vento!
After talking to Al for 2hrs, I miss her, and Florence, like crazy. Talked about how we mutually inspire each other with certain aspects of our lives. Covered the present and then got all nostalgic. Her two favorite memories of daily life with me from Florence:
1) Standing over the stove in the kitchen with a half drunk bottle of wine in one hand, a cigarette precariously balancing a column of ash on it's tip in the other, chugging the wine out of the bottle, adding some to the chicken, operating on the 4 for me 1 for you principal. As this was a very frequent occurrence (i liked to drink and was trying to teach myself how to make chicken marsala - which I sorta had down by the end of those 4 months), it's not surprising that this is her top memory.
2) The two of us sitting on the hill drinking lattes, Bryce would inevitably wander over, Al would eventually jump up "shit it's time for class", I'd slouch lower on the hill "hide me I'm not going and I don't want my professor to see me, oh and take notes for me?". Bryce and I would then play the movie game til Al came back.
Our combined favorite memory:
Our crazy old lady downstairs neighbor, who would leave us amazing, angry notes in italian with a few random english words sprinkled in here and there, complaining about mundane things that we had no control over (our laundry for example, dripped into part of her patio/backyard, we had no dryer and the clothes line hung off our balcony, over her yard). She'd wake up at 5 am and immediately putter out into her patio to obsess over her trees and her little dog would follow her, yapping away. She'd shout at it to be quiet and as soon as it stopped and wandered away she'd immediately start calling for it again "niki niki niki" and the cycle would commence. She made more noise than the dog....The first time we met her was hands down the best. We'd been there two weeks, and all of a sudden there was a loud knock on the door. Jeannie answered it and Al and I heard angry Italian combined with confused Jeannie floating down the hall and went to investigate. The woman was carrying an ash tray and gesturing. We figured out (with our mad second language skills....Jeannie's spanish and our two whole weeks of italian) that she was upset that a few cigarette butts had ended up in her yard. We tried to explain that we were using and ash tray and not just throwing them down there. When that didn't work, we just took her to the balcony and showed her. She started shouting "vento vento". We were very confused (although to this day, vento is one of the italian words that i've never forgotten). Then she combined the "vento" shouting with blowing on her hand...she was now accusing the wind of blowing the cigarettes from our ash tray into her yard...again, not something we could really control...she left and we inherited a second ash tray and a mixed fear/love/frustration for our new neighbor that would only continue to grow. Sometimes when I miss Florence in the early morning hours I just imagine her shouting for niki outside my window....
1) Standing over the stove in the kitchen with a half drunk bottle of wine in one hand, a cigarette precariously balancing a column of ash on it's tip in the other, chugging the wine out of the bottle, adding some to the chicken, operating on the 4 for me 1 for you principal. As this was a very frequent occurrence (i liked to drink and was trying to teach myself how to make chicken marsala - which I sorta had down by the end of those 4 months), it's not surprising that this is her top memory.
2) The two of us sitting on the hill drinking lattes, Bryce would inevitably wander over, Al would eventually jump up "shit it's time for class", I'd slouch lower on the hill "hide me I'm not going and I don't want my professor to see me, oh and take notes for me?". Bryce and I would then play the movie game til Al came back.
Our combined favorite memory:
Our crazy old lady downstairs neighbor, who would leave us amazing, angry notes in italian with a few random english words sprinkled in here and there, complaining about mundane things that we had no control over (our laundry for example, dripped into part of her patio/backyard, we had no dryer and the clothes line hung off our balcony, over her yard). She'd wake up at 5 am and immediately putter out into her patio to obsess over her trees and her little dog would follow her, yapping away. She'd shout at it to be quiet and as soon as it stopped and wandered away she'd immediately start calling for it again "niki niki niki" and the cycle would commence. She made more noise than the dog....The first time we met her was hands down the best. We'd been there two weeks, and all of a sudden there was a loud knock on the door. Jeannie answered it and Al and I heard angry Italian combined with confused Jeannie floating down the hall and went to investigate. The woman was carrying an ash tray and gesturing. We figured out (with our mad second language skills....Jeannie's spanish and our two whole weeks of italian) that she was upset that a few cigarette butts had ended up in her yard. We tried to explain that we were using and ash tray and not just throwing them down there. When that didn't work, we just took her to the balcony and showed her. She started shouting "vento vento". We were very confused (although to this day, vento is one of the italian words that i've never forgotten). Then she combined the "vento" shouting with blowing on her hand...she was now accusing the wind of blowing the cigarettes from our ash tray into her yard...again, not something we could really control...she left and we inherited a second ash tray and a mixed fear/love/frustration for our new neighbor that would only continue to grow. Sometimes when I miss Florence in the early morning hours I just imagine her shouting for niki outside my window....
posted by ath at 12:45 AM
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