Falling in Love With Z's Mountains

Yahoo!!! My longest visit to the Dolomites! We spent 4 ½ lovely (even if partially rainy) days in the Trentino-Alto Adige area of the Dolomites a few weeks ago. Being in the mountains is so liberating. This is our special place in the mountains because it's where Zeno always came as a kid.

Here are a few pictures from our time of relaxing, hiking (including an 8-hour hike), via Ferrata (no pics! I was too busy climbing!), and white water rafting. We went biking into a beautiful valley one day as well, unfortunately my bike rental seat gave me an awful time which took a bit of the joy out of that journey… note to self for next time... However, once we’d biked to the top of the valley we had a lovely nap in the cool grass. It’s just too much to tell, so I’ll let the pics do their own talking:

Next time you might be here seeing it with us in person :)

Tackling the "Rat Room"

There is a room in our house that we reserve for unwanted guests (we apologize if any of our readers have been banished to this room!). You will be relieved to know that Zeno took the job upon himself to salvage our "rat room"! I wish I had a few "before" pictures, but honestly, I think I was too scared of the room to open it up and take pics of it before now... 
It's true history was that it is where the coal was kept when the house was warmed by coal. It's been a good 50+ years since anyone has ventured into or used the room. Our final goal is to turn it into a pantry of sorts complete with a deep freezer! :) 


Here are Z's initial attacks... you can see that some of the cleaning fluids and solvents he had to use to make his first attacks went to his head a bit...

You get to the "rat room" by passing through the kitchen, into the first pantry, and wa lah! 

Zeno cleaned it out, fixed some of the crumbling cement and painted it

This is our dehumidifier doing it's best to dry the place out

See the little sqare part in the roof? That's a secret passage way up to our first floor landing! Too cool huh?

Here's the brave man himself

The attacked caused premature aging... note the increase in grey hairs

in addition, I noted some psychological effects from the trauma of the cleaning attempts...

Stay tuned for the final results of Z's labors!!!! He's working on the floor and putting down more cement as we speak... 

What to do with a husband who vacuums at midnight???

Now, Z and I don't divide "domestic chores" we just kinda pitch in wherever we can whenever we can. Sure, since I have a little more free time, I do end up tackling more of the housework, but for the most part we keep the home dirt at bay together... or we slack off together. 


Recently, with life and work being busy, we've been laying of the dust on the home front - or perhaps I should say, we've been doing projects that actually contribute to the growth of the dust on the home front! 


On Tuesdays, I get the afternoon off, and so this past Tuesday, after teaching an infant CPR course, I tackled the dust in the bedroom and kitchen - it had gotten BAD and so it took me until around 9pm to wrap it all up... i wasn't keeping track of the time, so it was only after I stepped out of the shower that I noticed how late it was! Wow! I'd been expecting Z to be home a while ago... Hmmmm... 


And then I heard the rattle of the door... I zipped down the stairs to find Z unloading a large box! I love boxes! And lo and behold, guess what came out? A new vacuum cleaner? ! ? ! :D 


"Well, I noticed the dust piling up and thought it would be MUCH easier if we had a vacuum dedicated to the upstairs and one dedicated to the downstairs" - oh my wonderful Z! And that's when I was glad I'd rolled up my sleeves, because if he felt the dust buildup was worthy of a second vacuum, yes, it was BAD. 


Meet our new vacuum - dedicated to the upstairs :) 

Vacuum style - get plugged in! 

You vacuum like this Amore...

Attention! Ready, aim...

FIRE!!!

Ahem, my cord unraveled a bit on that one...

You see how easy! 

Ahiii... my back...

So, when Z and the new vacuum came home, we had dinner at around 10pm and then... Z and the vacuum "played" until past midnight! I was laying in bed trying to be an example of restfulness and subtly (or not so subtly) pointing out that I'd just cleaned and vacuumed our bedroom :)