Lydia's Birthday Eve!

After waking up and zipping over to see two paintings by French artist la Tour, we scooted along and met up with the Three Wise Men on horseback on their way to worship Jesus! After returning home, we undecorated from Christmas - our sweet little Charlie Brown tree was grateful to be relieved of it's festive burden and wrapped up cozily in a sheet to rest - after which we cleaned the whole kitchen and made it festive ready for Lydle's birthday tomorrow! A full dose of Captain America topped the night off with inspirations and some good laughs (: Now we're off to sleep and dream of the beauty to come tomorrow! You never know what the new day will bring...

The Great Spill of 2012

Most mornings I make my way down our 63 Italian stairs to the kitchen where I collect coffee and breakfast which I carry on a tray back up those same 63 stairs so that Z and I can have breakfast in bed J However, today the Great Spill occurred on or about stair #11… the result was a lake of coffee!

 

And my little sister Lydle’s sudden appearance – “Can I help?” Aw, now that’s true love offering to mop the floor before 7am!

 

Thankfully, the situation was easily mastered and new coffee obtained for all!

 

 

Neighbors think I'm crazy...

I've gotten into the habit of meowing to one of our bushes when we come home from work :) That's right! What's that? It's not just the neighbors? You think I'm crazy too?!!!! 

Well, hey! What would you say if the bush meowed back? 

Ah, Ha! Got you there didn't I? :D 

When Italians go on vacation for a month or two in August they often don't know what to do with their pets. Hence, many of them are kicked out onto the street to fend for themselves. Little "Panna&Salvia" as we named her (see below) decided that our garden was as safe a haven as any since she found herself disowned. Panna&Salvia stands for "Cream&Sage". This name came because at first she didn't trust us much and liked to hide in our sage bush :) She didn't come out and make friends until I offered her a saucer of heavy cream! Girl after my own heart. For the record, she completely turned her nose up at "plain milk" only panna will do. 

So, I meow at our bushes when I come home because if she's around she'll meow back and come out for a nice good petting. She's a sweet one! I still worry that she's not street wise enough to make it on her own poor little one... but she's not the worst tradgedy of the summer. One of my friends saved a kitten who had been tied up in a plastic garbage bag alive and thrown out with the trash. I can't believe people can be so cruel! 

Here's Panna eating her cream

Mmmmm! That's good stuff! 

the Family Box!

On our multiple drives to and from Tuscany we have to stop at least once during the 5 hour trip in order to refuel. On one of our return trips we discovered that if we fuel up at the Super ERG we get a Family Box!!! Full of all kinds of little goodies for families - a drink, travel stain removal, cheerios, pasta, hard candy, hand sanitizer, travel kleenex... :) 


We'll, on our most recent trip, we needed to refuel and I was driving. Much to Zeno's chagrin, I didn't want to stop until I found a Super ERG so that we could get the Family Box! :) Of course ;)


"Such a kid..." Zeno moans, shaking his head and smiling indulgently.

Behold! The Family Box

Insanity

So, I finally tried the one Insanity workout that my little sister helped me get when I was in the US last time. It was the Cardio set… Whew! Honestly, 1/2 way through I had to give in. That's a lot to work up to… Or, should I say, "that's Insanity!!!" If I get myself doing the whole thing I will be one buff bunny! 

Froggie Reflections

It's been a tough time recently and a tough day today. It seems that we make plans, but we aren't at all in power of seeing them come to fruition. That can be a cause for sorrow and depression. It's hard when you feel stuck and out of control at the whim of... well, at the whim of... that's right, it's no whim, we're under God's mercy. Isn't He the one who began this life of ours? Isn't He the One who called us to Himself? Isn't He the One who brought us to this place? 


I was just reading the quote on our blog again, I'd forgotten it:
No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourself so. If you find yourself so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to him, and mind the present.


No wonder I'd been feeling so heavy. Perhaps I need to change my prayers from "God, change this!", "God, help!", "God, what are you doing?!?!?" and "God, get me out of this mess!" to, "God, help me to live patiently within the grace that you've provided me for this moment". 


It's one thing to realize intellectually, another completely to put in your heart and live out in your life especially when, in the course of these few lines, the situation hasn't changed... or has it? 

Psalm 37:3-5

Reflections of a Froggie - These reflections will come up in my blog at times. They are from my intimate heart directed toward God, considering His works in my life and my reaction to that work, be it accepting or resisting, rejoicing or sorrowing. In the end, He always has a plan, and in the end, He's in control, not me (though I like to pretend that I am at times...)

