At Home at Casa Baccianella

May 13, 2010

It was a gorgeous day.  The sun was out, the skies were blue and the birds were singing.  The laundry was hanging out on the clotheslines to dry, and my wet shoes (from a walk through soggy grass) were outside on the walkway.  I was upstairs reading an Italy travel guide with Cade when suddenly I heard it:  the sound of buckets of water being dumped out of the sky.  It took me a moment to identify the sound and register its implications, and then I bounded off the couch, ran down the stairs and through the hallways, through the side door of the house, and started grabbing clothespins and clothing off the line as quickly as I could.  I hauled the fully-laden drying rack in through the double doors and finally remembered my shoes, which at this point were even more sopping wet than they had ever been before.  Phew.  Within a couple of hours, the blue skies were back, and the sun was out.  But this time the clothes stayed in, since Murphy’s law was clearly in full operation.

The Taylors had gone to Florence for the day, and Anna was out running various errands, so the kids and I had the house to ourselves.  Since Florence was already on our travel itinerary in two days, we opted to have a day of rest, help with some household chores, do laundry, start packing things up, and simply enjoy the abundant amenities of Casa Baccianella.   It turns out that as much as we were all loving our daily sightseeing adventures on the trip, after two and a half months we were all a little bit road-weary.  The kids were thrilled to have an entire afternoon to play board games and watch two or three American movies in succession on DVD, while I tackled the job of wiping down the doors, shutters and windows throughout the house.

Since we were nonpaying guests, Anna had prepared a list of chores that we could help with while we were visiting for the week.  We were happy enough to pitch in to earn our keep—and wouldn’t you know, the kids actually thought it was fun to do chores at Anna’s house.  It figures.  She’s British.  Just like Mary Poppins.   Cade laboriously made a detailed list identifying each of the hundreds of channels available on satellite television and the kids all helped with weeding in the back and side yards.  But by far, their favorite task was helping Janice and her girls prepare the pool for summer, as my children enthusiastically learned all about “siphoning” while helping drain water, clear debris, and rescue frogs and tadpoles from the water-logged pool cover.