Fall's Big Storm...

Archive post November 1, 2018…

I don’t trust the Italian weather-people on TV. Some, from Mars, supposedly, wear uniforms. Aeronautical. Others, still from Mars or thereabouts, wear blue jackets way too short. They never button them either. So ignorant of THE LAW to don a jacket standing before the public. Untrustworthy. As for those persons from Venus, either the do their weather-map ballet in way too skimpy & tight dresses in TEAL or turn & twist in blown away looking nylon blouses matched with a straight skirt and clunky flats. I do rather like one weather-Venus on Canale 5 who sashays in short tight dark jeans with precipitously high heels. Nice flanks when she turns to look at the monitor. No marks for any of their prognostications.

I regularly surf three weather Internet sites here in Italy: meteo.it, meteoapuane.it and meteowebcam.it. Mid-stream though last week, just when You said he was goin ’to com’ on down to Codiponte, I checked the weather report. One showed end-of-world rain the entire weekend and then some. Cannot recall which. Another’s map was full of multi-drop rain icons for Sunday night, Monday morning. The rest rain would be basically AWOL. The last gave a midland probability of much needed… desperately… needed H2O but spotty coverage. Typical expose’. On the day of You’s arrival, I gave another look-see. All three had gotten onto the same program. Dire rain from now until the following weekend. RED & ORANGE ALARMS from the authorities over at the Italian Civil Defence facilities. Wow. You and I and the dogs can nap the entire weekend. Maybe.

Took all of Saturday for the storm to get cranking. Went out to dinner with You to a local cooking/styling conclave in a light rain but buxom winds. The later was a hint. Got home with the help of the gathering winds… tail-winds are always appreciated… packed everyone and the dogs off to bed and promptly conked out from too much American accented Italian cooking. Heavy Chevy. Right about 2:30AM… KA-KA-KABOOM kracked over-head and it did until an hour past the Fall back sunrise. Got up and made myself a caffe’. The dogs ate and then wanted to immediately go out. But, it’s RAINING, animals!!! Can’t you hold it? No. Their rain jackets fluttered & flapped. The two were drenched in 17 seconds flat. Unhappy. You dashed from his unattached BR and into the Kitchen only to growl… semi-politely… that he did not get much sleep during the tempest. None of these personalities asked how my night was. They only wanted to be consoled and to commiserate on a very adverse Sunday morning.

You went back to Genoa post-haste. The dogs moved from club-chair to sofa to the floor, showing no interest to go bounce with the liquid Mother Nature outside. I read and then watched Robin Hood for the nth time. Got fed up with King John… that over-sexed creep… so, I went back to slog through a book published by Edith Wharton in 1903 about Italian Villas and Gardens. She admitted to an error in the order of the title because, in her opinion, gardens make the villa and not the other way around. The classic Italian gardens also did not need the quantities of water like those later laid out in The English Fashion. With grass. Seemed an appropriate tome to consume… or, at least calming… whilst it truly began to storm outside. I had to put the book down. Could not concentrate what with all the whistling, crashing, screeching noises of the winds propelling the rain horizontally against trees, houses, windows, doors. I found myself the physical and moral support of two extremely worried Weimaraners on one single bed width sofa in the Casa Grande’s main salotto. The gale howled for a couple more hours in between rapid fire lightning flashed overhead and thunder rocked our ears below, huddled as we were. At some point during the 5th hour, the electricity blinked, blinked again, blinked a third time and then went out. Damn. The flashlight? Found that after bumping parts of my body from waist -ine down to retrieve it out on the Loggia. Candles? Oh, yes, You’s Reserve DOC of IKEA lanterns and bulky candles in the Stanza dei Tini. Matches? Matches?? MATCHES??? Found a small cache in a spinster-esque porcelain jar in You’s BR. What does he do with them? One of his flea-market treasures. Small as in 3 dinky matches. Being weak-minded in Emergencies, I am amazed at the presence of mind I showed to light first a candle and then light the others from one measly candle. NORMALLY, I would have gone on and used up what at the critical time was A Very Vital Resource!!!

Then True Storm & Disaster Danger struck. Laptop exhausted from its video labors. Ditto… damn-it… for the beleaguered iPhone. Could have thought about that before I sent those 521 Whatsapp messages to loved ones in distant and out-of-danger lands. No lights to read by. And the worse was the flashlight shut-down and only to be resurrected after 3 hours of being re-charged, if the electricity would deign to return to do its appointed job. No way man. Not until 2PM the following day would it be restored. I was out with the dogs surveying damage in the garden when I heard an alarm sound. Spied from my heights that the Scuzzy bar had lights, the antipatica signora in the Swiss chalet house had a light… could it be? Yes, it could. ELECTRICITY!!! Praise the Heavens. Not those which launch wind and some horizontal rain but, he who governs all. The weather-persons, not.