DIY

It’s election day here. I casually brought up the topic with my co-worker as to whom she voted for and she busts out with 2 photos of Berlusconi that she carries in her wallet, next to the photo of her boyfriend. Guess that answers my question! I have to say that I am shocked, despite the fact that Berlusconi has already been elected twice she is the first person I have met who has openly declared her love for the man, though Italians are so private about who they vote for. They will tell you without blinking an eye who much they earn a month, but ask who they voted for, well, they blush, tell you that who you voted for is private, and then turn away. I do know that Lorenzo split his vote, saying that he voted for one party for the Senate and another party for the House, rather like ordering from a menu at a Chinese restaurant, seeing as there are more than 140 parties to choose from, though only 5 or 6 “big” ones. He didn’t work this election, which was a bummer because when we have elections it is a boon for cops to get in overtime, as two police officers are required to be in the polling place starting the night before the election and stay until all the votes are counted. Yes, they sleep there, and they take turns working, eating (they can leave for meals), and resting. Lorenzo always takes the books that he has been trying to read since our last summer vacation and our Play Station, and other than being kind of boring, I mean, you are just sitting there watching people vote, there are worse ways to pass a weekend on the job. At any rate we dedicated Sunday afternoon to cleaning out the basement storage room.
We are in the midst of several home improvement projects. New blinds for the study to replace the 40 year old green ones that been there when the study was still a porch and not a room. And then down in our storage area in the basement Lorenzo has decided that he what he really needs in his life is a weight bench and a room to lift weights in, this from a man who hasn’t been inside a gym in over a year, a man who hauled his heavy barbells up and down flights of stairs when we moved where they had been under the crib in the baby’s corner, placed them in a corner of our bedroom and hasn’t touched them since. (And from a man who is as slim as he was when I met him, the jerk!) However part of the plan involves putting down a tiled floor in the storage area and putting up new storage shelves and better organizing what could really only be called a junk room right now, except that my beloved dryer is kept down there as well, so I am secretly kind of happy about it. Ironically, our garage has a beautiful cream colored tiled floor, put down by the previous owners, that our diesel engine car drips oil onto, while our basement storage room sits there nakedly exposed to whatever walks over it. Honestly, it is just the kind of floor you would want oil dripped on as it never looks clean, even when you have just washed it. I really don’t know the reasoning behind these decorating decisions, but you can be sure that whatever tile we put down it won’t be as nice as what we have in the garage.
I usually hate home improvement projects involving Lorenzo. He is there, concentrating on whatever it is he is doing, while he leaves me the job of keeping an eye on the kids and running and fetching things for him. I don’t mind helping him, but I do mind helping him and try to keep two small children from climbing up ladders and picking up hammers. We started after nap time, with Livia clinging to me, knowing that I wanted to put her down and when I did finally detach her from my hip immediately got into arguments with Giulio over the toys that we had dumped out on a plastic sheet for the kids to play on just outside the storage room while we dealt with the stuff inside. The toys were all things that had been given to the children either when they were already too old, or where they seemed to have too many pieces and be too large to ever be properly put together. Soon the floor was covered with random pieces of a complicated race track and an “activity” table meant for one year olds that someone had given me for Giulio when he was already almost two, but that he was happy to assemble now.
The scary thing about going through our stuff was to find out how much stuff we have that we weren’t using, nor did we ever intend to use again. Apparently if I didn’t want it in the house I moved it down to the basement for That Day when it would be cleaned out, therefore 9 objects out of 10 were deemed Not Needed, including my wedding dress. You can be sure I’m going 100% couture the day I marry George Clooney, so I won’t be needed my old Bridal and Formal gown. And what was I thinking hanging onto 5 bags of maternity clothes, not one of which I ever intend to wear again, even if I did have another baby. Nothing makes a pregnant woman feel more beautiful than wearing maternity clothes from another decade. I discovered that I have an obscene amount of baby clothes, but as one of my best friends in Italy has just announced that she is pregnant I must hang onto them for a little longer, just in case it is a girl, because it feels like a shame to just give them away after the days of hunting at Value City, Target, Gap Outlet, and Old Navy to make sure that Livia was the best dressed girl at the nido.
The Hoarder Award went to Lorenzo for the 3, that’s right 3 irons that we had, and of which he would only part with 1. Though I explained that I had a fantastic iron and that if anything ever happened to it I was going right out to buy another and would not be dealing with those dinky little irons again, he argued that they didn’t take up much space and kept 1, plus the travel iron, though ironing is the one thing he won’t do. Nice to know that he has my best interests at heart. I also found several old purses which I was at least smart enough to clean out before putting it on the charity heap because it contained, oddly enough my dental x-rays, and a business card from a hotel that Lorenzo and I stayed at in Florence when we went to visit my cousins who had come from New York. The purse was a knock off of a style that was in about 5 years ago, and I cringed to think that I walked around Florence with it, God knows what my chic New York cousin thought about it—hopefully she didn’t notice.
Lorenzo dug out an enormous jar of ancient olives from his parents, another gift along the same lines as the prosciutto and wondered where to dump them, along with several jars of preserves that had been sent to the basement and never seen again.
In the midst of all this cleaning I kept going out to check on the kids and often finding that Livia, after her initial reluctance to be torn from my side, had taken to doing a David Copperfield on me and disappearing. I found her in the yard watching Terry water some lettuce, dust sticking to her face in streaks thanks to her snotty nose and looking like one of those children you see on the money raising campaign for Third World countries, minus the GAP raincoat. And took her back downstairs where now Lorenzo, with dust flying through the air, was attacking the 25 year old wooden storage shelves that looked like they had been put together by someone who was overly fond of nails. Just the thing to have around small children! The kids eventually took refuge with Terry and we were able to drag out the pieces of the shelf and sweep up, we gave Eugenio’s dad most of the wood, since he has a fire place and didn’t mind the nails.
In the end though other than being a bit grimy the kids were no worse for wear, Lorenzo was thrilled to have taken down the shelves, and I was just relieved that no one got hurt. Now perhaps you understand why I don’t like home improvement jobs.