Yesterday was one of those perfect summer days. Mr Zeus and I packed ourselves off to spend the afternoon with his eccentric aunty who lives in a lavish, sea-view retirement apartment which she acquired somewhere along her life of liaising with very rich men. Some might say that her childless life and faded looks with only two little dogs and a cat for company is rather tragic, but I say with a view like hers, a little-piece-of-heaven garden and a swimming pool in spitting distance, who gives a flying divorce settlement??
The pool as it turns out was filled with sea water which was a bonus for me. I have blogged many times that I'm scared of getting into the water because I can barely swim. So I had to go through my usual psyching myself up routine before I got into the water.
In the course of my two years in Athens - and as of last Friday it has been officially two years - I have finally reached a healthy weight. Family feuds, doubts, settling down issues all made me drop weight like there was no tomorrow. As the fog began to clear, as I settled into my life and my father started talking to me again like the old times, my weight has normalised and my body has flourished. Sometimes I stand infront of the mirror after a shower slapping my thighs and enjoying the new sensation of how they vibrate.
The point of this is that the extra two or three kilos have made me float so much better and yesterday I had a really great time swimming around. I actually enjoyed it because I didn't feel like I'm going to sink every few minutes.
Swimming over, I sat on Aunty's terrace drinking in the blue skies, blue seas, pink bouganvilla. It felt like my first true summer day of the summer so far. In the Homeland that total sense of peacefulness is called the coolness of your heart. I was so blissful that I wondered if my senses were going into overdrive when the ground beneath me rattled, but as we later learnt that was the Patra earthquake.
On the way home we sat in the traffic making cruel comments about young things in the fancy cars that their daddies and sugar daddies had bought them. Gotta have the hot car! I recently heard of someone we know with no earning capacity who took out a EUR 15,000 loan to buy a Mercedes. Smart move in these credit crunch times, but then that's the Greeks for you: sunbathe today and think about the burn tomorrow.
The pool as it turns out was filled with sea water which was a bonus for me. I have blogged many times that I'm scared of getting into the water because I can barely swim. So I had to go through my usual psyching myself up routine before I got into the water.
In the course of my two years in Athens - and as of last Friday it has been officially two years - I have finally reached a healthy weight. Family feuds, doubts, settling down issues all made me drop weight like there was no tomorrow. As the fog began to clear, as I settled into my life and my father started talking to me again like the old times, my weight has normalised and my body has flourished. Sometimes I stand infront of the mirror after a shower slapping my thighs and enjoying the new sensation of how they vibrate.
The point of this is that the extra two or three kilos have made me float so much better and yesterday I had a really great time swimming around. I actually enjoyed it because I didn't feel like I'm going to sink every few minutes.
Swimming over, I sat on Aunty's terrace drinking in the blue skies, blue seas, pink bouganvilla. It felt like my first true summer day of the summer so far. In the Homeland that total sense of peacefulness is called the coolness of your heart. I was so blissful that I wondered if my senses were going into overdrive when the ground beneath me rattled, but as we later learnt that was the Patra earthquake.
On the way home we sat in the traffic making cruel comments about young things in the fancy cars that their daddies and sugar daddies had bought them. Gotta have the hot car! I recently heard of someone we know with no earning capacity who took out a EUR 15,000 loan to buy a Mercedes. Smart move in these credit crunch times, but then that's the Greeks for you: sunbathe today and think about the burn tomorrow.
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