Ferragosto Woes

August 15 was Ferragosto, an Italian holiday that kicks off vacation time. Some families take the entire month of August for vacation, some take the week of Ferragosto or the rest of the month. But the actual day is marked, in these parts, with fireworks, closed businesses and trips to the beach. For those who cannot take a long holiday, then Ferragosto and the days following are their short holiday, so this year, the holiday days were Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Ferragosto is not the time to go to a market, try to eat at your favorite restaurant, go to the beach (unless you like traffic and crowds), or need a major repair. Naturally, we need a major repair.

Yesterday, Nathan went to work as usual. Later, I went down to the garage to leave for a doctor's appointment and found the garage door would only lift halfway. Our garage door is old, the motor is old, the whole thing acts up periodically, so I just kept opening and closing the door, giving it some pushes to help it along. Open, close, open, close - this went on for some time as in growing disbelief, I realized the door was actually broken, broken. Not just sort of broken. I am used to "sort of broken" with pretty much every aspect of our house - we have to turn the kitchen sink hot water on and off using the shut-off valve underneath the sink, the dryer works sometimes but not others and is on some sort of work schedule that only it knows, the A/C pipe that drains condensation water outside is clogged, so water spends all day spilling all over our back patio...you get the idea. But broken, broken is a real problem. Knowing I had about a five minute window left to now actually make my appointment on time, I called Nathan in a panic to have him tell me how to disengage the motor so I could hand lift the door. He refused to tell me, saying the door was far too heavy and I should not attempt it. He would come home from work to do it. At which point my tears started. With the garage door half open, I got into the car, started it so I could blast A/C and try to dry the rivers of sweat soaking my skin and clothing, and just sobbed and sobbed. Then I realized all the Ferragosto beach goers were back to parking on our street (after a parking ticket frenzy a few weeks ago), they could see into our garage as they wandered by with their towels and man purses, and it did not look good to have a running car in a garage with a woman slumped over the wheel. I did not take having a broken garage door well, mainly because I could see into the future, and the future looked like Ferragosto.

Nathan arrived, we realized the lifting cable had snapped on one side, and that meant he could not manually lift the door. With the lifting cable snapped, the counterweights that hold the door up have dropped. These counterweights are inaccessible behind the framing of the garage door. So we had one car out of the garage (thankfully) and one car stuck inside it. We can get by on one car easily. No problem. Except...we have nowhere to put that one car so that we can freely access it. Parking on our street is not an option since two friends came over earlier this week to go out to dinner, and in the hour and a half that we were one block away at our local pizzeria, they both had their windows smashed out. In addition, the police have been issuing parking tickets on our street, since technically, there is a no parking sign posted. Some friends who live up the street were able to house our car for one night, but our longer term option until the garage door is repaired is to park at some other friends' apartment complex (behind gates) two towns over from us. That will work fine, except let's say I go into labor in the middle of the night. The metro train by our house doesn't run after 9pm, so we have no way of getting to our car. And for daytime, Nathan will be getting rides to work, which means if I go into labor in the middle of the day, he will have no car, and I will have no car.

None of these options are workable at 38 weeks pregnant, so we spent all day calling our landlord. It's Ferragosto, so no answer. I decided to go to our Housing office on base in order to have them contact all numbers they have for our landlord. Our Housing office is staffed by Italians who get all the Italian holidays. It's Ferragosto, so Housing is closed. It finally occurred to me to drive to our landlord's hotel and see if anyone was around. And were they ever - the hotel is hopping for Ferragosto. All of Naples seemed to be at the hotel with one glaring exception - our landlord. I knew two people there staffing the place, but they did not grasp the urgency of my problem and did not seem inclined to provide me with any way to contact our landlord. The message, "I need access to my car for when I go into labor!" did not get across. The electrician who fixes a bunch of stuff at our house was there, so I explained the problem, and he came to take a look. This was the condensed version of our conversation:

Him: "You cannot open it manually. It's too heavy."

Me: Just staring at him, but thinking, "Mmmmm-hmmmmm. That's what I told you."

Him:  "I cannot fix it because the problem is not electrical. Fabio needs to fix it. Fabio is on vacation in the South."

Me:  "When does Fabio return."

And then I got the shoulder shrug. I knew it was coming and had been dreading it. "Maybe on Monday" was the very hesitant reply.

Me, pointing to our one car parked on the street:  "I cannot park the car on the street [and explaining why]."

Him: Staring at me, then the garage door, then back at me.

Me:  Staring at him, then the garage door, then back at him.

Stalemate.

Note to self: Do not ever have a serious, but non-emergency, situation during Ferragosto. Also, do not go into labor before due date of September 3.

