In Which She Awakes at Four in the Morning

... because a seasonally misinformed mosquito had stung all the parts of her body peeking out from underneath the bedcovers - hand, shoulder, neck, face - causing her fingers to swell so much that she had to run cold water over them to get her rings off. At four in the morning. Unfair. Now my eyelid is twitching from fatigue.

Here's a piece of current Italian culture of which I feel an actual part: http://www.lifeinitaly.com/news/news-detailed.asp?newsid=11316 . The boys' school is going on strike, uno sciopero (shoh-pear-OH), this Thursday, so all the working parents in the neighborhood are scrambling to make plans. One of mine will go to his grandmother while the other stays at home with the housekeeper, so I'll still have my morning free. Then we'll have pizza lunch with mom, then the old babysitter will come say goodbye because she's leaving next week for Berlin (we already have plans to go visit her around Easter, hurrah!), then we commence the normal Thursday schedule of taking the bus to bring F-- to tennis, playing on the inflatable slide, coming home to an empty house to eat dinner in three while the parents tango. While we wait in the schoolyard for the kids' release I've talked with many of the mothers about this school problem, also read about it in the newspaper, heard about it on the radio and television, and it's cool to know that this little elementary school is one of the tons of schools - up to the universities, in some cities - all over Italy joining to protest the new laws.

The weather has changed. The leaves are yellow, amber, and falling, and it's begun to rain. All of my pants are too long, and I only have one sweatshirt with a hood, so Mom, I might take you up on that Amex mini-spree that I never took! It's hard for me to get up the energy to leave the house when all this gloom makes me want to read all morning - which I could very well do, if I wanted to - but I think I balance my time fairly well between puttering around the house, and getting oot and aboot. Today I spent my bonus* on a card for ten visits to P--'s gym, which I plan to use to go to ex-ballerina Giorgia's Wednesday morning tone-up class, and just last week I found a nearby cafe that will be My Place, run by two dark-haired chicks in their late twenties whose warm smiles and cheery chatter make it fun to sit against the far corner and watch the morning rush.

* A few weekends ago, the couple for whom I work took a weekend vacation to London, and left me for three days with their boys. They called in the troops - two aunts, a grandma - but nevertheless it was scary to know that I alone was in charge of two little boys for 72 whole hours! The one to feed them, clothe them, get them to Boy Scouts and to school on time, with the right equipment, etcetera, not to mention keep them quasi-entertained, and keep them from killing each other. For these three days I received a week's extra pay, which was awesome, but I also think I cut at least sixteen months off of my life.

In these days I'm feeling lethargic, like I eat too much pasta and don't walk downtown as often as I initially did. The Italian class was too easy for me, so I'm back to square one in terms of learning to speak the language: I drop in to visit P--'s mother at her home and let her make coffee for me, secretly pretending that she is my own wizened, complaining, foreign grandmother; strike up banal conversations with other cafe dwellers, about the headlines or the weather; ask strangers for the definition of an unknown word in my Italian book (currently "Il Piccolo Principe") or newspaper, and answer the questions that naturally follow, like where I'm from and what I'm doing here. It's not a classroom, but it works.

So... my employers have offered me an incentive to stay in Torino longer than my prescribed year -- my own apartment, so I don't have to live with them, and fewer hours (only after school, no work in the mornings). At times it sounds like a manageable situation, but I keep coming back to the gut feeling that the Bay Area wants me to come back, and that I want to come back to the Bay. To my family and friends, and a chance to get reacquainted with the city I basically left in 2004. This situation is cool, and I know I'll miss living here, hearing and speaking Italian, etc, but I don't think I'm ready to actually begin a life in another country, and that's exactly what I'd be doing.