Having an active fantasy life is a pretty amazing thing. Now that I’m doing so much armchair travelling, it seems that the weight of the world is getting lighter by the day. That said, I haven’t managed to escape reality entirely, as happened recently upon the death of one of our old sheep. 

Melpomene, or Mel as she soon came to be known, left us quietly a couple of weeks ago having lived a long and happy life. When Sasha returned from the barn chores all too early that day, I read on his face the expression that over time I’ve come to know so well - another of the old animals had died. 

He found Mel kushed in front of the little sheep house where she had fallen quietly into an eternal sleep. Still warm to the touch, a light dusting of snow on her back, she had what we’ve come to think of here as a very good death. Other than a slowing of her gait in recent months, there had been no sign whatsoever that she would be leaving us anytime soon.

I write about this now because it is snowing and Sasha is away getting better so I’m the one who’s just come in from doing the barn chores, handing out pats and peanuts to our motley crew of aging animals along the way. My new Italian fantasy life is definitely a psychic godsend during these dark days of winter and I really am committed to the project I’ve begun. 

Even so, no matter how you slice it, there are still shining moments here on this old farm when there’s nowhere else on earth I’d rather be.

When I made the decision to learn Italian this year by pairing audio lessons with some enjoyable armchair travelling, I obviously had no idea what I'd be getting myself into. Suffice it to say that things haven’t been heading in the direction I had planned. 

The truth is that all this language learning and dreaming about things Italian was really intended to be a motivational exercise, a practical scheme whereby I could both beat the winter doldrums and propel myself toward a lifelong dream - a real, in the flesh, trip to Italy to soak up the great art treasures of the Italian Renaissance while partaking of some beautiful scenery along the way. Rome, Florence and Venice, I imagined, were the three places I absolutely had to see before my time on earth ran out. With the clock ticking away, this seemed like a good time to get the job done.

However, as I’ve been flipping through the guide books and watching travel videos on You Tube, I’ve noticed how often words like “crowded” and “expensive” abound. “Expensive” pleasures can somehow always be downscaled, but “crowded” is another matter entirely. I was horrified to discover that there’s even a special word in Italian to connote bumping into someone while taking one’s passagiata or ritual evening walk. 

In Florence, we are told, there are knock-offs of Michelangelo's David on street corners everywhere you turn, yet it costs money to see the real one. I discover to my genuine horror that nowadays, due to crowding, you have to make an appointment if you have any hope at all of getting into the Uffizi. One pays extra for a reservation to avoid long hours in line and there’s no such thing as an untimed visit either, all of which makes me wonder whether the splendours of classical Italian art might not more pleasurably be experienced through an expensive coffee table book in the leisurely comfort of home. 

Any dream I might have nurtured about Rome, or the Vatican or the Sistine chapel ceiling, died on the spot when two of my dearest friends recounted their nightmare visits there. The words “crowded” and “expensive” figured so heavily in those anecdotes that, Michelangelo forgive me, I'm beginning to think I can do without. My urbane and witty friends hated Florence for the same reasons and couldn’t wait to get into the countryside. They were tired of being crushed by the tourists, and if I’m not mistaken, even found that city to have an offensive smell.

As for Venice, what can be said? Described in virtually all the travel guides as "a must see" that is both “crowded" and "expensive,” La Serenissima, we are told, is best visited off season. However, anyone who has seen the Nicholas Roeg film, Don’t Look Now, won’t be at all seduced by the dark, dank vision of the city that fall and winter seem to provide. Pair that with the news that gondola rides are only for the very foolhardy (or at least for those touristy types with serious money to burn) and a bit more of the bloom falls off the rose. Do I really want to be laughed at by the locals? Suffer pigeons dive- bombing me in Piazza San Marco? Drink cappuccino that goes for eight dollars a cup? And just how deep is my long cherished desire to sip a Bellini while perched on a stool in Harry’s Bar? The price I’d have to pay for that one, even if I could find a seat, seems pretty “expensive” too. White peaches notwithstanding, would I be missing all that much if I stayed away?

The other part of my plan, the language learning component, has also encountered some mild difficulty. It took me a few days to opt for Pimmsleur over Michel Thomas when, despite good reviews, the phlegmy intonations of the latter began to drive me insane. Who needs water on the ear? It became absolutely unbearble!

I also passed on anything whose title mentioned learning while driving a car, partly because my vehicle has no facility for docking an i-Pod and partly because I’m stuffy enough to believe that, while driving a car, people ought to be concentrating on driving a car, not daydreaming in the foreign language they're immersed in while behind the wheel.

As discouraging as some of this might sound, I'm certainly not giving up on my Italian fantasy life or on my New Year's resolution to add a new language to my skill set. As my vocabulary is expanding by the day, I am merely moving my dreams a little further off the beaten track to those places in Italy where a curious and adventurous woman might find delight in less famous things.

If that means that, thanks to Frances Mayes and her ilk, most of crowded Tuscany has to fall off the roster too, so be it. There are lots of other places left to see. The only thing that's certain right now is that the journey I’ve begun in my head has already done wonders to take me away from the dreaded winter blahs. That in itself is magnifico!

Even without a calendar I can always recognize the turning of the year by my sudden craving for salt. By New Year’s Day every year, the chocolate overdose that accompanies the Christmas holidays just somehow seems to catapult me into a totally savoury world. Lindt, of course, has tried to have it both ways with their amazing dark chocolate bars seasoned with fleur de sel, but right now I’m having none of it. From today on, when snack time rolls around, I’m back to pretzels, hummus and pita, bruschetta, crackers and cheese. Anything that doesn’t involve chocolate.

Right now I’m sitting in front of the fire on this first day of a brand new year trying to resolve what to do about resolutions. Looking backward at the mostly failed ones I put forward last year, it seems prudent this time either to forgo the ritual entirely or somehow to decrease the possibility of failure so that something truly encouraging might actually come to pass.

This year, I’ve decided, I’m only going to make one resolution. I’m going to pass on all the stuff about exercise and healthy eating and go straight out into left field with something entirely new. I have resolved in 2011 to learn to speak Italian. 

For anyone who is cringing right now, trying to push away the nascent apprehension that I’m embarking on a cloned Eat, Pray, Love kind of experience, please have no fear. I’m not working through my marital angst by planning a year of travel to Italy, India and Bali. I’m actually just staving off the inevitable winter blahs with a fantasy life that includes the language of another climate, and mental images of another place and time.

Some weeks ago, while rooting around in some of the boxes that Sasha has packed up for give-away, sale or disposal, I came upon a CD set of Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun. Since this is not something we’d ever have bought, neither of us has any idea where it came from, but it did fit nicely into the CD player of the little Ford Focus I purchased this past fall. I listened to it all.

Despite the cloying southern drawl of the narrator and the total massacre of the Italian language (why do they let authors record their own works?) I fell totally in love with the descriptions of the landscape, the culture and food of Tuscany, the idea of an escape to someplace else.

So I have downloaded a good set of audio Italian language lessons to my iPod, found in my own library a number of wonderful books involving things Italian, bought a small English/Italian dictionary and a Fodors.

Now, over steaming bowls of ribollita or minestrone, I’ll be all set to fantasize at will. This winter, as I swan around in my fat pants intoning phrases like “Mi piace la pasta” or “Dove il bagno” I’ll be getting two things done really well. I’ll be dreaming the edge off reality and I’ll be learning something new. What could possibly be better than that?