In Which She Describes for You A Typical Day

30 September 2008
Turin, Piedmont, Italy

7,15.
Alarm clock rings. I press snooze for five more minutes. The weight of my blankets, doubled against the beginning of autumn's chill until the central heating turns on October 15th, makes it hard to get up.

7,20.
Five more minutes, since I don't yet hear anyone in the kitchen.

7,25.
Sigh as loud as I want because I have my own room then throw back the covers, put on my glasses, fuzzy slippers. Bathroom, hair is insane. Go into F---'s room to raise the shades and bring out his backpack. Lay out his clothes for school. Pour a cup of tea, sit for just long enough to dip and eat a handful of little biscuits, then put out R---'s backpack and uniform shirt. Morning snack into both boys' bags (just a juicebox, because anything more intervenes with cafeteria lunch), shoes and jackets placed near the front door.

8,35.
Whew! They've gone - boys to school, Mom by train to Milan for the day, Dad to the office - and I finish my mug of tea at a leisurely pace. Shower, put in contacts, blow my hair dry (because if I don't, my new coif somewhat resembles the middle-aged female politician mullet), put on dance clothes under sweats, and grab an apple on my way out the door.

9,00.
Take my bicycle to two different outdoor markets to find a grey hooded sweatshirt for under 10 euro, because on my way home from H&M yesterday I realised that the 20 euro sweatshirt I'd just purchased from an international corporation could be easily replaced by a less expensive market-bought one of equal quality, and the original, returned. Scan the market tables with the shifty eyes of a seasoned veteran, no longer the starry-eyed browser I once was.

9,40.
Arrive at Belfiore Dance studio for a trial run at an advanced contemporary dance class. The teacher wears a pink bandana around his baldness, chain smokes until he has to come inside for the start of class, and knows most of the women by name. I proceed to make a nearly complete fool of myself by mixing up left and right, failing to catch onto the phrase in the across-the-floor combination, lacking the Italian vocabulary to ask the kinds of questions that would prove that I actually do know what I'm doing - "How can I shift my weight to more smoothly connect these two movements? In which direction should I look when I do this?" - but keep trying and smiling and turning the urge to cry into the fortitude to finish the class with a laugh. Afterward Eugenio tells me that it's good to do things that challenge us, otherwise we have nothing. Encourages me to come back. The girls in the locker room squeal over the fact that I am American - Californian, to boot! - and hope that I return so they can practice their English with me.

12,15.
On the way back home I run into the mother of one of the boys' friends, one of the two mothers in the neighborhood who don't work. This one's husband just designed the new Cinquecento. I tell her that I'm coming from the dance class I told her about yesterday, and that it was hard! She tells me that she's on her way to a trial class, too, but for Judo. Brava, I say, I can't wait to hear about it in the schoolyard this afternoon. Ciao!

12,20.
Back home, and have to leave again at 14,00. Put bicycle into basement, take the ancient elevator up to the sixth floor instead of stairs, since I can already feel my muscles getting sore from dance. Decide to be adventurous and try to make a soup: start a pot of water, add a half cube of vegetable stock, slice up a fat carrot and a medium potato, simmer them with three sage leaves. Check email. Go back to add a sliced sweet onion. Change out of dance clothes. Tighten some screws in my self-assembled IKEA dresser because the bottom drawer was beginning to sag, fold some clothes, and check on my soup. It tastes good! I cooked something! Pour the whole mess into a shallow porcelain bowl, grab "Portrait of a Lady" and two little wheat toasts, and enjoy a slow, quiet, yummy lunch alone.

14,00.
Put out placemats for the boys' merenda (after school snack), the sweats into which they'll have to change before we set off for their various sports. Take the bus to the train station where I meet an American girl with whom I've been emailing about teaching English; she's leaving the country soon and looked for someone to take over her clients, and while I am too busy to do it I know someone who is interested, so the three of us meet for a coffee. We exchange explanations of how we got to Torino from the States, and when I leave the two of them are still talking about teaching. I'm glad I put them in touch.

16,10.
Waiting in the schoolyard for school to let out. It actually is just like "The Nanny Diaries." Chat with the moms, and my two American au pair friends with whom I went out last night for a movie and wine adventure (Hancock, dubbed over in Italian, and after-hour drinks at a restaurant in the middle of closing... another entry...). The mom I had seen earlier says that Judo was a little too difficult for her, she's too old for that kind of physical activity. We laugh, the boys come out, and everyone goes home. While we walk the four short blocks between school and home I ask them about lunch (gross, as they say every day), class (good), tell them they can't have ice cream today but maybe tomorrow, all the while putting myself between these two little blonde boys and oncoming traffic.

