Thankfully we actually managed to have an early night last night and were in bed by 10pm. Unheard of since we arrived here! Stuart complained of having had lots of stressy dreams in the night, but at least he was sleeping. I'm not sure if stressful dreams are any more restful than lying awake, but I hope so. Regardless, we were both woken up at around 5.30am by the unmistakable and very loud noise of Lucca... ahem... getting rid of whatever it was in his tummy that didn't seem to agree with him. About 4 times. In the cold light of day it seems like it was nothing more sinister than a fur ball or possibly some part of a lizard, but at 5.30am the noise was most unpleasant and sleep-disturbing.
Of course, that didn't stop him from coming to wake us up at 6am for his breakfast!!
After getting up to feed the cats I ended up snoozing my alarm until 7am today, at which point I went outside to throw some kettlebells around. When I came back in, Stuart was already up and breakfasted, and getting ready to head out for his day's work - reasoning that the sooner he went out, the sooner he would be able to come home. So I waved him goodbye with his packed lunch and hoped to goodness that he would manage to make it through the day, then went to have a shower.
While I had my own breakfast I checked my emails, social media etc. and decided I would give Sue a call. I dialled her number only to hear a recorded message in Italian mentioning Telecom Italia. Hmm. Seemed suspiciously like our ability to make outgoing calls had been suspended. I tried again a couple of times, but got the same message. So, as per the letter we received yesterday, Telecom Italia have suspended our telephone service (outgoing calls only) for non-payment of a bill from May that we have never seen.
We suspect that we may have accidentally handed said bill over to Michelle along with a pile of other post addressed to the previous owners on the misguided assumption that since it was nothing to do with us, we didn't need to open it and pay it...
Anyway, the non-functioning phone spurred me on to get straight onto paying the bill - the back of the letter mentioned that the bill could be paid online, so off I went to the Telecom Italia website to pay my hard-earned money over for someone else's bill. Except that when I got to the website, it turned out you have to register or log in in order to pay a bill. I typed in the codice fiscali of the previous owner (which the letter & payment slip referenced) to register on the website - but it told me that there was already an online account set up for that code, so I would need to log in. Hmm. Next, I tried (a desperate attempt admittedly) the 'I've forgotten my username/password' link - but after typing in the relevant details it wanted to know the maiden name of our predecessor's mother. Not having that information to hand, I conceded defeat and gave up. We will have to make a trip to our local post office first thing in the morning to get the bill paid.
So yet AGAIN I faced another day of being home alone, with no transport and no (outgoing) telephone communication. At least the internet was still working to keep me in touch with the outside world!
It wasn't long before Stuart messaged me on Facebook to let me know that he had arrived in the village up the valley. He'd tried to call me, but had received a message on his mobile to say he didn't have enough credit to call - and that's after topping up his credit with €15 yesterday! Thankfully the owners of the house he was working at had left their Wi-Fi on, so he was able to connect to that and send me Facebook messages instead. I can see us making the trip to go and get this alternative SIM card sooner rather than later!
After that, it was a fairly uneventful morning of solid editing work. I was pleased to hear from Stuart at around lunchtime, who said that his morning of strimming had gone better than expected and that since all the strimming was now done, he would be doing the slightly less physically exhausting task of pruning bushes for the afternoon. That was a huge relief.
I lunched at my desk as I was expecting my weekly catch-up call from Allison, which usually comes it at around 2pm Italian time (1pm Allison's lunch time). It's always so lovely to talk to Allison and catch up with office news, her news, gym news etc., almost as if we are still sitting opposite each other in the office. Thank goodness our phone was still receiving incoming calls! The time simply flies by though, and before I knew it we'd been gassing for an hour and it was time to say goodbye and for us each to get back to work.
I headed back to my office work, with just one more short break to take the washing in off the line and to go and collect the post mid-afternoon.
The time seemed to drag in the afternoon, but eventually at about 5.40pm, I heard a car roll down the drive and heard Stuart get out and greet the cats.
Turns out that despite the relatively OK morning and the relatively easier work he was tasked with for the afternoon, he'd still had a big struggle of an afternoon, falling over his tired legs on several occasions, being stung by a wasp and being bothered by horse flies. I think we're both relieved that it's the weekend so that he can get some more rest (it might be up to me to go and do some more work on Goose Island/Gooselandia this weekend and let him save his strength).
Once Stuart was home and the car unpacked, I downed my office tools for the week and we sat on the patio in the evening sunshine sharing a beer or two. The weather forecast for the weekend is a little unsettled, so I'm not sure how that will impact our plans - tomorrow we have a few errands to run though, not least of which will be paying this darned telephone bill!!
For now it's an easy dinner of scrambled egg on toast and a relax on the sofa safe in the knowledge that we don't have to get up at the crack of dawn in the morning (other than to feed the cats, clearly).
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