piano piano

Sometimes Simon posts something obscure and I go OH MY GOD, WE ARE SO FAR APART AND STILL SO CONNECTED WITH AWESOMENESS. Many times the awesomeness is bacon related and we have opposing views whether said awesomeness is actually awesome, but I digress. Last month Simon posted this and I immediately stopped drinking my hot beverage to send her this photo:
I actually found that in a cupboard at work and decided it was so weird no one else would steal it. I was right. ALL MINE. Now, to find a way to keep my fork from disappearing...

Simon begged me to post my photo here, but I have been so preoccupied with Egyptian mummies and irregular Italian verbs that I forgot-- but today I received fresh inspiration!

My wonderful neighbor has been tutoring me in Italian. Every afternoon I drag myself out of bed and up a flight of stairs to apartment 12, where Mariangela makes coffee and forces me to do terrible things like MATH. IN ITALIAN. I have to think about 3x8 in English, so doing it in a foreign language is like digging through the junk drawer of my brain and coming up with "venti quatro" ten minutes later. But she has the patience of a saint and every time I give her the blank stare of "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," she simply says "piano piano" and comes up with simpler words. Never again will I take language for granted. So today, before we started to review the words for "mole" and "kite", she brought out the espresso--

And I cannot wait for the day when I have enough Italian words to explain why I needed to photograph her coffee cups. We did learn "hedgehog" on Tuesday... perhaps I can start there.