Boxing Deliveries

It's supposed to be freezing cold today but no-one said anything about the hurricane force wind. The laundry room door is blasted off its hinges again. This time there's no saving it - will have to remake it over the next week.

I'm up early but Marcia is sleeping in late today - the banging shutters kept her awake while I was snoring away in my bedroom. Reheated coffee, cut a slice of the chocolate cake and relatched some of the shutters and doors so they banged less and Marcia could sleep more.

Drove over to Bordighera to share Christmas with my mother and brother, who live there while Paul teaches some students there as part of an EU funded program. Good to see them, in good health and in the warmth of a wooden cabin on a campsite there. Much better than the damp, cold, concrete apartments of recent years.

Lots of presents, of food, of drink and of talk later, headed back home in the evening to a slightly chillier Marcia, who hates it when I visit the other side of my family.

Christmas Duty

I began dishing out the presents after dinner of the 24th, as is custom in Norway. This process took long enough that it was almost midnight by the time we opened Marcia's 'present to the house', which was the most popular Nintendo Wii. Unpacked, working, superb on the new LCD TV, we played bowling, tennis, boxing, golf and surfing till past 2am. Brilliant fun start to Christmas Day!

Of course that meant I woke late - like waaaay late - in the official morning. Just in time to call my brother to say I'd be over for lunch at his and my mother's place, some 60km away. Could we all have spent Christmas in one place? No. That's a long and unhappy story.

So anyway by lunch I was with my mother and brother in their rented cabin in a campsite in Ventimiglia. The presents I had bought in Dallas and Zurich on the way over were bang on. Marcia's gift of a hairdryer also. The basket of goodies - well the liquid portion for sure, but the snacks I carried back with me at the end of the day (OK they were the type of things I munch on when entertaining, but still).

Even though I had slept nine hours and had been up but five, I still managed a short siesta there. Reckon more to do with letting myself relax after checking everyone is still OK and in one piece. Paul continues to work, Mother is hanging in there, Marcia holds the fort so I can fight another day. The project in Brasil may terminate tomorrow but I have enough to get through the year ahead. All is well today.

End of the evening and I head on back home. Cheered up Marcia, who feels down as always when I visit the others.

I've done my duty on Christmas Day.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve and the sun shines bright through the window again. Quick check of the internet and I'm down for a coffee, fix the garden gate, move TVs and wrap presents.

My next door neighbor tells me water is leaking through one of the terraces (I know already) and gives me a bottle of home made white wine for Christmas. Marcia gets upset and goes into one of her withdrawals, which is really unfortunate. I know she manages the distance and separation very well, and looks after everything the very best she can (which is a lot given my unfailing ability to leave things an unfinished mess).

It's very hard for a lovely women of 34 to live an isolate life in an unfriendly country, with little social life and an inability to find and hold good friends. Not what either of us intended those fifteen years ago when we first met on a warm, sunny beach in Copacabana.

The sun has gone, low clouds cover the sky. The wood fire is lit, the lights glisten on the tree. A cake is in the oven, soon to be followed by a roasting duck. Italian TV is showing 'Sissi' again for the ten millionth time.

It's Christmas Eve, and I'm home.

I'm home

I'm home. The sunlight is coming through the small window of my bedroom, Marcia has come on up with a cup of fresh coffee and I can stretch out in my bed and look at some familiar things.

Some of the work I did on the top terrace has created some problems; so that's something to do. The garden door needs fixing too. Plus several doors are jammed thanks to the humidity and rains these last few weeks. The list grows...

First it's some last Christmas shopping, stuff for my mother and Paul, stuff for the house. Marcia's been after this for some time, as have I : an LCD TV. So finally, in the rush of promotions for a Christmas sale, I bought a 32" LG monitor. Everyone was happy - only to find the dumb thing didn't work, provoking my frustration at the product and friction with Marcia, who was determined to make it work (on the shared conviction she has the patience to get these things to wok, and I do not). In the end she gave up at my insistence the TV was defective, so I tossed it back into the box and drove back to the store. Sure enough it was defective (hah!) so I got the showroom replacement which, of course, worked first time.

Don't know why, but in these last years I anger quickly at things that don't work, packets that don't open, things that block my way and slow me down, people who don't think or do their job as I think they should. If I'm not getting old I'm sure getting crotchety.

We settled down and flipped through channels, controls, input options and everything else you do when you buy a new gadget. Bu I'm concerned I've broken the magic of the last two days, which I desperately don't want to do.

Up to my bedroom and, once my head hit the pillow, I didn't feel sleepy, so I watched a movie Marcia had downloaded - "Get Smart", another spy spoof where the guy who always screws up gets to be the hero. There' s some input by Mel Brooks, so it was humorously loopy. Good thing to go to sleep on.

From Chicago to home

Three hours late taking off, the apparent reason being the ice on various panels was delaying the unload and load of cargo, bags etc. Maybe. Like it isn't always cold up in the air and isn't snowy and icy in Zurich and Chicago during winter ..

This time I was stuck in the middle of the middle section of the seats and, naturally, the guy to my right was ugly and fat, a man who couldn't stop splaying his legs and elbows into my space. Fortunately on the other side of me was a chatty, humorous and happily non-conformist young woman. Family all over the place, conversant in at least three languages, confident enough to, in true American fashion, tell all in 15 minutes (something I'm always criticized for doing). Zany enough to laugh at my sense of the ridiculous. I enjoy traveling, notwithstanding my constant critiques of increasingly crappy service, and meeting people like this is always fun.

Like the transient sand art of Tibetan monks, part of the pleasure is in knowing that this is the one contact I will ever have with this person.

I managed to sleep most of the flight; the movie I saw was "Wanted", entirely forgettable and definitely not worth paying money for, either at the theater or as rental. Not even worth downloading.

The plane arrived way too late for me to connect to Nice. All of these airports now sprawl so much that it takes upwards of 20 minutes to get from gate to gate. I checked the transfers and fortunately could still get to Nice the same day, arriving about 4 hours later than the original schedule.

I went to the Swiss Air lounge and, surprise, I was allowed in. Not only that, but I was able to take a shower too, which after two days travel was a godsend. Chilled out there, wandered around the concourse, bought some more presents, went down to the departure gate and boarded the flight for Nice.

The sun was just setting, as we climbed, the dark silhouette of the Alps was framed by a deep red strip proclaiming the end of the day, slipping away from the indigo of the night. Some lights were visible in the valleys before they were lost beneath low lying clouds. It was a very magical flight down to the sea.

Got through pass control and customs very quickly and within a few minutes Marcia had arrived. We drove into the center of Nice, had a dinner at Buffalo Joe's, a Texas-style restaurant franchise that makes tasty food. Then we went home, where Marcia sohowed me all the things she had done for Christmas, including decorating the tree solo, wrapping presents. Marcia is very precious to me.

Within a short while, I was in bed and deep asleep.