  
Through writing, my thoughts and feelings become much clearer to me. I am not an eloquent person orally, and when I don't write, I tend to bottle up my emotions. Sometimes this has no significance, but if I find myself dwelling on pessimistic, negative and/or untrue thoughts they will eventually cause me to explode in uncontrolled emotion the result of which is carnage and disaster... yes, it's not so pretty...

My hope is that through this process of honest expression I will be able to process better and more healthily what He is doing in my life from a perspective of truth and that my relationship with the Lord will grow. And, that you, yes, you, will help to challenge me and keep me accountable. 

Trust in the LORD and do good;
     Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. 
Delight yourself in the LORD;
     And He will give you the desires of your heart. 
Commit your way to the LORD,
     Trust also in Him, and He will do it.

As I walk this life, though I face challenge and dryness or joy and fullness may I grow in faithfulness, delight in the Lord alone and trust Him to lead me in the way that I should go.

Psalm 37:5

Does anyone else find that being peaceful and still is sometimes the hardest work? It sure is for me!


These past two weeks I feel like I've done a million things but then nothing at all... Conquered a "new" room in our house, junked a lot of junk, made myself a stylish messenger bag, almost adopted a pretty abandoned kitten, thought of ideas for two kids books.... and the list could go on. And yet, some of the big hurdles I see before myself haven't moved. And now, because I'm tired out and not completely myself, I feel impotent in the face of my life's goals, dreams and hopes.
As much as I want to control everything and make things turn out and proceed according to my wishes and plans; I know I just need to wait, quiet and patient and trusting - "... and He shall bring it to pass".
Amen


Goodnight all those I love! I'm so glad I have you <3

March 27th 2011

The year 2000 was a big year for me. This year that marked my second decade of life brought along two major surgeries – one to remove cancer and one to rebuild my jaw. Following the one surgery was radioactive therapy and the second was 2+ months of liquid diet from having my jaw wired shut.

Sure, not fun times, but my family was AWESOME! They were with me and literally beside me the whole way. Not to mention that God truly poured out His grace on me to see me through. Funny thing is that one of the most vivid memories I have from that time is how frustrated I was that I was so winded and wiped out just from walking short distances.  My attitude was, ok, surgery and treatments are over – now it’s time to be all better! And when that didn’t happen straight away, well, that was hard.

So, this one day, when I was walking around the lake but was forced to sit down on the curb because, after about 15 yards, I’d gotten so dizzy and breathless, I determined that I was going to be able to run around the entire lake without stopping. It was a spur of the moment determination because I’d never been a runner, only playing soccer in high school, but in that moment, that was the goal I felt that if I could do that, than I would count myself all better. And so it began…

And this past March 27^th, 2011 marks my 5^th mini marathon!!!! Oh yeah! If that’s not a testimony to God’s strength and faithfulness I don’t know what is. Like Eric Liddell said, “When I run, I feel His pleasure”. Now comparing Eric running and Amanda running is like comparing a sycamore to a forget-me-not, but I imagine the resulting God given pleasure is much the same J  

I Cor. 10:31 Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

My first Midnight Run

Well, despite hardly being able to walk after Sunday's run, I'm recovering quite well :) Those 63 stairs are going pretty well - hardly notice them and I can even put my sox on without too much groaning. 


So, Thursday the 17th is a new Italian international holiday! We are going to be celebrating 150 years of the unification of Italy as a republic!!! The theme of the run is Run and Live Positively - I heartily agree! 


Besides the fact that I'm always up from a day off :) I think I'm becoming very Italian... There is an organization that is going to be putting on a run exactly at midnight so that we can run in the holiday! I've never participated in a midnight run, so I'm really excited. We get a shirt and a number and everything - very official :) 


I was thinking of bringing my video camera so that you can see what its like too... we shall see. I've never run with a camera, but for 3km I think I could manage. 


Check out our cool Midnight Run shirts!!! 

Random Shots

A package arrived a few weeks ago!!! I love getting packages, or sending packages... I just like packages in general :) This one came from Kim!!! 

Thank you for the scarf Kim!!! It's great :)

In preparation for her upcoming delivery my friend Rachael and I went out for a "girls" night and had pedicures and Mexican food :) 

Rachael relaxing

Rachael is in the maroon and I'm in the blue - I was hoping it would look like a nice Spring color... but it turned out to be a bit alien like... 

