflatable pool (you know, one that you build yourself with a frame above the ground, visually not a masterpiece but we are so happy with it), play a game of volleyball with my middle girl (‘just play well, okay, mom, you can't cheat me’) and then look forward to the red onion-cooked octopus rings from La Rotonda.

Italy, I'm on to you. But you already suspected that.