Back to Rome and a bit of sadness

It's always a bit difficult to come back here to Italy after one and a half month in Finland. Now that my children are growing it gets even more difficult. Daniele and Sofia had already been back here for 10 days and were happily out with friends and didn't care too much about us coming back from Finland. I think that was the fact that made me most sad, noticing that nobody really cared. Maybe I would have expected my husband to gather everyone and have a pizza evening out or something to make us feel a bit welcome, but nope. I should have learnt by now that I shouldn't expect anything from anyone, just pretend, that's the only way! Instead I found a dirty and dusty house that no one had been cleaning very often in the whole summer, the bed linen and the towels hadn't been changed and the garden looked sad with almost all flowers dried and the grass ugly. It seemed that everyone had been waiting for me to do all the things. Carlotta was sad because the swing had been taken away (it was broken, but you could use it, if you were careful not to go too fast).

I feel I really should do something about the house and the garden to make it more pleasing to my eyes. As my mother-in-law passed away last autumn, we have been emptying her flat and lots of her things are now in our house. Our house isn't so big and all the things I had chosen because I found them pretty have disappeared under all other things that I haven't chosen to have in my home. I think the first thing would be to get rid of everything that we don't need, but it feels like a huge project.

Anyway I think the best thing for me is to try to find beautiful things here as I did in Finland, take my camera and go out and do and see things with or without the rest of the family. My teenagers wont be coming with me so much anymore, my husband's thoughts and energy are absorbed by his marathons, so I have to do things I like to do, like go horse riding, meet friends and do things that make me feel good. And of course try to be a bit healthy because that also makes you feel better.