Day 5: House guests are still breathing,

so I give myself an above average rating . . but feel free to disagree. . . 

Oh man. Today Kim and I got up early so that we could hit the closed Bank and the ortofrutta where we bought out almost all of their selection of marmelades and truffle oils. F came by and picked up the bags; they were that heavy. Next we went to the shoe store where we had great success, that one next door to Giusti bakery called Cafe Noir followed by Guess and ProMod, twice: we had to because the jeans from Guess had a gem stone missing and so one of the salesgirls ran it to a jeweler to have it fixed for Kim. It was two trips back to ProMod where the windows make things look better than they are so of course we had to exchange because they don't give refunds in Lucca.  At the chocolate store there was a present waiting for Kim and Savana from Benedetta at Chocolat, the store with the  always whimsical window displays. Naturally we went shoe shopping for Kim's husband Donald and toy shopping for her son Donald and we went jeans shopping for Savana and we found her a pocketbook and a belt.  (Well, she needed to have something to coordinate with the jeans.)  We also went to Delicatezze to get picnic food for tomorrow, but they were closed so we went back to Cacioteca to get cheese because Savana loves gorgonzola, but on the way we found a jeweller who claims he can duplicate the kunzite ring surrounded by diamonds that Kim wanted in NY, but that got sold out from under her. And he can have it to her by Monday night. We'll see. We also bought out a food store with a cute motherly lady who kept asking if we were a posto, but we never were because Kim has grand ideas for this picnic and she is not to be messed with when she has a grand idea.

We made three desserts and ate them!

Two people with seemingly nothing in common who found out they had tons of things in common.

I can only speak one language at a time, but smiling is universal!

  Meanwhile Greta, T and Savana went home after a little shopping because they had somehow gotten F to agree to let them bake three separate cakes. He was already baking bread for the party and it was so hot in the house at the end of the day that Kim refused to come inside and generously offered to take all girl people out to eat. The cakes came in handy for my non-profit meeting for people interested in alternative healing and energy work.  Almost everyone who was there last month cancelled on me today for a delightful array of excuses that I will have to remember the next time I need one.  The real reason was it was too darn hot today.  I know that. Kim knows that. The waiter who served Kim her Bloody Mary knows that.  But at the energy party, as we call it around here, we had Laura, the erborista, Angelo, the bar owner who wants to teach meditation, and Rebecca Cherry who specializes in Akashic readings whereby you give her your name and a specific question that does not need a yes or no answer and she gives you a response that is written from the source of all knowledge of the universe. That is cool, but what is cooler is that she brought her 14 year old son who plays American football and looks like a cross between all the vampire boys and Michelangelo's David to judge the desserts the girls made, play catch with them out in the piazza, and then be willingly put to task on his facebook page with the pictures these scoundrelesses took of him on a pink bicycle. Don't ask. I am still the mother of the year just because he was at my house.

There was a mind numbing time before Anglelo arrived where every half sentence I said I had to say in two languages because Laura doesn't speak English and Rebecca doesn't speak Italian.  For a while they were both glaring at me, but at the end of the night Kim made everyone laugh and it turned out that Laura is paying Rebecca to do a reading for her.