Smiles on our faces

Sometimes I think that in America we are all going around with too many smiles on our faces.

I buy blood oranges at Shoprite and, upon cutting them open at home, find them to be dessicated. Next time I am in Shoprite, I complain, thinking the produce manager would like to know. I get a blank look and an oh, well, maybe they'll be better next time, and have a nice day.

I go to a local 'Italian' restaurant and order a Caesar salad. After one bite, I know something is off, way off. I call the waitress over and tell her that the salad tastes strange. She said, oh, we make Caesar salad with Chinese cabbage. I look at her, kind of speechless, and mutter...but Caesar salad isn't made with Chinese cabbage, anywhere, ever. She just smiles brightly and says that their customers like it that way, and have a nice day.

'Hi, I'm Dave, I'll be your server tonight.'

'How is everything?'

'Everything alright?'

'Ya doin' good?'


'Here's your check.'

Walking through the City

There are times when I really worry about going back to New Jersey someday, and what that would mean for my sense of who I am. I am sort of a chameleon, able all my life to take on the colors and flavors of the milieu I am in. For example, at different times of my life I have been: San Francisco college student; political volunteer; corporate wife; career woman; rural/suburban housewife; and, now, woman about Verona, a city of 260,000.


My last iteration in rural/suburban New Jersey was one that I found to be boring. So easy to settle into a routine of gardening, shopping, all that...I needed more. So, I campaigned hard to move to Italy. My husband said that I became like the Queen Mary setting off for Europe...a straight line, full steam ahead.

Here, yet another side of me has emerged. I have become more independent. Paradoxically, not having a car seems to be the key to independence. I walk everywhere by necessity, or take public transportation. Going out the door into the city on foot is always an adventure. This isn't possible in rural/suburban New Jersey. You need a car, period, end of story. You have to plan where you are going, you miss seeing a lot while on your way to your destination.

Angel and I have developed symbiotically parallel lives...he cycles, I help out my friend at her shop. The apartment is home base. He travels with his cycling group; I have ventured out to travel alone. In New Jersey, we would always be going to places together. We are actually more independent of each other in Verona. That leads, I am happy to say, to being more 'together' than we ever were: planning wonderful trips, going to events, running into friends while walking in the city. I don't want to give that up, and am seeing that life in New Jersey can be isolating. It takes so long to get anywhere, we waste so much time in cars.

Writer's Block

I have been wondering why I haven't been writing in my blog. It's been a month. Well, then I remembered Thumper's mother who always told Thumper, 'If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.' My mother told me that, too.

I have been keeping my own counsel about how I feel about Italy and Verona and Italians in general for several reasons: I don't like to be accurately accused of making sweeping generalizations; I realize that my current feelings are just feelings and, as such, are bound to change...I hope... to more positive feelings; and, last but never least, I don't want to write something I may have to retract. Just as I still don't really know what I want to be when I grow up, though a glimmer is starting to come through, I am not sure how I really feel about this long experiment in international living.

So, I'll take a stab at this another time. I just wanted to go record as saying to myself in my blog that I have not gone away, that I am still thinking, thinking, thinking. Too much thinking is analysis paralysis. I'll leave it at that.