Why I Shouldn't Waste My Time Cleaning

In a little break from the posts about my February Trip to the Nord, never let it be said that I don't know how to get out of doing housework. To start at the beginning, Salvatore is still here. Don't know who Salvatore is? Read this post:  Salvatore. One day, turned into two, turned into the rest of my time in this house - eight more days. There aren't even any more pretensions that Salvatore and his assistant, Guiseppe, will finish soon. Today, my landlord stopped by and assured me that no work would be done inside (I didn't realize there was still a question about that since in my mind, there would absolutely not be anymore work inside), and he ended with, "Outside is no problem?" Since I've sort of gotten used to Salvatore and Guiseppe hanging about, I agreed that it is no problem. I did notice that my landlord gave Salvatore the key to my house today. That's a little problem. But really, I'm just too tired to pursue it. Side note: Guiseppe plays my favorite, contemporary Christian music on his boom box (is that the term the kids use these days?), and he even sings along, so at least I get a show each day.

As I've written before, we live in something resembling Fort Knox. Bars on every window and steel barred doors, metal shutters that roll down electrically in between the metal bars and our locking windows. These metal bars are painted white and show every bit of dirt that floats around so heavily in the air here. I gave up cleaning them a long time ago. I did realize that upon moving out, we'd probably need to clean these beasts. So this morning, before Salvatore's 8am arrival and gung ho work ethic took over my yard, I spent 45 minutes, a roll of paper towels, and half a bottle of cleaner wiping down every single, horizontal bar on my front door, 8 foot tall, metal shutters. I certainly didn't get every speck of dirt, but they were looking good. Now only nine sets to go.

My walk into the village. From this, you can see why I am greatly looking
forward to moving to a town with wide sidewalks, even a waterfront
boardwalk with NO traffic. But you can't beat the view here of
Pozzuoli, known as Puteoli in antiquity. Oh...if you think those are
sidewalks on either side of the road, think again. It's trick photography.

For lunch, I walked into the village. Actually, I was walking to the rosticceria to pick up a chicken. Then I realized that we have dinner planned for the next four nights and don't need a chicken. So I decided to walk on to Baby Ciu Ciu, this super fancy, baby clothing store - Baby Armani, anyone? Only 156 euros for a dress! But last summer, I stopped in one time, not realizing they were so fancy, and discovered that they have a sale room where things were 5 and 10 euros. Much more my speed. Yet for some reason, I haven't been back. One last visit to Baby Ciu Ciu netted Nora a pair of totally cool, harem style blue jeans, a hippie top, and a baby bandana that is too cute for words. Then we went to La Piazzetta for pizza, my favorite pizza near our house. Naturally, Nora fell asleep for her afternoon nap when I was on my next to last bite of pizza, necessitating a 30 minute stop on the way home at the gelateria while I waited out the rest of her nap. The things I have to do for that Baby.

A nicer view of the village.

When I got home, Salvatore caught noticed me sneaking entering into my front door and called me around to the front of the house to show me that he was power washing all the bars. Yes, including the front door, the one I'd spent 45 minutes of precious, precious free time cleaning. Dang it! But my bedroom window was open, so he hadn't been able to do that one and wanted me to close the window immediately. I did so, then got busy playing with Baby. And a little thought finally worked its way into my brain that reminded me of our totally crappy windows. So horrible that in the winter (i.e., rainy season), we have to keep towels in the windowsills to soak up all the rain that floods around the edges. I started going through the house, and sure enough, every single room had floods of water in it. Salvatore is extremely thorough in his power washing. And since we no longer have any of our stuff, we also do not have scrap towels to clean up messes. I went outside to get Salvatore, he called Guiseppe, the two of them grabbed a mop and some towels they found somewhere, and they started mopping up all the water.

And that's how I got the inside of my house cleaned, too! Since our house cleaner has had some family, medical emergencies going on for the past six weeks, we've been a little on the dusty side. But not anymore. Sparkling floors, compliments of Salvatore's fastidious power washing. I know it was fastidious because he told me so. Fastidioso. He told me that he is fastidioso with his own home. I'm not sure if he was remarking that he ALSO (as in, like me) is a fastidious cleaner, or if he meant that in HIS home, it is fastidiously cleaned (as in, completely unlike mine). I don't really care. All I know is my floors are now clean and I didn't have to clean them. Salvatore can stay as long as he wants. And Singing Guiseppe, too.

Perfect Summer Day in Italy

Yesterday was as near a perfect day as I've had this summer. I headed back to the beach with a friend who lives down the street. We set up our chairs and umbrella, pulled out water, snacks, and books, then promptly set to the hard job of relaxing on the beach. Our view took in the Baia Castle up on the nearest cliff, then on to Capo Miseno, that famed home of the Roman fleet at the time of Pompeii's eruption, and off in the distance, Capri was visible in the clear air. When time for a cool down swim arrived, I donned snorkel gear, and we set off for a nearby buoy. Where the buoy floats was once dry land, and with this particular stretch of the coastline being a former hotbed of vacation villas for wealthy Romans, under the waters lie the ruins. There are more watery ruins down the road in Baia, but those are for divers. The Arco Felice bits lie just off the beach where we were set up and the water is so shallow that in a couple of places, had I put down my legs, I would have been standing on an old, villa wall. The only villa we found during this swim was not one that had a mosaic floor, although those are out there, too. This one did have several columns, creepy with the algae covering up their former glory. One toppled column was not covered with marine life, so it's brick facing was clear. In other places, the columns just rose up out of the sand bed, with the walls of the villa surrounding them.

I'm always a little wary when I put on a snorkel. I'm not completely comfortable in the water, and for me, the unknown can sometimes be a good thing. I'm not sure I actually want to know what creatures are swimming around me. As with everything else in my new life, things are different here! There is no marine life. Nada. Just around the villa, I was thankful to finally see a few small, colorful fish - I suppose due to the marine growth on the ruins providing food. That made me feel a little better, but I've never snorkeled a place that just had nothing going on. Is it water pollution? Just a fact of no food = no creatures? Come to think of it, I now recall a headline from a couple of weeks ago in Italian, meaning I paid little attention to it. It was a news banner flashing across my email home page with the words "bianca" (white) and "Naples" in it and a picture of a shark. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention. This seems like it could have been important now that I'm actually swimming in these waters...okay, I've just done a Google search on the matter and found nothing. Although apparently some company named Evinrude is now distributing something called the White Shark line in Italy - see, that headline I read could have said anything. That's why I just count on ignorance and prayer to stay safe here.

Following a few hours under the summer sun and sporting a lovely stretch of skin that my sunblock spray missed, we packed it in and headed to our respective homes. Since sitting in the sun all day is hard work, I had no desire to cook dinner. As it turns out, a J-O-B. is actually hard work, so Nathan, too, was missing a desire to cook. He made the most lovely suggestion for dinner. You might think it was the words, "Let's eat out." That, however, is not the relaxing, easy way out - dinner out can be complicated, and very long, unless it's pizza. Since we're just off our diets, we're trying to spend weeknights with more healthy options. Off we went to Gennaro's, where we picked up prosciutto, salami, mozzarella di bufala, fontina cheese, and a large loaf of bread. Back home, adding in some olives and tomatoes and fresh basil to our spread along with glasses of wine, and we enjoyed my favorite, Italian dinner of all. And best of all, while we were at Gennaro's, we also stopped in to the gelateria for dessert first - a cone of biscotti gelato, and the day was perfect!