It's a Beautiful Day

How I wish I could claim that I took this fabulous picture. I love the beautiful girl with the long legs. I love the balletic yet relaxed position of her arms and her perfectly pointed toes. I love her flowing hair and the perfect shadow beneath her. And I love the composition of the sand sea and sky behind her. Credit goes, I believe, to her father, Davide Frandino, for the image.

I can, however claim some shared genes... Meet Emma, my brother's Italian granddaughter. She lives in Italy with her parents, but they have a condo at the beach near San Diego and she and her mother spend every summer there. 

Annie has always spoken English to Emma, even in Italy where virtually nobody else does. Traveling to Southern California every summer began as a way for her mother to ensure that Emma would be bilingual, but it has become a way of life. Emma has always had a way of seamlessly traveling between Italy and California and is flawlessly bilingual.

I remember when she was very small, speaking her own private language. Everybody breathlessly awaited her first real word to see if it would be English or Italian. I said 'buona notte' to her one night as I was putting her to bed, and she didn't say anything, but she gave me a look as if to say ," that's Italian. English is supposed to come out of your mouth. " She always knew which language to use according to whom she was speaking. The fact that it was sometimes English with Italian syntax just made it all the more charming. She used to call the beach where dogs are welcome "Beach Dog" and from that time onward we all called the dog beach "Beach Dog".

In other news: It looks like the source of the leak has been located!,  Despite being an Engineer, OilMan's expertise runs more to making elegant drawings of pipes and fittings. Finding the source of a leak which could be buried anywhere under concrete or rocks over a couple of acres of hilly property was really never part of his job description. He was starting to lose sleep over the growing amount of water dripping out of the drain pipe into the street. I think he secretly hates to admit defeat, but he finally called our friend Dan who can fix anything. He came over and located the leak within an hour. They only had to take apart some stone steps.* It might even be the source of the water that has been coming up through the street since before we moved here....The man is worth his weight in gold but he won't let us pay him....