It was sunny and cold out today (40degrees) and the Australian Open was on live. A perfect excuse to just hang out. Josh took Avery for a bike ride in to town while Olivia and I drank hot tea and watched some TV. I have no idea how Charlotte spent most of her morning, because I wasn't speaking to her.
It wasn't until after 3pm, just before Charlotte had to leave for her swim meet, that she approached me "to talk." She apologized for her behavior but it quickly became apparent she didn't really understand what she was apologizing for -- shocking as that may seem. Therefore, a much longer discussion ensued during which Charlotte questioned my parenting skills. Well, no one is perfect, least of all me; but to be continually criticized by my oldest daughter is just hurtful and unacceptable. When will this phase end? When she's an adult with a family of her own? I hope not!
In the end, we made peace. Josh and I went to the meet while Olivia and Avery stayed home with Morris. We've really gotten lucky with this AquAniene facility being just 2km from our home in Rome. Given that it is probably one of, if not the nicest aquatic facility in the country, many meets are hosted there making it convenient for both Josh and I to attend. In Chicago, our home training pool was so small, we never "hosted" meets. On the contrary, we were typically required to drive an hour or more to attend meets...where warm-up often began at 7am! Here Josh can drop Charlotte off for warm-up (which thus far have commenced at a much more civilized 3 or 4pm) and return home for an hour or so before we drive the 5 minutes back to the pool to watch the meet. This is the second meet at AquAniene and we already know there will be at least one more next month.
Charlotte only had one race today -- the 100 Breast -- and she swam her best time. She dropped two seconds off the time she swam at the AquAniene meet in December. You can't ask for more than that. Everyone was all smiles on the way home. At the same time, we were curious about the meet set-up -- it was a regional qualification meet, so fairly important for the Italian athletes. Yet, there was not an electronic timing system in place. In other words, there were no touch pads and thus, no official clock! Charlotte informed us that the touch pads "were broken." Given our experience, in such a case, one would expect to have at least two. if not three, timers per lane getting a manual time. But strangely, there were only 3 or 4 timers on deck, getting manual times for ALL 10 lanes! Very bizarre! For my own sense curiosity, I'll have to get some more clarification on how this all works -- maybe next week.
The kids were having a movie night while Josh and I were going out to meet some friends for dinner. Our friends chose a very cool, up-and-coming place. It's called Palatium. It is principally a wine bar, but there is a restaurant upstairs. Palatium serves only products from Lazio. So all the wines and all the ingredients for the restaurant are sourced locally. Both the food and the wine were really very good. While we had an 8:30pm reservation and the husband joined Josh and I shortly thereafter, his wife didn't turn up until 9:45pm due to another social engagement. I should mention, these friends are Americans, not Italians, so the disregard for punctuality becomes all the more offensive. At the same time, we probably had more fun speaking alone with the husband so it was just as well. When she did arrive, she was joined by another friend of hers, an interesting, well-travelled American woman who is a freelance journalist writing about art and architecture. In the end, we really had a pleasant evening although it was approaching midnight by the time we left for home. As we headed for our car, we climbed the Spanish Steps and walked down the road towards the Villa Borghese gazing at what I consider to be the most beautiful view over all of Rome. And, we had it all to ourselves.
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