16,35.
Arrive home, toss backpacks and shoes aside, commence to argue over F--'s gameboy. One runs to the bathroom, the other changes into his sweats. I pour identical bowls of chocolate rice krispies cereal for merenda, exchange them when R-- bursts into whiny tears over something his brother put into or did to his cereal, and opt for a plum and slice of wheat bread for my merenda. Turn right around to catch the number 10 bus to F--'s tennis lesson. On our way out I race the elevator in a shoe-tying marathon: they line up their feet, shoes untied, and I have to tie all four shoes before the elevator arrives at the top. I won!

17,10.
We dash against a red light to catch the bus, and cram into an unusually full car. I teach them the phrase "don't get fresh with me" when the automatic closing door clips my butt, which makes them laugh. We try to guess which stop will be the magic one that lets enough people off for us to breathe. (It's the third.) I accidentally get off one stop too early, but we still have ten minutes before F-- has to be there, so we walk/jog the long block past the Olympic Stadium (built for the Winter Olympics in 2006) to the sport building.

17,30.
We leave big brother at the entrance and turn around again to hop on the 10 going back in the direction form whence we came, to bring R-- to gymnastics. Meno male, thank goodness, we arrive at the bus stop five minutes before the next bus arrives, so we can rest our bodies for a bit. We practice naming body parts in English, and the bright little six-year-old asks how to say puzza in English? Stinky. "Stinky nose," he says, "stinky eyes!" This bus is thankfully emptier, but I choose to stand, holding R-- against me so we can look at all the people. A decent-looking university student wearing an orange sweater with big buttons notices from four or five seats away that my stream of upbeat English banter (I can almost see people's ears perk up when they hear me on public transportation), and gives me a lovely smile before descending the bus one stop before ours. Do you know him?, R-- asks, and I say, Nope!

18,08.
Walk into a madhouse of an athletic club: little girls in pink sequined leotards scamper between pairs and groups of tired Italian parents, waiting parents, protective parents. He changes into his non-skid socks, and I let him run into gymnastics class with his schoolmate Yaya. Sit in the hallway with the others. Mom texts me to see if he's alright, and that she'll be back from Milan in time to see the end of his lesson.

19,15.
Patrizia and I greet R-- after his lesson, get him dressed. She promises him some potato chips from the downstairs cafeteria bar for being so good. We run into a mother she hasn't in a long time and the two chat, pinch the cheeks of each other's offspring, and I stand there with a polite smile, waiting to be introduced. Doesn't happen. On the five-minute walk home her husband calls three times wondering where we are and if we'll be home for dinner. Yes, she replies, we're arriving! "Men," we laugh together.

20,00.
Home, finally. Dinner is a meat in tomato sauce, prepared this morning by the Peruvian cleaning woman, with rice and sauteed spinach. There are a few brief, airy comments about there being only one plate for dinner (fine with me, but some are still hungry). The kids talk about school, the parents about work, and we all breathe a sigh of relief that a new month starts tomorrow. A better month, they hope; the return from vacation to school and work is always tough. There's a quarrel over Nutella for dessert - one wants it on fruit, the other on bread - and I try not to giggle at A---'s sweet paternal confusion. This wheedling and mediating is what I do ALL AFTERNOON!

21,30.
I'm in the laundry room scrubbing down my Adidas, the ones that used to be white but now blend in almost perfectly with the pavement outside, when I hear someone scrambling around in the kitchen. Poke my head out to make sure it isn't one of the boys, and it's their mother. In a fit of bitterness the younger brother has hid the charger for the elder's Nintendo, and now he can't remember where it is. The older one is throwing a tantrum because his charger is gone, the younger because he wishes he had a Nintendo, and I slide the door of the laundry room closed. It's the biggest screamfest I've heard since my arrival (someone is shoving chairs and throwing toys), but I hear that both parents are actually involved in the situation. I consider myself off-duty.

22,00.
Turned down an invitation to watch the Juventus soccer match at a friend's friend's house, and another to a late-night university party at a friend's friend's apartment. Instead I put on my Colorado College running shorts, my XL "Democrats in Italy for Obama" t-shirt, and curl up on the couch with a mug of rosemary lemon tea to read my novel.

If you ever wonder what I'm up to in Italia, it's probably a variation of the day above. I'm nearly always exhausted! But generally content.