Positano Porter

Tonight I kissed a stranger. Not on the lips, mind you, but on the cheek. The Positano Porter said he could take our bags down to the beach for a mere 5E (6-7$) and I was so overjoyed and tired of hauling crap around that I kissed him square on his sculpted, stubbly cheek. That 5E will save my poor husband from hauling that dastardly suitcase down about 100 steps. It will prevent the inevitable sweatdrops that we accumulate just going up our stairs to leave our apt complex. Then, a 13E ferry ride to Salerno to the train station (to avoid going back through Napoli (see previous post as to why) and a 3 hr train ride to Rome, where I’m ready to kick some administrative ass. At times the laizess-faire (sp?) Italian attitude is so charming, and something to emulate. We Americans can get so worked up. But at times the prompt, courteous, and no nonsense Capital ideal is lovely. Shit gets done.

Positano is lovely, and made lovelier by the cooling wind and thunder rolling over the mountaintop. We hired a car to take us to Pompeii today. I thought I would be much sicker on the hairpin-turn-mountain roads, but we got along okay. The terrible thing is that Clare won’t stay in her seatbelt, and no amount of cajoling and bribing and threatening will keep her there. I kept having visions of her launching out the window if we got hit,a nd at one point she lunged at the handle and the door popped open slightly. $%&#$^%#@. What can you do?

Pompeii was … well, I don’t really feel like I got a chance to connect with it. We spent a lot of time wandering, looking for the right direction to head and Clare tripped her way through the rutted streets. It was a slow, ponderous haul, and I settled for taking pictures of every doorway and piece of rock in front of me. Those tricky Italians make everything confusing and unmarked so you have to either buy the guide books or hire a guide! Smart, but exhausting. Sometimes you long for the simplicity of HERE IT IS< RIGHT HERE of American signage.

Tom took my picture in the “House of the Tragic Poet” and I really felt it. I had planned on writing while I was here, and I feel that now it won’t happen. I’m too tired at the end of the day, too frazzled from chasing Clare, keeping her out from under Vespas, cooking, haggling, trudging trudging trudging along. We’ve only been here a week and I SO dearly miss Auntie Leigh Ann’s 15 minutes of peace she gives me every day when she whisks Clare away to see the kitties, eat blueberries, and “eat rainbows”. I am looking forward to my mom and aunt paula coming over, my sister and her husband visiting with my niece and nephew, and the change of scenery.

Did I mention Clare downright fractured her toe? Seems she’s bent on gradual destruction while we’re here. Maybe it’s protest. She ran right up to a heavy teak chair and crushed her large toe (take note: opposite of the foot that already had a purple toenail from dropping a big flagstone rock on it a few months ago) and jammed her toe under the chair. No amount of cold water from the garden’s fountain would help and when it turned raspberry and then violet, I know we were in for it. Two days later she still lifts her big toe to walk, but doesn’t wake up at night crying “my toe, my toe” at 1 am. What trooper.
Sigh.