days of wine and roses

Today is beautiful. A noticable North breeze ( föhn) has whisked away all the moisture in the air leaving the sky a brittle brilliant blue. The air is clear not muzzy with moisture. No humidity at all. Makes a nice change although I actually don't mind humidity much.

Everything is quiet at the moment, no husband ( he is in Germany) and house guests gone, it is just me, the fish, the garden lizards and the birds. Not much else. Mostly I am trying to keep my act together as I wade my way through this adventure called menopause. It sucks, no doubt about it. Where last month was great this month is the exact opposite, with two periods within 14 days of each other, the chronic upset stomach and other gut related issues, the headaches and the crashing fatigue I think if I could hibernate through this crap I would. I least now I know that the weird skippy heart beats I get right after I eat usually indicate the inevitable on coming hot flash. Phew and boy they do mean hot! I don't mind that so much, it is more funny than annoying but the morning sickness and the upset tummy are really annoying.

Now that I know for sure this is the main issue and having been checked out by my doc on several occasions now and been given the ol' stamp of health and having complied with his 'you need to get your heart rate down- but the heart itself is healthy- by doing ( faithfully) every day som sort of manic aerobics work out -step up step down... I know that the weirdness that seems to come and go arbitrarily is just hormones.

Menopause is not an illness it's just damned inconvinient.

I have good days and bad days and inbetween days.

We had an excellent weekend. Marcus's sister and brother in law stayed and on Sunday we made the drive into Bellinzona and walked around, up steep hills to see the three UNESCO castles. I was breaking in my new hiking boots so I had decent footwear, good thing too. And all the step aerobics paid off because this time, in difference to many other times, I did not find myself wheezing as we made the climb up the old stone stairs to the middle castle.

We had the perfect day, sunny and warm but also breezy so it was nice. We had a lovely lunch and a nice little drive afterwards. Came home and ate icecream, drank esspresso and then later on BBQ'd. Which was also great! We sat out on the terrace until after dark with candles and a smouldering BBQ to warm us. Then the day's hiking and hill climbing finally got to us and it was bed time.

Monday morning the house emptied itself as Marcus had to fly to Ahrensburg and S.&B. drove onwards to Italy for their holiday. I discovered that I was too damned tired to move so I just went back to bed. Some days I am sooooooooooooo grateful for the fact that I can just do that when I want to.

In July ( soon) I start my full time ( okay 3 hours a day = full time) Italian course, if it actually happens. I am both nervous and happy about this. Maybe by the end of July I will be a tick more fluent in italian and can at least talk to people. Which would be nice. Funny thing is since moving down here my french has greatly improved , at least from the understanding side of things. I watch a lot of TV in french since we only have 4 channels 2=italian , 1= german and 1= french. I guess all those years of french in school in Canada paid out a bit. Don't know how spoken fluent I am but I could get by if I had to the annoying thing is when i try to think in Italian it is the French that overwhelms my brain.

It looks like we will be here for another year at the very least so I had better try to actually live here instead of feeling as though my life is on hold.

Now I have a book to write, many art projects to finish up and general stuff to do. The usual...

Hard to believe that we are in summer already. Hard to believe it is almost July. Time zips by.

Until then, be excellent to each other.