Nice happy feet :)

Tummy bugs and exams don't go together...

Somehow, during my trip to Portugal, I picked up a stomach flu. The kind that requires the near proximity of the bathroom :( Today, this evening, I have a final exam for Lymphatic-Massage... I'm finding that my concentration is not so sharp. I hope it goes ok!

Can't Swallow and Can't Breathe...

You would think that after 30 years of life some of the basic things required for daily life would come second nature and we wouldn’t have to think about them anymore. Well, come to find out that I don’t swallow or breathe right… Thank goodness I’m still alive!

The first I discovered from my dentist – it seems that since I’ve had so much mouth trouble throughout my life that I never made the switch from “kid-swallowing”, which we do when we’re losing and missing our teeth during our developing years, to “grown-up-swallowing” what naturally follows once we have all our permanent teeth and an “adult” mouth.  I learned that most every adult can swallow while laying down! And all along I thought it was a trick only Z could do :) We’ll eventually I’ll be able to do it too after I finish my swallowing lessons with the swallow-doctor! Yes, there is a more technical name, but it's not quite as fun. 

Not swallowing is one thing, but not breathing right?!?!? Being a healthcare professional I realize that if one doesn’t breath properly it results in all kinds of health trials and could even lead to death. So, when I was told I sprained an intercostal muscle (the muscles you find between your ribs) because I breathe wrong I was rather amazed. Pretty good to survive more than 30 years without breathing right! This one is a bit less of a drastic learning curve. Turns out that for whatever reason, I just have a weak diaphragm muscle and with some easy strengthening exercises which are no more than breathing correctly, I will breathe just as I should have been all these years.

Wow! What with finally learning how to swallow and breath the next years of my life promise to be quite amazing! :D Before I get carried away with excitement, perhaps I should double check and make sure I know how to walk…. 

Help! We're being Poisoned!

For the past two months Milano has been more than 3x the level of pollution that the European Union has set as the high-risk mark for health.  It really does effect people! Working in the health sector I’ve seen more respiratory and skin problems as well as complaints of headaches and general unwellness.  In order to detox ourselves a bit we decided to escape the city last weekend and hike above it all! We chose the Brembana Valley where they have a bunch of wonderful mountains called the Orbie.

Faithful EtaBeta took us most of the way up the mountain and where she stopped we took a chair lift. From the chairlift we hiked through the often untrodden snow towards the peaks! Oh, it was beautiful and clean :) The sunshine was like kisses on our faces! But we found we couldn’t handle all that fresh air… we found ourselves quickly huffing and puffing and coughing away as we made our way through the snow. Ok, ok, we realize it was because we’re out of shape ;)

Once at the top we plunked down in the snow and read together, took pics, enjoyed the view and, of course, made snow angels! 

On our way down the mountain we took a quick stroll through the little mountain village. So adorable! We were envious of the quite and calm life we saw around us. We livened things up with a bit of a snow fight ;) 

So, for one afternoon we might have been huffing and puffing around, but our headaches vanished! Until we went through 2 hours of traffic to get back into Milano…. 

This is a demonstration of one of Z and my favorite "utterly informative" traffic signs. We've been sitting in traffic for hours, finally we come upon this notice: "Patches of Traffic for the next bit of distance". Oh? Great! We wouldn't have noticed otherwise :) Sometimes you just have to laugh outloud in the middle of it all - I did! 

Gettin' Old!

There was a time when I could abuse my body and not suffer a bit from it... no more.  Remember that 14km I ran when I was barely convalescent from the flu? Well, it seems I pulled an intercostal muscle - one of the low ones on the side that wraps around to the back. It was a bit tender, nothing more, until...


I decided to go running again this past Sunday. Instead of 14 I thought to tame it down and just do 7 - enough to warm up all my muscles and help that little pinched intercostal get back in its place. 


No such luck. 


By Sunday evening I was writhing on the floor - laughing with tears in my eyes because it hurt so bad it would make me collapse to the floor! But it happend so spontaneously and uncontrollably that I found it funny even though it HURT! Worst of it was that laughing made it hurt even worse! And that made me laugh more... 
Wonderful Zeno, he massaged my muscles and got me heat packs. Now I'm back to just a "tender" situation, no writhing and suddenly collapsing :) 


Note to self: from here on out it's best to train. Those shocks to the system aren't so easily recovered from.

So many goings on!

