**Blogger has set up some new-fangled photo installation program that is dfbwfbqBULLSHITsdfjhhq and i cannot make it work properly.  Consequently, the photos on this blog (and the last) are arranged stupidly.  I have given up trying to right the obvious wrongs in order to just write and lessen the chances of becoming so frustrated that i launch my laptop across the room into the wall.  sorry for the confusion.  When my blood pressure returns to normal i will write a patient but strongly worded letter to the haughty, python-speaking people at Google asking why they have to make things so damned technical and complicated for the rest of us. 


Is 11am on Sunday morning and I am snuggled in bed, eating bon bons (seriously) and listening to the Church bells toll for the 4th time today.  I am being a bad, lazy girlfriend, but I figured that as long as I blog then I can write the morning off as productive.  FL is over at Bosc di Sot working hard to bring order to the chaos that has befallen our beautiful home.

Our beautiful home!  Oh readers, we were so naive, so eager, so young and in love!  When the papers came through and Bosc di Sot was finally ours we rushed with abandon into our new home, ignoring the strange smells and bubbling floors and rust that poured out of the water pipes, blind to the scary collapsing shower and sagging ceiling and lights that wouldn't turn on.  We had a home!  A kitchen!  We just wanted to cook and paint and make love and plant flowers in the frigid, November garden.  I lined the sticky kitchen counters with cookbooks, hung the 5lb sparkle shirt from a pre-existing nail on the wall, and lit a fire in our gorgeous fireplace.  Smoke poured back into the living room and choking, laughing, playfully we opened doors and windows.  The house was ours, and regardless of whether or not we could breath or had to wear three pairs of socks to keep warm, we were happy.

FL's father came over last Wednesday to have a look around.

"Puttana!" he exclaimed.  This was not a good sign.

Examining the house, he began to point out the obvious flaws, the ones that we thought could be lived with and dealt with from the inside.  The walls, under the coat of dirty white wash, we covered in mold.  He pulled back the ugly wooden paneling in the living room, found the walls there to be decaying, in places black and crumbled.  The removal of the ugly wood paneling led to the destruction of the ugly faux-brick linoleum on the floor, leaving only bare cement.  A removal of the tacky, filthy ceiling lights left only bare bulbs and faulty wiring.  The entire house would have to be re-wired, he said, which would involve getting inside the walls.  The water pipes were rusted and the shower was nothing short of scary, the entire bathroom in need of new tiles. 

"Pack your shit up," he said, in his gruff yet humorous way.  "We're gonna have to start from the beginning".

And so our home has turned into a construction zone.  As I write, from the comfortable (now) "guest apartment" of Mr. and Mrs. Cecot', FL is over at Bosc di Sot knocking holes in the brick and cementing in new outlets and wires.  Yesterday, when I wasn't sitting indian style on the floor gazing lovingly at him while he worked (my god, he is beautiful, all muscly and manly and he can do and fix anything!), I spent the day removing layer upon layer of paint, stucco, and mold from the walls of the bedrooms with bleach.  Thursday and Friday I worked there by myself while FL was at work, cleaning like a mad woman and removing debris, pulling up flooring and scrubbing the fireplace, removing countless nails and screws and changing the glass in the windows (FL helped me with this), and trimming the garden which had grown wild during these past weeks of constant rain.  It is going to be a time now before the house is actually habitable, but it is all for the better.  When it is done, it will be beautiful.

The house sits on a hill surrounded by a tiny forest, a little ways away from the bigger mountains that protect Cormons.  The name Bosc di Sot is Friulian, but translates to Italian as "bosco" (meaning "forest") di "sotto" (meaning "under").  This little forest is at the edge of a tiny national park on one side, and private vineyards and valleys all around the other side.  We drive up a windy, steep road to the top of the hill, and there sits the house.  The front of the house faces west, but that hardly matters: there is nothing to see but a wall of trees and brush.  It is the view from the side facing north- where on a clear day in the winter when the leaves are gone one can see Mt. Quarin and glowing Cormons- and east which is killer.  From our upstairs bathroom window, which faces out the back of the house, we see first the garden down below.  It is lush and rambling, full of fruit trees, tiny overgrown paths and wild bushes of herbs.  Up from the garden there is a hedge of huge pines, and above that, the view goes on forever.  First, tiny towns, their church steeples and the roofs of houses, rolling hills and patches of vineyards.  This earthly world gives way to darker mountains, first those of Italy, and then those in Slovenia.  They are blue and black and fog hangs over them, they are infinite.  I like to play a little game called "how many castles can I see from my bathroom window"?  Sometimes 3, sometimes more.  They are illuminated on the mountains at night, their spires poking up from towns closer by. 

On the side of the house there is a canopy of grape vines, hanging over a table and chairs (currently nasty cement, we will have to find something more comfortable), a perfect place for summer meals.  The garage and what is to be my writing studio are detached, a red tile-roofed building unto itself.  Underneath there is a giant room full of wood for the fire, old tools and furniture that i just cannot wait to get my hands on to refinish.  There is a wooden gate to the side door of the house, a pretty little area with potted plants and a tiny porch.  The side door leads to the kitchen, which is small and desperately in need of updating and new cabinetry, but cozy.  It has a window looking out over the garden.  We are blessed to have a cast iron stove and a new oven, but the refrigerator is a disaster.  Curved brick doorways lead to the other downstairs rooms, and the fireplace presides over the main entry hall, which will be our dining room.  Classy marble stairs lead to the second floor, where there is the bathroom, too small and in need of remodeling, and two bedrooms.  Our bedroom is at the end of the hall, and it is perfect.  Old creaky wood floors and huge windows that open wide, it is small and cozy.

After all of our work yesterday, our reward was a trip to Ikea- where we bought a little chandelier for the bedroom and some other odds and ends- and dinner at Giat Neri, our favorite romantic date night destination.  On the way home, FL remembered that Gradisca, a town nearby, was having it's annual Chocofest, a festival of chocolate (duh).  For about an hour we wandered about, drinking vin brulee (red wine brewed with spices) and sampling truffles, until our eyes were closing on our own accord and sleep was the greatest idea that we could come up with for how to spend the rest of our Saturday night.  At home, we put on Four Weddings and a Funeral, and FL was snoring before Andie McDowell and Hugh Grant met up at their pub with "Boat" in the title.  It was 10:30pm.

I'll try to take and post pictures during this remodeling process, though this is contingent on blogger's photo system cooperating.