My family shapes history again!

Hi Friends,

Happy Friday!! Happy weekend! I hope you will indulge me and let me tell you one more family story before I go back to something light and silly next week.

I finished going through the old family photos and histories this week and found that my family originally started out in Italy and then moved later to France. My great (to the 100th power) grandmother, Caterina (named after her master’s mother), lived with a nice gentleman, Leo, who never married. He worked out of his house, so he spent lots of time with my grandmother. They were very close and she went everywhere with him. Leo had some friends, Mr & Mrs del Giocondo, who would come by all the time to bring him casseroles and carrot cake. Mrs del Giocondo, who was very plain looking and quite shy, didn’t have a whole lot of friends. She loved animals and was especially nice to my grandmother. Caterina became one of her few friends. Leo wanted to do something nice for the del Giocondos so he decided he would paint them something special to hang in their house. He started painting a portrait of Mrs.del Giocondo. Mrs. del Giocondo was self conscious about her looks and would hide behind Caterina. Leo got tired of trying to coax her to sit up and smile, so he threatened to paint exactly what he saw – and to make his point, he did. After that, Leo and the del Giocondos had a fight and Leo stopped working on the portrait. A couple of years later, Leo decided to move to France and of course my grandmother moved with him. He started to miss the del Giocondos, especially Mrs. del Giocondo’s carrot cake, and decided to finish the portrait from memory. Unfortunately, he never gave it to the del Giocondos. It ended up hanging in the house of some guy named Louvre. Anyway, the first version of the portrait is attached. I don’t mean to be “catty” but I think Leo’s first version is much better! My human Mom has seen the actual final portrait in Mr. Louvre’s house and she agrees with me!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Amore e lambisce,

Josie