The flu is finally and truly behind us. Even though we're still coughing a little bit I must say we're over it because we both ran 14k on Sunday. That's right! I was pretty amazed too :) 


There was an organized fun run in Bergamo, about 45 mins away from us, and it began that we were going to lightly jog 7k with some friends - all of whom happen to be Marines. Well, when we got to the part of the run where you can decide if you want to run 7k or 14k Zeno looked at me so pleading, 
"What do you think? You can run it nice and calmly!"
The sun was shining, I was feeling happy to be running, my wonderful Z was expressing that he wanted nothing more in that moment but for me to follow him... how could I resist?! And then at km #8 I was thinking, 
"What did I let him talk me into?!" But in the end, I was so glad I did it! What a sense of satisfaction :) Until I woke up with every muscle in my body aching together with my head. Yet, even that is simply a motivation to keep running, only more often and not in such a shocking manner. 


That was Sunday, today is Tuesday, and I kicked down our back door! That's right - karate chop!!!! Though it took me quite a few more than just one clean kick. I had to bash it a good dozen times before the lock busted loose. 
You see, we've been wanting to change our back door for months now. It doesn't close properly, the lock has been finicky (not opening easily with the key), but we were saving up because it's a big project. Well, today the key just would not open the door. I stood there 40 minutes turning and turning, budging. coaxing, pleading... until blisters started showing up on my hands from turning the key so much. 
I called Z and gave him the low down,
"Can I just bash it in by kicking it?" I asked
"Go for it!" 
So, after trying one last time the "civilized way" I took my foot to the door and bashed it right in! 
Now we're using the front door with our "castle" key - that is, the long key that makes one feel like they live in a castle :) 


Also today, Z bought all the fixings for a Salmon dinner and presented me with a KINDLE!!! Yay! Happy Birthday to me!!!! Thank you so, SO, SO MUCH Amore mio :D What a grand surprise!!! Now I have a US bookstore that I can carry all around with me :) And I can read all the English books I'll ever need. I can't wait to get started.
Hmmmmm.... What shall my first book on the Kindle be? Any suggestions? 

Officially Legally Driving Italian Adult!

That's right :) 
I'm officially all grown up here in Italy. I passed my driving exam with flying colors and have been zooming around ever since! Yahoo! It's amazing what a tremendous sense of freedom being legal gives you. 
Now, if I could only get the talking bit down... 

Typical Day Off

So, today I didn't have to go to work... or, that's how the expression goes. So instead of working I:
went to grocery shopping, picked up some things from the Farmacia, dropped off 12 of Z's shirts to be ironed (it takes them and hours while it takes me days, so it's totally worth it!), dropped off our camera to have the sensor cleaned, went to the farm to "milk" our cow :), picked up a birthday gift for our little friend Emma's 1st birthday, took the car to get washed, filled up the car with GPL (more economic and environmentally friendly fuel), upon returning home made a bee-line for the bathroom!, fixed a late lunch, called home, did up the dishes from the night before, watered the window boxes which were looking like the dry Sahara, made some lemonade... drank it ALL, responded to a few e-mails that had been waiting, found my bed and fell onto it for a 30 minute nap, did my Italian driver's ed homework, walked off to driver's ed class and came home to find Z waiting for me :)
Now we've finished dinner and are going to sleep - Ahhhhh, sweet rest. Tomorrow should be more relaxing, I have to go to work :)

Italian Driving School

One of the things I've been up to over these past few busy weeks has been Italian driving school. Yes, because I'm an expatriate, after a year of residence I need an Italian (or European) driver's license in order to make my way along the Italian roads.
It's been pretty intense actually! I don't remember learning anything about braking systems and the differences between diesel/petrol/methane engines... I remember more about legal blood alcohol levels than the tecno part of how the car actually runs. Interesting to note that they don't mention anything about blood alcohol levels in Italian driver's ed...So, I'm well on my way! I have an area on line where I can take practice tests and I plan to take one driven practice run with my instructor before sitting for the written and practical exams. I probably won't take the exams until Sept/Oct simply because the school and DMV close down for the summer months - just like the rest of Italy.

With my Italian driving license I'll feel so much more officially Italian!!!! Though Zeno says I shouldn't tell the US since they might immediately take my US license away...

New "do" after Locks of Love

So, today was the big day and after donating 10 inches to Locks of Love here's what the hair is looking like:



Zeno really likes it, and it's the perfect thing for spring... my big question is what to do with it when I'm running!