Change is good....right?

This weekend a couple of things happened that made me stop and think....then realize that I'm changing. Of course I expected some changes, but these surprised me.

First off, those who know me know that I have pretty much always been a woman with curves (from the waist down.) Stated bluntly, I have a butt that can't be ignored. Sometimes it's bigger, sometimes it's smaller but it is always a presence. Living here hasn't changed that. I know there are those who would like to hear that moving to a different place and eating different food will make it disappear but I'm sorry, it won't.

So Saturday Leif and I took a short trip to Siena for business and got on a city bus. A bus with hard plastic seats and no padding whatsoever. I sat down and was instantly uncomfortable. Something down there hurt. My butt bones (sorry, I don't know the correct term) were sitting directly on a muscle, one  I'm sure I didn't have before moving here. I shifted my weight slightly to one side and felt that bone slowly slide off the muscle and into a softer place. Nice....but then my lower back hurt from sitting sideways.

I looked at Leif (I'm sure my eyes were giant at this point) and he looked back and asked what was wrong. I said, "I have a muscle in my butt that I didn't have before and sitting hurts." He kind of laughed and said, "And you say I'm delicate!"

I told him that I'd been restless sitting for a week or two, but just thought it was my legs bothering me, not my butt. I asked him if this is normal, does he have this problem, does it go away?

He said, "My little biker...."

I gasped (I actually did) "You mean it'll always be this way?" Because, you know, I'm enjoy this bike riding thing and don't intend to stop now. He just laughed again. For the rest of the trip, every time I adjusted my seating he'd look at me, raise that eyebrow and laugh. This is weirdness number one.

Then yesterday we were in the kitchen talking about the grocery shopping list and looking at our wines and I heard someone say "I'd happily give up a gelato or two for more of that wine!" I looked around the kitchen and there were just the two of us and he was looking at me with this funny smile on his face and then I knew that I was the one who said that.

Let's not tell Dad that I said that. Ice cream was a dessert after supper and bedtime snack from birth till I moved out, in great part because Dad wanted ice cream every night and he couldn't just eat it in front of us because it's hard to enjoy your ice cream with six big sad blue eyes staring at you. Ice cream is the treat for every difficult job, for every celebration, for...well....everything. With that kind of conditioning how is it possible for me to casually offer to exchange ice cream for wine?

I blame Leif. You should too. I didn't even drink wine before I came here. Now I'm offering to trade ice cream for wine like it's the most natural thing in the world. He's totally corrupting a perfectly good, dependable, mid-western woman and turning her into a bike riding, wine drinking, Italian speaking woman.

Well done, Leif.