Thursday 12 May

Wednesday morning I managed to get a picture of Noni in the morning, when she was at the knitting and  church phase or her 2 hour morning routine. She follows the same routine she has followed for years, prayers with coffees do cookies  at the table, mass on TV while knitting, then back to table for bigger breakfast, bigger than cookies that is, could be anything from peanut butter on toast to something left over in fridge. The rest of the day was dominated by cleaning out more drawers, sewing some small things for Noni and waiting for the plumber. There are many plumbing issues in the house right now. Just about everything in the top bathroom is leaking. We have been trying to get a plumber here since the day after gramps came home from the hospital. Lots of tension around which plumber is called. mom and Dad always want to call Minnucciani first which in years past resulted in Julio who is their friend and knows all the old houses. In recent years Julio may come but the work is done by His son Jimmy who is not the plumber that Julio is/was. Anyone who has visited this house in the past 10 years has experienced the faucets that turn in the opposite direction that one would expect...Jimmys work and there are other anomalies that all track back to a visit from Jimmy. So the Martinellis push for the other respectBle plumbing mob, Southwood plumbing, while Mom and Dad feel obliged to start with Minnuccianis, and so it goes around. 

The first week I was here Noni sent me down to the hardware store (the first time I got to leave the house on my own) to look for the simple replaceable mechanism to see if we could at least fix the toilet leak which was significant and had to be tinkered with anytime someone flushed. GReg had a go at installing but it took some bending and jiggling to get in so fix was not enough to stop leak. So getting plumber here was still a priority, especially after the water bill arrived a few days ago, 5 times more than the normal bill of approx $35 a month. Southwood plumbing is coming this morning at 10 and of course our bodgy repair has somehow settled in the the toilet is quiet. But there are many other leaks both upstairs and downstairs and there is a new water saving toilet from the city which needs to be installed somewhere. 

I am still working through the sewing room finding treasures here and there and some half finished small sewing projects. Where these have some use in the new place, I am finishing them. Otherwise I am just putting things in families. Still finding screwdrivers so I may have to rephotograph that family. My most recent find was curlers from a range of years, there must be more curlers lurking around but here is a sample. 

Gramps has moved onto general drawers that go beyond his papers. He is really on a mission and yesterday he kept calling someone over to check some find or confer on keeping or tossing, so we all ended up over there pouring over finds. See a couple of photos of la famiglia with stuff everywhere, thanks to the mirror you can see me too in this one. I can't believe how many things they have saved, there is even an off aerogramme from our years on Evescourt road.  But in his enthusiasm yesterday he threw away some mail that had come that day, when he could not find it we had to dive into the throw always to rescue it.

Today is Lucca's birthday and so the first of two parties was on at their fVourite pizza place. Mom and dad were happy to be on their own so Linda came and got me. They were still up watching the end of a game when we returned.