A message from Judy this morning....."....Plummer (sic) is set for next week so you will be able to pee at last in the house..." Who knew that the word "pee" was capable of making my heart skip a beat! Judy is the harbinger of news that alternately causes me extreme agita or total elation. This update is, I am delighted to say, one that brings the latter. In nearly eight years of ownership, the closest I've come to waste elimination on my property was a clandestine episode, an emergency, when I slipped into the subterranean entry way of the smallest house and dropped my drawers. No further details necessary! To know that I actually have a toilet and a functioning shower mechanism is absolutely thrilling.



Judy is my alter-ego in Italy, a dyed-in-the-wool, no-nonsense New Yorker, who can turn a full page to-do list into an "All-Done" list in a matter of hours. Or so it seems. Her better half is Fausto, a native Umbrian of mild temperament, good humour and an endless network of skilled laborers and artisans who he can call upon to help in the reconstruction of my house. He is honest and hard working and while he is retired from the Italian phone company, his days are filled with freelance assignments that help bolster his modest pension.

July 4th weekend is days away and I leave for Italy exactly on the holiday. If you are looking for a half-empty transatlantic flight so you can stretch out on two seats, travel on a holiday. It's only the day before and day after a holiday that are big travel days. Trying to wrap up things at work is excruciating. It's the end of the fiscal year, a time of frantic accounting and lots of activity before everyone settles into their vacations.

A quick phone call with Judy on Skype yesterday. The kitchen countertop is finally in place, after Fausto waited five hours for the installation team. The garden is clear of all debris. I am hopeful of mild warm weather, little or no rain and the opportunity to relax and enjoy my house in the first warm-weather trip I've made in a while. The beds will be delivered at some point during my trip, and I need only purchase pillows and linens in order to spend my first night there. As usual, I throw open a suitcase or two a week before leaving and fill it with a little bit more every day. I look for things that I can leave there, clothing, small appliances, a personal thing or two to add warmth. This trip has come up so quickly, just as the pace of my life in New York has accelerated in recent weeks.

I look forward to the lazy, food-filled afternoons of Italy and I feel myself giving in to the magnetic pull of my little casetta.

Beginnings

Umbrianista....a female inhabitant of what is called the "green heart of Italy". As a part-time resident, visiting for now only once or twice a year, I have hardly earned the name. But I am doing my very best to remedy that by spending more and more time in my favorite country and putting down roots in the garden of my miniature compound atop Monte Peglia on the outskirts of historical Todi. Le Caselle is the tiny borgo of five or six stone houses and only one family in permanent residence. My vicini - the Italian word for neighbors - are the real deal, having lived off the land for a generation. I, on the other hand, am a curiosity - a single American woman, a New Yorker, no less, who purchased a package of three modest crumbling houses on a large giardino from which one can see in the distance, the misty silhouette of Santa Maria della Consolazione, the famous round church that distinguishes Todi from the surrounding hill towns.

Le Caselle lies in Quadro, a frazione of Todi; a rural spoke on Todi's bustling wheel. Quadro consists of the narrow road that leads to Le Caselle, along which a rag-tag community of elderly Italians and new immigrants from Muslim countries make their homes. There is, in addition, a circolo, or community recreational center where locals gather to play cards, socialize, gossip and have a hearty meal in the downstairs cantina/restaurant. I am certain that I am discussed if not regularly, then from time to time, most likely in the context of being an American of some means, and thereby the source of potential income via the restoration of my house. Across the way there used to be a Tabacchi that was owned by an elegant elderly couple, who must have passed away since it was closed and boarded up last time I was there.

Ascending the serpentine road leading up Monte Peglia one gets an increasingly broad and dramatic view of the landscape. Vineyards, olive groves, restored villas and new construction, open fields, luxurious driveways lined with cypress trees. It's a fantasy of the Italian countryside; the sort of thing you see in films and glossy magazines, come to intoxicating life. It all makes you pine for fresh figs, oilve oil and umbrian bread, and one cannot help savoring the lushness of it all as you climb towards what is certainly heaven or Xanadu or whatever one calls that perfect place of tranquility.

Le Caselle has a welcoming committee of three mangy canines - Bruto, Piubruto, and Brutissimo (Ugly, Uglier and Ugliest). Straining against metal chains, their barks like bullets in an echo chamber, their matted coats and filthy faces warning of fearless attack capabilities, this security team ensures that no one enters the borgo undetected. For this, I suppose, I should be thankful, but I can't help imagining waking each day to an alarm clock of yelping, barking and croaking (from the rooster in my neighbor's chicken coop. ) Not having spent a night there yet, I am filled with fear about having made the most foolish purchase in Italy's long history of selling off ruins to foreigners. But another part of me can't wait to throw open the shutters and breathe in the in the bright mediterranean sun on that first morning, just like the English ladies of that delightful film "Enchanted April", who, having arrived in the Italian countryside the night before in a depressing rainstorm, found a burst of glorious light waiting outside their window when they awoke. Reality will probably fall somewhere between the two scenarios, so I resolve to be prepared for either Nirvana or murder.