Cicciluzz’, Haircut, Birthday, Instagram

We made a new friend on June 1st.

We found him on the street near our home. Knowing it wouldn’t have survived long there, we picked it up and brought it home, asking my father-in-law for help, seeing as he’s saved more than one sparrow in the past. Here he’s eating some jam, but then after we got some special baby bird feed for him.

We read in this forum as well as this one to put him in a box with a damp cloth inside an espresso cup and a light above to warm him up. He stayed at my in-laws’, who live on the same floor of our apartment building, because we have a cat, but we went over frequently to be with him.

We became quite attached to him and named him “Cicciluzzo” (or, in Neapolitan style, Cicciluzz’). He ate a lot (and often!) and after the first few hours wanted to be with us all the time, especially on my finger or in my hand. It was hard to get him back off and into his box.

Unfortunately, when my mother-in-law got up two mornings after we brought him home, she found him with his little feet in the air. I don’t know if he ate too much or too little, or if he was too cold. I only know that we’d done all we could to save him and that we immediately felt his absence. A lot. A week has gone by since he left us, but we continue to think and talk about him every day.

In other news, after a few years of having long hair, I now have it nice and short.

In March I’d done my own haircut, more or less using this technique to chop off this big handful of hair. Unfortunately I don’t have a single photo of when this haircut actually looked good, before it grew out of shape. (It was already too grown-out for my Me-Made-May’13 photos.)

You can see in my picture on May 31 that I got another big haircut, but it wasn’t any good after washing it (I certainly don’t have the patience to flat-iron it out!). So I called the hairstylist back to cut my hair super short, and the picture above is what came off that time. Except that cut was even worse than and I ended up going somewhere else the next day for a fourth haircut which finally was ok, though I’m still figuring out how to style it, so no pictures yet!

Saturday was my birthday. My daughter made me a wonderful card…

…and a necklace!

Then we spent the day with friends at the Grotte di Pertosa (Pertosa Caverns, province of Salerno, Italy), a truly intriguing place. There’s a network of tunnels and caves full of stalactites and stalagmites, strange formations and a little river that you go down at the beginning in boats which the guide pulls along with cables stretched across.

You couldn’t take pictures inside, so I only have these ones of the beginning of the cave, but it was an experience that I’d suggest to anyone in the area. (The pictures on the website don’t do it justice.)

I don’t know why I decided to share these bits of my private life, which I generally try to keep more or less… um, private. If you liked these little daily tidbits, you can also take a look at my Instagram photos, which until now I’d only shared with friends and family. Follow me on Instagram or any of the other places you can see in the social icons at the top of the page. (I’ve been on Facebook and Pinterest for a while but also recently joined Twitter, Google+ and Bloglovin  [Follow my blog with Bloglovin], even if I still don’t fully understand how to use the last three!) Look forward to seeing you!