An Appeal to The Lord

As part of our rent we pay for a parking space in the parking area across from our house. We’ve been paying since we moved in for a space that does not actually exist. Unfortunately we have been on the waiting list since our move here and after some recent inquiry it seems we may be waiting until after the New Year. As one friend put it, “You may be waiting for someone to die, I mean Italians don’t just up and change routine!” So after several conversations with our landlord and a few leads we have made no progress.

The problem with parking here is this. There are not many free public spaces along our street and those are often full, especially during the day when Lauren may be out with groceries and kids in inclement weather. (It is a lot like trying to find a space at A&M, or like Kramer and George looking for spaces on Seinfeld) Also, when we park it in our “temporary” space in the garden it blocks our upstairs neighbor (the Spanish Colonel) from getting in and out of his garage…and then I have to hear about it at work. To make matters even worse, Lauren can get the car into the garden but cannot manage to get it out of the garden.

Hopefully things will change, we have God on our side. It seems our landlord knows a woman who has a garage, but there are no available spaces. The friend does however know the priest of a church down the street which has some parking. So, our landlord’s friend is going to ask the priest if there may be any spaces available…maybe I should pray a Rosary or some Hail Mary’s to help out. It is 4 or 5 blocks away but it is at least a parking space.

Alone and Unafraid

It is hard, when you are 2 years old and like pockets, to know the difference between a pocket and your waistband. So it should really have come as no surprise last week when I discovered that Will, who is 2 and loves to put things in pockets, had put a fork not in his pocket…but in his pants. See last week Lauren took a trip to the South of France with her mom and sister in law; leaving me to play 2 on 1 with the boys. So I found myself saying things I thought I would never say, like: “why is there a fork in your pants?” Despite that, everyone faired very well, myself included, and there were no trips to the hospital or anything! There were very few “that’s not how mommy does it” or “Daddy, I wish Mommy was here.” I know, everyone must be very disappointed, expecting the worst, secretly hoping for some minor disaster that would push me over the edge of reason so that I could report the insanity here, but that was not the case.
Besides the fact that Braxton was sick on Monday and Tuesday and a cold snap kept us home bound more than I would have liked, it was very fun. Will and I had coffee every morning at the café, I shopped for our dinner at the little old lady’s pasta shop near our house and we had great man bonding time. I even managed to do laundry, clean up a few things and get everyone fed and dressed appropriately and in a timely fashion.
I did discover that since men are lazy, impatient and always looking for a better way to do something; that most likely not many men do housework or are stay at home dads here in Italy…it takes more than 3 hours to wash and dry 1 load of laundry. Also I found that with 2 boys on the loose, a single parent is always either preventing disaster or cleaning up the aftermath of what appears to have been a tornado

Music to Live by

I decided that it would be cool to have a soundtrack always playing over my life…and fortunately our upstairs neighbor usually accommodates nicely. Every day, or nearly so, the two girls who live upstairs (ages 17 and 9) practice piano. The 17 year old masterfully plays classical pieces that I recognize, though sadly cannot name, that always seem to fit the mood and season. During the summer her play matched the oppressive heat and melted and muted colors of a hazy summer afternoon. Today her notes coincided exactly to the spectacular cool of autumn sunset shining off the ancient faded brick and terra cotta of the church visible out our kitchen window.

To Every Season

While the weather in our first few months here was content to remain only hot…fall has brought some changes. First of all, the weather has cooled to a very pleasant 75 or 80 in the day and 55-65 at night; also the weather changes from sunny to cloudy to rainy to very very very very very foggy at a whim and with little indication what might be next and is sometimes all in one morning. The visibility in the fog this morning was measured at 80 meters or about 200 feet. Despite the warm days however, Italians have decided, in mass, that it is cold weather time. So seeing people bundled up in jackets and scarves is not unusual even in the middle of a warm sunny afternoon…because its fall and Italians wear jackets and scarves in the fall.

Centro Sportivo

It was a bad week in Ferrara Sports. First CARIFE Ferrara Basket Club was defeated by Armani Jeans by one point on Wednesday and lost 2 of 3 over the weekend, and then the Ferrara Banditi lost 2 of 3 and did not make the playoffs. In plain English that is the local Ferrara basketball team and our friend Luke lost to the Milan team in a heartbreaker and then had a pretty rough weekend series…fortunately these are just preseason games and Luke feels like the team has strong chances this season. As for me and the flag football, well we had some abysmal showings, much like the Aggies, and will not make the playoffs this year. So all in all it was a bad weekend if you are a fan of Ferrara sports. On a high note I will not be proving how old and out of shape I am by limping into the house after 3 games of football and being sore for the rest of the week.

Check out http://www.banditi.it/news.htm and http://www.basketclubferrara.it/ for more fun facts and info.

A lovely weekend

We live in a 16th century palace. Half of the palace was broken into apartments during the war and the other half is still occupied by the family that originally owned the building. They are lovey and we have become friends with the owner's son and his wife who occasionally live here. They met while living in New York and she is Serbian. She remembers how diffucult it was for her when she first arrived so she has been wonderful about introducing me to her Engligh speaking friends.

This weekend, they invited us to her birthday party in their garden. The garden is gorgeous, there was live music, lots of wine, and food passed by their full time, uniformed maids. They even insisted (Italians really know how to insist) that Matt play the guitar so we even had some Robert Earl Keen added to this perfect setting. The band joined in half way through the song -- perfecto! AND we didn't even have to get a babysitter. The boys' window overlooks their garden and they slept through the whole thing. Even through Matt on the guitar!

The next night they invited us to another party and the theme was "bad taste". Our friends decided not to dress up because "we do not have the time for such things" so we didn't either. We are so so so thankful that we did not dress up because we would have gone all out and looked totally tacky but the Italians still looked fabulous. "Bad taste" Italian style is evidently not the same thing as American bad taste.