Identity crisis

Who am I? Who will I be? How will I live and which things will I prefer? Peanut butter or pasta? Coffee or caffè? A bagel or la michetta? Dinner at 6 p.m. or dinner at 9 p.m.? Out of the house at 18 or out of the house at 28+? Football or soccer? English or Italiano? Grandmas who kick a soccer ball around with me or nonne who dote on me and ply me with lasagna? Hugs or double kisses?

Signs you've been away from home far too long...

You are willing to accept bad, preservative-filled substitutes. I saw that this German discount chain here was advertising "America Week" complete with bagels, peanut butter and something called a "Rib Burger" sold in the freezer section. I bypassed the freezer section and the Rib Burger and headed straight for the bagels and peanut butter, which are actually imported from Germany. The brand-name is some funky fictitious creation meant to sound American - "McEnnedy" (I can just see the German marketing gurus sitting around the conference room table deciding on that one "McDonald's is popular in America and that Kennedy family seems to be pretty famous..."). The peanut butter looks a little greenish in color. My real American peanut butter ran out during the long, final wintery days of pregnancy. I haven't tasted my loot yet but I'll report back on the authenticity factor. I'll be tasting the originals in a month. Yeah!

Strange and interesting combinations

Well the sun finally came out after the "spring that never was" so that merits a post. We've literally had rain for months now. I spent most of the spring glued to the couch breastfeeding, so I guess it didn't make much difference to me. But now I'm ready to get out there again so the sun is a welcome sign.

This week I saw two things that struck me as odd. Not necessarily bad but odd. We all know I have a particular dislike for those drinkable yogurts. I know that many an Italian is loading up on the drinkable yogurt right now in preparation for the summer holidays (there are yogurts that help your skin tan faster and people drink them before going to places, such as Mexico, as a preventative measure against potential gastrointestinal problems) but I have just never been able to choke one down. Well I just saw an ad for an ice cream bar that once you bite into it becomes...don't make me say it. Yep, the ice cream bar is filled with drinkable yogurt-y goodness. As if it weren't bad enough that there's an entire aisle of them at the grocery store. Now my ice cream bar could have chocolate sprinkles and lactobacillus as main ingredients. I haven't been able to find it online but once I do, I'll post a pic.

Then I saw a video for the latest Fabri Fibra (Italian rapper) song called "In Italia," which is kind of a lament against everything wrong with Italy today. And it features Gianna Nannini. Another strange combination. Not bad, just kind of strange. It'd be like Eminem and Melissa Etheridge teaming up for a duet. Who knows? It could work. Below the video from YouTube. The chorus goes, "There are things nobody will tell you. There are things nobody will give you. You were born and died here. You were born and died here. Born in the country of half truths..." Well it's catchier (and rhymes) in Italian.

Paesino

I keep thinking to myself that I'll update the ole blog when things "stabilize" or "get back to normal." I'm barely five months into this parenthood project and it has become apparent that I should prepare myself for a new reality (one that doesn't include sleep - didn't they say the kid should start sleeping through the night by 12 weeks? Mine still wakes up several times a night. That is, when he goes to bed...). Anyway, this is a post to say that I'm still here. Tired and still figuring this out day by day but feeling more confident as time goes by.

In any case, since I moved to Italy, I've always lived in a paesino of 9,000 people on the outskirts of Milan. Strangely, I never utilized my town as a small town. I never drank a coffee or did aperativo at the bar in the main piazza, I never bought my newspaper from the local giornalaio, I never entered the local church (I am not Catholic but still I could have at least popped in to see if there were any cool frescoes or anything...), I rarely mailed anything from the tiny post office branch here. You get the picture. I did, however, briefly work out at the local gym. For the most part, this was the place I slept at night (aaaah, sleep) while by day I was always either in Milan, on public transportation or fighting the traffic in or out of the city. Even when I began to work from home, I rarely left the house because I was just too busy.

Right after my son was born and while taking a brief break from work, I realized that I needed to get out of the house or I was going to go nuts. It was January and bitterly cold outside but I was climbing the walls in the house with a colicky baby. So I bundled us both up, put him in his stroller and began using my little paesino as a real little town. And, you know what, it 'aint a quiant village nestled in the Tuscan hills but I'm beginning to like it. I still don't want to live here forever but I do like the feeling of walking out my gate and hearing "Buondì" ("Buongiorno" in Milanese) and of knowing all of the people in the little shops who are all on a first-name basis with Dylan and I. I walk by the local elementary school and the mamme, teachers and other little kids seem to know us somehow. The other day a signora stopped me to say "I heard your son has some sleep issues and cries a lot at night, so let me give you some tips..." I cut her off to ask how in the world she knew my son had sleep issues and she said, "Well your upstairs neighbors were telling the butcher how your son keeps them up nights and I overheard, so like I was saying..." OK, the small town thing could get old but it's fine for me for now. Honestly, this is one of the things that saved my sanity in those first overwhelming, isolating months.

Hold the dioxin please

There's a man who comes up from the south and sells yummy delicacies out of the back of his van and parks in a piazza not far from my house. He's not always there but when he is, I always make a point of lining up behind his van with the hungry Milanese and buying things like melanzane sott'olio (kind of like these that Ms. Adventures makes but his are sliced into very thin strips) that you just can't get fresh around here if you don't make them at home yourself. He has lots of yummy vegan-friendly things, as well as cheeses and salamis. I have always assumed he was from Puglia, which is why I call him "Pugliese man." He's very outgoing and simpatico in a way that the Milanese aren't, and we always look forward to seeing his telltale white van and bantering back and forth with him while he wraps up our purchases. When he doesn't have change, he slices off a hunk of parmesan cheese to give instead. Last weekend I saw the white van from afar but we noticed the line wasn't as long as it usually is. As we got nearer the van, I said to Cristiano "Hey, the side of his van says Naples. I didn't know he was from Naples..." I was no longer hungry for eggplant and Cristiano was no longer hungry for his favorite cheese. What with all of the talk about dioxin in Neapolitan products, we are avoiding them. Sad but true. I also saw on the news that hotel and restaurant reservations are way down in Naples as people don't want to vacation or eat al fresco surrounded by trash. In talking with friends from Naples, we've been told that the trash crisis is not affecting every square inch of the city but it seems tourists don't want to take their chances. And as much as we feel like alarmists (as Cristiano says "There was probably dioxin in there all along and we just didn't think about it before..."), we don't want to take our chances either...