Sheep Guarding Llama

Wednesday.  Started off the day with the long walk down to the distant grocery store down the hill and lumbering back heavy laden with groceries going uphill.  I’m not going to mill this particular bit of Italy.

The kids watched more SciShow Kids this morning.  And they set up science experiments to do on the dining room table.

This afternoon, Luciana played Papo y Yo on Steam.  We hung out gaming a bit.

Slow day, very little news.

Tuesday.  Day two of antibiotics.  Not really feeling better, but hey, not feeling any worse, either.  So that’s something.

We had the power out at the house a bit this morning as the electrician and handyman were back today to replace the pump that had died this past weekend.  So no running water and no power this morning.  Lots of fun.

We’ve discovered that the toilet upstairs in the house, the one that only the kids are able to use, is broken and has been flowing continuously.  So it used up all of the available water and killed the pumps.  Just great.  So, just like how the owners had come in while we were gone and watered stuff on the deck and left the hose running for days and ran us out of water before, they had something break and run us out of water now.  So many issues that should not be problems like this.  Why is there no visibility or monitoring on the water usage in a place that has so many water problems?

Worked today.  This evening Dominica went to bed really early.  She was worn out and not feeling great.  So just the kids and I tonight.  We did some exploring of shows on YouTube and Luciana has discovered that she loves SciShow Kids and we watched loads of it together tonight.  She loves how they present stuff and is really interested in it.  What a great find.  I’m so excited that she likes this.

Luciana and I explored lots of shows and watched Reading Rainbow together, too.  Ciana figured out that it was the guy from Star Trek and thought that that was really cool.  We watched an episode here Levar goes to Israel and learns about self driving cars.  Luciana was really interested in that and thought it was so cool.  (She would end up talking about self driving cars for months, asking how they will work and stuff like that.  She learned a lot from that episode.)

Liesl went off on her own and has been watching the original Full House episodes which are available on Netflix here.

This evening the girls and I played Secret Order: Beyond Time on Steam.  It is a hidden object adventure game with great graphics.  The girls are enjoying it.

Monday.  Starting our day without water.  Not fun.  But the handyman and the electrician both came to the house very early and worked on the pump.  Thank goodness someone is looking at it.  No water is a really big deal. We’ve had a lot of maintenance issues with this house.  Water issues, power issues, pump issues, Internet issues.  This house, while gorgeous, is not doing any favours to Italy for selling us on this being the place to which we would want to move eventually.  Spain, Greece and Romanian living experiences were far better.  But I still love the Alba region so much.  Some day I hope we get to go back there and try it out again.  It’s been half a decade already since we were last there!

We had a very busy morning.  Went to the shops, Dominica made breakfast, we took the kids to the park, and hung out for a while.  I went to Cafe Nero and got coffee for Dominica and I while we hung out with the kids.  I also got a snack of cashews from the local fruit stand and Luciana tried them and has fallen in love with them.  She stole pretty much my entire bag.  Back at the house, our fruit truck guy came by as well.

I’ve been more and more sick for a couple of weeks now and finally today we decided to talk to some people and figure out what needs to be done to see a doctor.  So we talked to the people that manage the house here and they got a friend of theirs to come and drive me up to the hospital (which also functions as a walk in clinic) to see the doctor there.  The hospital is well within walking distance, I have walked up there before.  My driver told me that Sicilians never walk, no one in the city would walk here, even people much closer.  They would always drive anywhere that they need to go.

It is a good thing that someone took me up there because it was impossible to locate the clinic inside the hospital.  You had to really know what you were doing.  Once there, the doctor did not speak English (doctors in Europe especially seem to not speak much English) so having a translator was useful, although I was able to follow most everything.  It only took five or ten minutes, tops.  I got a prescription for my usual antibiotic and we were off.  It was all free.  Italy is famous for its great healthcare.  Second only to France, worldwide.

From the hospital we just ran over to a local pharmacy and grabbed my prescription which was fast and simple.  No big deal at all.  And then back home.

Tonight I went back to the park with the kids again.  We get a bit of exercise doing this.  It’s a good walk and then I tend to walk around at the park while they are playing, so we all get exercise.  While we were out we got food to take home for dinner and got gelato while we were down there, too.  The girls are loving our playground and gelato outings.  Dominica basically never comes down, she does not enjoy the walk down or having nothing to do at the playground.  I have my phone and continue working from it while there as I pace around the playground area which works out great for getting exercise while keeping busy.

I stayed up working until quite late.  I had a “midnight snack” of a cheese sandwich at three in the morning.

Sunday.  I set up a make-shift office in the living room this morning so that I could stay productive while Dominica and I made a Netflix morning of it.

My favourite post of the day…

This morning Dominica realized that our Schengen visas will be up in just two weeks!  The pressure is on now to get everything lined up for our flights, apartment, and such.  A lot to do in a short bit of time.

We are up to season five of Star Trek: The Next Generation which we have been watching for most of our television time for a while.  Dominica can’t make it through shows that I also enjoy straight through, though, we always have to break them up.  Which is a bit odd because when she doesn’t watch with me she pretty much only binge watches, beginning to end, any show that she is going to watch.

To shake it up, we started watching Star Trek: Enterprise which we have never gotten into before.  We gave it a bit of a chance and are starting to like it.

I have been watching a lot of PBS Space Time, as well.

The kids came into the living room and played puppets today.  They are so funny.

Liesl and Luciana played Twin Saga today on Steam.

I took the kids out to the playground again today.  They had had so much fun there yesterday.

Tonight our water ran out.  That’s not good.  We’ve not been using very much and now we have none.  None at all.  So now we are in a little bit of a panic.

Coming back from our walk outside, Luciana noticed a scorpion in our doorway as we entered the house!  Our first scorpion since Nicaragua at San Juan del Sur.  Not good.  I was able to kill it really quickly, luckily.

I did a bit of research around the house tonight and discovered that we did not actually run out of water, but instead our pump that powers the house has burned out.  Wonderful.  We really hope that they can address this tomorrow.

Saturday.  The breaker flipped in the apartment this morning, probably when the fridge’s condenser kicked on or something, and it cut off power to the entire house.  That means that my CPAP turned off and I woke up to being choked by the CPAP.  Not a good way to wake up, far worse than a normal alarm clock (and a lot more dangerous.)

I got up since there was little choice and got to work.  That made it an early day, a few hours before I normally would have gotten up on my own.

This evening I took the girls to the playground because we were hoping to find the inflatable slides and jump house available (they are always there but are deflated much of the time.)  Because we have moved into the shoulder season, they are up in the evenings now on busy nights.  Saturday night is perfect.

We were very happy to find that they were there and so the girls spent every moment that they could on them.  These inflatable bounce houses are definitely the highlight of Sicily for our girls.  It’s the simple things in life.

After the bouncy castle was deflated and put away, Liesl and Luciana went and did the normal playing on the playground and made a bunch of new, local friends.  They had an awesome evening playing all together there.  They are so happy to have friends now.  Sadly, we are leaving so soon, they will be lucky if they get to see them again.

We played until all of their friends had to go home for the evening.  Then I took the girls out for ice cream at the gelato stand near the playground.  It was an awesome evening of hanging out with the kids.  One of their best days in Noto.

Once we walked back to the house, the girls played for a while on their own and Dominica and I watched some Netflix.  Not for long, though, as it was pretty late.

Tonight was more reading of The Bobbsey Twins at bed time.  The girls are really getting into me reading to them at night and are liking this old turn of the [last] century stuff.  We read a bit of Nancy Drew before getting into this series.