Italian rubber rings, the tamest graffiti and tiny pants.

Happy New Year all!

Dear lord, it's 2012. And I still think of the 90's of not being that long ago. Ha ha.

Well I had the pleasure of spending New Year in Italy with A and his family, which was awesome. I ate far too much, watched a slightly terrible film, watched some fireworks and played on an arcade Sonic the Hedgehog game until the wee hours.

I did come back with something though. Something I didn't arrive with. The Italian rubber ring. It pretty much comes as standard once you leave that place. You wear it under your clothes and it contains all the lasagne, gnocci, tigelle, rustica, pasta and gelato that you really shouldn't have eaten, but you did anyway 'cause you thought 'Fuck it. It's Christmas and I'm in Italy.' But sadly it does make jeans a little harder to fasten and causes cardigans and coats to gape a little at the buttons. Oooops.

Get your rock sugar, get your rock sugar baby.
A certain randomness befell us as we headed for a hot chocolate in Modena. The brown sugar packets all had old school rock bands on them. It was weird. I had a metaliica/ACDC sugar in mine and then took a couple more as souvenirs (sad, I know). They had The Sex Pistols, Thin Lizzy and The Ramones.

And now for the tamest graffiti ever:
It essentially read, pasta again? and had a love heart after it.
Only in Italy........... Ha ha
I couldn't decide if they were anti-pasta or just complaining a bit or I dunno, maybe they were being ironic. Still in the grand scheme of things, it was the tamest graffiti I've ever seen.

And now for a little complaint about the lack of winter weather. And I realise most people were rejoicing at this, but 12 degrees at New Year, in Italy and barely any snow on the mountains. That's darn right scary. And disappointing for those intending to ski. We had glorious sunshine and amazingly blue skies and whilst hats, gloves and scarves had to be worn, it was just so mild. I miss snow, especially at Christmas time.

And finally, there were some slightly tiny pants, thus the title. I won't go too much into it, but I will say this......They were a little tinier than I would normally go for and were slightly uncomfortable. But still I wore my new red panties on new year and so according to Italian legends (or those of the L family), I should have good luck for the year. I bloody hope so. They did ride up a little, into places they shouldn't. Ha ha. My word, I think I shared too much. Ah well. Don't be such prudes........

Happy Tuesday.
I hope those first days back at work weren't too bad. Mine was fine, still a few kids on holiday. Whoop!
If only every day we could just have 15 kids. My world would be such a nicer place.

Anyhoo, toodle-oo.

Helen