New Year's Eve Flashback

There is nothing like posting a New Year's Eve video in April, right? I tried to do this way back in January. It was my first attempt at uploading a video to YouTube, and things did not go well. After hours of waiting for the upload to complete, I finally gave up and went to bed...and pretty much forgot I'd ever even tried to show you all our phenomenal New Year's Eve here in Naples! Four months later, I thought to check and found the video all waiting for me on my YouTube channel. The link is below. Last time I tried to link to a video (not my own), you Americans could not open it. So I don't know if this will work out for you either. If so, then great - you can see why Naples is one of THE BEST places to ever spend a New Year's Eve. If not, then imagine this: We are on top of a small mountain (created by a volcanic eruption in the 1500s) with a 200 degree or so view that includes Arco Felice, Pozzuoli, Naples, the Sorrentine Peninsula, Capri (but it's dark, so you can't really see it or make out their fireworks unless you know exactly where to look), Lucrino, Baia, Capo Miseno, Bacoli, Monte di Procida, the islands of Procida and Ischia, and Monterusciello. Fireworks bursting at every single point as the camera pans around. Quantity over quality, baby. These aren't the best shows in the world, but since every one and his brother are shooting them off their balconies, from their yards, and from piazzas, the sheer volume IS the show. You'll hear a friend's voice in the background, and through my clever cinematic skills (aka sheer, dumb luck) the video ends just as he says, "Only in Naples." True that.

Buona Pasqua a Tutti!

I love this photo of our kitchen during the food prep. How Italian does this look!

Happy Easter, Y'all! As you might imagine, Easter is a big deal in Italy. Good Friday is a day where many towns, especially in the south, have processions carrying religious figures or floats (we attended one, which I'll post about in a few days). Today, of course, is Easter, but Italians take the holiday one step further with La Pasquetta - Little Easter - the Monday after Easter. A long weekend of festas. We had prepared for no celebrations at all - no chocolate, no special food for dinner, no plans to visit friends, no Easter baskets. Just church and home. But the beauty of Italy is that sometimes, all you have to do is drive down a short road to come up with a feast.

With our church folks asking us what we had planned for Easter, and our one word response of "sofa" as the reply, I think we both started feeling a bit inferior in our planning. Nothing says "Christ is Risen" like a whole bunch of food, after all. Nathan decided to stop on the way home and pick up some mussels from a roadside stand. A few more yards down the road, we passed a stand selling bread. That was my cue to call for a stop, and when I hopped out to make our purchase, we hit jackpot with some beans and roasted artichokes as well. Thankfully, we had friends riding home from church with us because it's near impossible to get our roadside food purchase amounts down to fit a two person family. In this case, we'd ended up with 2 kilos of mussels, a kilo of beans, five roasted artichokes, and two loaves of bread. All for under 15euros. We were able to share the spoils with our friends and eliminate half the food going into our trash bin. Back at home, Nathan worked his kitchen magic, cooking the mussels in a sauce of butter, thyme, white wine, shallots, and fresh lemon juice, throwing some pasta in a pot and cooking up a quick sauce of sage from our recently planted herb garden in some melted butter, and sauteing the beans. Our planned lunch of soup out of can instead became a feast fit for an elaborate dinner. A Buona Pasqua indeed.

Santa's a Witch!

Not really. But he is an old, wrinkly woman who carries a broom and has a hooked nose. Tonight is the night that La Befana visits children and leaves them treats here in Italy. There are several different stories as to her origins. One story is that the wise men got lost while trying to find the Baby Jesus, so they stopped at an old woman's house to ask for directions. She put them up for night, but declined their invitation to come with them due to her household chore list (boy, does that sound familiar!). Befana regretted this decision, so she followed after the Wise Men, giving treats to little children as bribes for them to help her find the Baby Jesus. She still hasn't found Him, so to this day, Befana visits children and gives them treats in search of the Babe (or, she gives each child treats in hope that he/she is the Babe). Another story is that the Befana legend has come down from a pagan goddess of Roman times who gave gifts to celebrate the new year. OR, the ancient Romans visited an old crone at the winter solstice to have their fortunes told, and Befana is the modern day old crone who gives gifts instead of fortunes. And why the broom? Some say she rides her broom through the air, some say she needs the broom to clean up the soot after coming down the chimney, and yet another explanation is that cleanliness is so important to her that upon seeing the Star of Bethlehem in the sky, she set off to find the Baby and help the Mother with her cleaning. As far as her name goes, one theory is based on the Italian word for epiphany - Epifania. Befana is a play on Epifania...maybe. One Italian town even sets up a post office where children can mail letters to Befana (but she lives here in Italy, not in the North Pole). Santa may like milk and cookies, but wine and biscotti are Befana's preferred treats. And by the way, bad little children do indeed get lumps of coal in their stockings from Befana.