This Week on the Corner of Missoni and Gucci

It has been a very diverse sort of week; lots of fun times with the kids, some good nights out with the girls, american food, some great runs, beautiful sunshine, museum hopping – a little short on the job hunting end of things, but I won’t be complaining about that becasue…

I survived my first cold call speaking only Italian! Of course I’m pretty sure I have no idea what the outcome of our conversation was, but the fact that I called knowing the man spoke almost no English gives me the warm fuzzies in my tummy.  At the time it gave me a whole ton of butterflies hyped up on sugar, but he was very nice and I don’t think I embarrassed myself to greatly.  He said something about the next Monday morning, so maybe I should just show up tomorrow at some point? We shall see.  It’s nothing too important because the firm only works with product design and has no overlapping computer programs, but it would just be another good experience to get in and talk with people about the design world of Milan.

The kids were a bit rambunctious this week.  I think perhaps the sunshine was a factor, and knowing that it probably won’t show it’s beautiful shining face for another few months led us all to get a bit wild and crazy.

Monday afternoon found Alberta out on the balcony overlooking Via Bagutta interacting with pedestrians and resident shop keepers.  She would whistle out the window and then hide, thoroughly confusing a man standing in the corner of his shop window.  Alfonso and I would watch from a different window and report to Alberta what the man was doing, mostly just jerking his head around and staring at the sky searching for the mysterious whistling bird.  We were all amused with this game for about 20 minutes.  The man on the other hand probably got really tired of it after five…but no we did NOT stop!

Next Alberta started barking at dogs taking potty breaks by our front door.  She finally found a common language with a yappy Terrier and they proceeded to converse back and forth.  Unfortunately for the dog, his owners did not find the loud conversation suitable for such a high-end street, and every time he barked he would be yanked up off the ground and shushed.  But he would literally bark back every time Alberta barked, so his owners got quite the hamstring workout.  We on the other hand had sore abs from laughing so hard at their attempts to quiet the social dog.

Also viewed from the balcony this week was a minor accident between an old man and a moving vehicle, I really need to spend more time out there!  I invited Paula over for a breakfast (seeing as her family sometimes forgets to purchase food for days on end) and we enjoyed a lovely veggie omelet  together.

After eating we were simply looking around on the street from the balcony when we witnessed a car back down the street hit an elderly man, knock him to the ground, and apparently from the yells we heard, incur some damage on his leg.  While I don’t fully believe that much pain was felt, the inhabitants of the street were all a flurry running back and forth, calling the ambulance, and fetching the man’s wife from a shop farther down the street.  The man remained sitting on the ground holding his leg, until about ten minutes later an ambulance came and carted him off on a stretcher, presumably to the hospital.  I may have giggled an inappropriate amount from our safe perch above all the commotion.  Italians can be ever so dramatic.  Exciting times on Via Bagutta!

Breakfasts were a popular food choice this week, but surprisingly enough, most of the breakfast I had were for dinner!  On Thursday we had fried eggs as our second course at dinner (obviamente Alfonso ate his raw from the shell).  Friday the Au Pair girls planned a pancake feast at Jessie’s house way out in Bollate.  Seeing as I had made the trek before, I thought Caroline and I would have the trip in the bag.  No such luck, we took a train in an entirely wrong direction, had to backtrack and try again resulting in a two hour adventure to make it to the said pancake feast.  And since I was packing the necessary frying pan, eggs, and milk, there were no warm pancakes waiting our arrival.  Long journey aside, I was in my element frying up pancakes for friends! Where I always want to be; laughing, putting random things in pancakes, and eating like food is going out of style.  There were chocolate pancakes, apple pancakes, banana pancakes, strawberries, yogurt, hand-whipped cream.  We even had maple syrup from Costco that Caroline packed all the way to Italy in her luggage.  As crazy as that idea of her’s was, I couldn’t have been more glad that she did.

When I arrived home for dinner on Saturday, I learned that the kids had gone out for the night to a Scout event meaning it was just Francesca, Maurizio, and I for dinner.  I was a little nervous that I was intruding on their one night to spend together in peace, but once Francesca told me pancakes were on the menu I didn’t give those worries a second thought.  I love pancakes. I love them so much.  These pancakes were still good even though they were gluten free and more like crepes to me.  I also love crepes.

Because I may be converting my diet to consist of predominantly starchy pancakes, I have been working hard in my running.  On Tuesday Max and I did some interval training in Parco Sempione.  Had I known this was on the schedule, I am positive I would not have shown up.  I enjoy running, but when running is extremely difficult it’s not on the top of my ‘favorite things’ list.  It turned out to be not that bad, and I really enjoyed having someone there to help push me to my limits.  Because our schedules didn’t coincide for Thursday, I had strict instructions to continue speed training on my own to get me prepared for the race this Sunday.  I may have lollygagged around for a bit on my solo run Thursday, but after I plugged in some bumping tunes from 2002 I found a brisk pace and even did some sprints up a tiny hill I found.  Alberta and I did some HITT workout moves on Wednesday to get some heat to the abs and arms (watching Alberta try to do exercises is deserving of it’s own video, btw) and Thursday also saw some time on the dance floor.  If you’re not sore after a night of dancing, you didn’t really dance, is my personal belief.  I may have spent a little too much time on the dance floor, because for the race this morning my feet were still in a bit of pain.  Perhaps I will leave the heels for the Italian women, since they don’t seem to react kindly with my feet.

Preparing for my early morning race rendezvous with Max I went to bed early, and ended up waking before anyone in the house.  This was definitely a first for me.  Finding the air freezing at 8:30 am, I was pleasantly surprised to find Max drive up in a car, instead of the aforementioned Thai scooter.  Score for Maria! Because we were so darn early to the race, even after stopping for a coffee, our race warm up consisted of a 30 minute jog to the top of the only hill in Milano, Monte Stella.

 (Later Francesca told me this ‘hill’ is actually a pile of rubble from the destruction of WWII with grass growing on top, and some planted trees.  It created an impressive view none the less.)  I’m not one to warm up for extended periods of time before a race, maybe a few legs swings and jumping around, but with the cold wind and hiding sun, the course of action was alright by me.  We just made sure to stick with a slow pace to ensure fresh legs for the actual competition.  Before running, Max asked how I wanted to run today.  I told him ‘really fast!’ He replied, “Oh, then you will run alone.  But if you finish in under 45 minutes I will buy you two beers, under 50 minutes I will buy you three beers.”  Lets analyze.  I understand that a rewards system is a typical way of encouragement and motivation, but should alcohol rewards really be mixed with athletic achievements? Also, did I miss something? Three beers for a worse performance? Well I’m no fool and I like my beer, so I ran my 10K in 46:30 leading to a pace of 7:30 min/mile.  It was a very crowded race, full of extremely competitive runners but I enjoyed the course and was very pleased with my time because I took off five minutes from the last 10K I participated in.

In closing, Alfonso fell off his chair this evening at dinner, landing hard on his bottom.  When Francesca bent down to help him up and ask if he was hurt Alfonso squished up his face and pushed a fart out.  All systems go, I’d say.