Square 2

Well, FINALLY, after weeks of feeling like el crapo, it turns out I have one of the usual intestinal parasites that fly around, and in two days I will have finished with the ghastly medication.  The good news was that I felt well enough to hit the park today, thanks be to the Force.  I may be beginning yet again, but at least I am not at square one, but square two.  Every little bit helps.  My rheumatologist prescribed a goal of five days of exercise per week, and this after I told him I was so tired I was shrivelling up like a salted snail.  Did I get any sympathy? No! 

Some kind of equipment was bought by the largest running club at the park and installed at Narcissists' Corner.  They still have the barbells that end in lumps of cement, and the pull-up bars are still the main attraction, but now they have some kind of odd affair the purpose of which seems a mystery.  Two pieces of equipment:  you stand on a type of floating pedal arrangement, hold on to some bars at shoulder level, and you swing from side to side.  Since gravity is doing all the work, I couldn't figure out what the equipment was supposed to be doing.  There are always a couple of people swinging away every day at most hours, but no one was using them this morning since it was very early.  I looked at the lettering on the things.  Apparently the arrangement gives you some kind of massage.  Who knows how, but one day when no one catches me, I'll get on one and see if that swinging really does anything.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my Italian conversation classes consist of the teacher conversing and me trying to patch together enough words to say something.  It is unbelievably frustrating because I can read all kinds of things in Italian now, such as the short stories of Leonardo Sciascia, and I can understand someone who speaks fairly slowly, but converse??  It's probably because what the teacher and I talk about is way beyond my current abilities--I don't have enough verb tenses, to begin with.  Oh well, maybe if I eat enough homemade pasta a sort of cultural osmosis will occur and I will burst out singing O Sole Mio.