A day to relax

Nov. 28th Wednesday

I started my day off with walking down to the bus stop at 6 a.m. with Andrea.  She was taking the bus to the train station.   I've always felt like she needed some mothering during most of her time here.  She's only been here 2 weeks and worked all of I think 5 full 5 1/2 hr. shifts because of the weather.  She really has no idea what really hard work is on an olive farm.  Yet she complained A LOT!
I mentioned a while back about the "fly lures" hanging in each olive tree.  They are plastic bottles, like liter size soda bottles half filled with sardine stuff.  It smells really bad and if you're working on a tree and the wind is just right, the smell is almost unbearable.  And they have dead flies floating in it.  Well, Andrea liked to play word games.  One was; If you had to either drink one of those bottles or work every day at this olive harvest for one year, what would you do?  She actually chose to drink one of the sardine bottles.
So anyway, the bus to the train station was 10 min. late.  It was supposed to be there at 6:25 and the train to Rome was leaving at 6:45.  Don't know if she made it.  She'll email me when she gets to Rome.
So I went to work with Gianni and Franco.  It's just the 3 of us now.  We got a real lot done in the 2 hours before it started to POUR!!  And the wind got real strong and there was thunder.  So we all high-tailed it out of there, soaked and very dirty.  The wind hasn't stopped yet and it's almost 6 p.m.
I got a fire in the fireplace and music videos on the tv.  Andrea found the station that plays music videos non-stop.  No commercials.  Up until she came I never turned the tv on.  It's nice having music and I know all the songs.  They're from the 60's, 70's and 80's.
I've started making a picture collection of PIAGGIOS.  They're usually 3-wheeled little vehicles.  Some bigger ones have 4 wheels.  But they're actually just a scooter(Vespa) enclosed with a little pickup back.  And they're everywhere.  Gianni pronounces it as PEEKIO.  Since I am in olive country here, all of our neighbors out towards the sea are just starting to sweep the olives.  That is what conventional farmers do to get their olives up off the ground and to the oil factory.  Up until this week, I never saw anyone else out there collecting olives from their trees.  And PEEKIOS are a part of most every farm.  So I see more of them now than ever.  I saw one on the AutoStrada a few weeks ago going to Bari.  It was in the very right hand lane going, I'm guessing about 40 m.p.h. or less.
For the first time since I've been here, Gianni said "tomorrow, you relax".  I have a whole day off during the week!  And busses are frequent to many little towns.  I just have to pick one and explore.

Why do I hear gun shots almost every night?
The big orange and white Tom Cat came to see me today.  Full of conversation-purring-kneading.  Beautiful, beautiful cat.  Definitely not wild and not hungry.