Sunday on the Piazza

As crazy and noisy as Saturday night was (I found our from Sally that the Italians were hooting and honking in the Piazza because Milan had won some soccer match, like who cares??) Sunday morning was that quiet and peaceful.  No one in the Piazza, no dogs, no children, no card playing old people, no baby carriages, no chattering Italians, no one.  The morning started in total silencio! I was at peace once again.

Unfortunately, in our apartment at the top of the Piazza,  there was not total silencio. First of all I went into the bathroom to pick up the small rug to give it a good shake out the window, when I saw a small black scorpion fall out of it!  Aaack.  You can imagine my scream bouncing off the stone floors, cement walls and stone ceilings.  Gary, thinking I was on the verge of death, slowly got up from the couch to check on me. For those of you who don't know Gary, the Italians say he is "taciturno" that puts it mildly.  Picture Gary Cooper and dial it down a notch.  Anyway, he successfully disposed of the creature while I researched on the web scorpions, antidotes in case of bites and likelihood of survival once bitten, fortunately which is high.  So then as we were drinking our coffee and the Stoic One says to me, "Oh, by the way, last night when I went to the bathroom there was a pigeon snoozing on bathroom counter."  What????!!!! Is this guy nuts, like who casually mentions this over coffee.  As I stared at him incredulously, he said, "Don't worry, when I came in the pigeon woke up and flew back out the window." Glad to know the idiot bird is no longer in the house. As you know, we don't have screens on our windows, no one in Italy has screens on their windows, but we WILL have screens on our windows before long....sigh....

To calm myself, I paced the apartment, looked out the back window by the river, and there were all of the Italians!  They had left the Piazza to go fishing.  I have never seen anyone fishing the river before but there they all were.  Long fishing poles, matching navy blue chairs, and ice chests next to them.  Needless to say, there were no women.  Around noon, the Piazza slowly started to fill up.  The card playing men now had on coats and ties, oh yes, church!  There was no card playing, only people sitting, chatting quietly (!) and drinking their coffee. I must say they don't look particularly happy, but I am sure that the card playing will resume tomorrow.
In the afternoon it started to rain, and the Stoic One and I took it upon ourselves to have a meaningless couples' quarrel.  The content went something like this. Stoic One,"If we are going to live here, we will need to get used to the noise so we don't have to close the windows when it is hot." Me ever reasonable, "I knew you didn't really want to come here.  You think it was a mistake don't you?  What are we doing here in the middle of nowhere without any friends or family, and it is raining and if we were home we could go to a movie but we are in Italy and the nearest theater is probably in Rome.  Boo hoo.  The Stoic Onc says, "I think we need to get double pane windows."  sigh
In the evening, we went out for another lovely dinner.  There is no problem so big that a good Italian meal won't cure.  I had "stinco" which means shin bone in Italian.  We had a lovely evening, the weather was cool and it was quiet.  We slept well and woke up refreshed.
(BTW to people following along, I updated the beginning to explain more how we got into all of this.)