IT'S GETTING COOLER!

OCTOBER 19, 2003

Although this is sunny Italy, we are not far enough south to avoid the change of seasons. The nights have gotten cooler, and while the sun feels warm during the day, it’s cool in the shade. It’s even cooler in our house, which at the moment is without central heating. Construction is much different here in Italy. The walls of our house are solid, not frame construction. There is no insulation in the walls, and I’m not sure what is in the attic, or even if there is an attic. The nice thing about having walls two feet think is that you don’t hear any creaking and settling at night, and even the most severe winds go unnoticed. The bad thing about this type of construction is that once the house gets cold, it STAYS cold!

We are hopeful that the work will start tomorrow on the kitchen floor. It will be torn up, new pipes and lines laid, and then the new caldaio will be installed. The caldaio will supply the hot water for our radiators. Since I’ve never lived with radiators before, I’m not sure what to expect.

For now, we have borrowed a portable electric heater from a friend, and are keeping the door to the living room closed while it’s on. I always wondered why houses in Europe had a door to every room. Now I guess I know the answer…it’s to keep the heat where you want it, and to save on heating costs. In the bedroom, we are extremely glad that we bought the heated mattress pad! Without it, someone would have found us frozen in our sleep by now. Our room will definitely be the coolest room in the house, and the radiator is way over by the door, not nearly close enough to the bed for me! We don’t think we can risk having the mattress pad AND the heater on at the same time, but Art has suggested that once we warm up the bed, we move the heater into the bedroom and turn it on low. He says his head, and whatever part of his arm is sticking out of the bed, are freezing. I guess I’m lucky to have a little more hair, and shorter arms!

We expect the climate here to be similar to that of northern Georgia. The summers will still be hot and humid, and we are hoping that we get some nice breezes up on this ridge. As for the winters, we don’t expect the temperature to be as cold for as long as it was in Louisville, and we definitely expect snow to be extremely rare. We may see some snow on the higher mountains, but hope that we don’t experience much of it here!