If there is a god, I feel sorry for him/her-
I realized the other night that doing this job is in a small way what it must feel like to be god, for this reason: If I do everything right, nobody notices or says a thing. If something goes wrong everyone is quick to curse me.
In Italy, nobody likes to go to work and italians are quick to think of excuses to skirt their jobs. An example of this is for Halloween. Here, everyone has some vague notion of a generic "saints day" on the first of November, and they use this is an excuse to take off an entire week. Well, I think most italians worked on Monday the 30th and Tuesday the 31st, but then took the rest of the week off. Leone, going to the American school, took Tuesday off as well. Anyway, so the family decided to go to Genova for two days to attend the Festival Della Scienza, leaving me in the house alone. This is fairly normal, and I don't really take it personally because a) I enjoy the time alone and b) Caterina usually says something like "Oh, we would take you with us but Alessandro rarely gets so much alone time with the kids and etc., etc." Anyway, so she said basically to just turn on the alarm when I leave and to make sure the dogs are fed and to enjoy the time off and that they would return sometime Thursday evening. It sounded good to me, so I relaxed, did some reading, hung out with Gaia, studied some Italian and had a nice time. Thursday night, at about 8:30, I was in Florence. I had just given an english lesson to this cool guy I met named Fabio and I called up Gaia to see if she wanted to eat dinner. So I went over to her place and Caterina called me. She asked if I was at the house and I said no, that I was at Gaia's about to eat with her. Caterina said that they were almost home and she wondered if I could be there to help make dinner (Frank and Darshani also got the two days off). I said sure, no problem, and, sadly, left Gaia's house without eating. When I got home, Caterina almost immediately started screaming at me because I wasn't there, making dinner when they arrived! Then she said it was too late to eat and that everybody was going to bed without dinner, that she was furious with me because I hadn't done any work around the house while they were gone (?? What?) and that I should think about these things. I said all the obvious things that someone in my position should say, such as "I'm sorry, you said I had the time off, I didn't know what time you were returning, if you were expecting me to make you dinner you should have told me, I did everything you said to do (setting the alarm when I left and feeding the dogs), etc." But all of these perfectly legitimate responses were treated like attacks towards Caterina. Apparently, I should have called Caterina to ask if they were going to be home in time for dinner and that she can't be burdened with having to think of EVERYTHING (Nevermind the fact that she had 5 hours in the car to think "Hey, maybe I should call Jimmy and tell him we're going to be home at 9 and hungry?"). On top of that, apparently, feeding the dogs was my only concern in addition to my other, never-before-stated duties that I didn't know about but that I'm supposed to be doing, such as straightening a bookshelf that has been sitting untouched in the kid's room since I got here and is only in minimal disarray (at worst), or preparing Leone's new desk for the next week of school, a desk which is nothing except an empty wooden desk with a pencil holder and Leone's backpack sitting on the surface, which cannot be any more organized as far as I can tell, or some other made-up-on-the-spot-by-Caterina-for-the-purposes-of-having-something-to-yell-at-me-for-not-doing duty.
*sigh*
I went to bed hungry, upset, and unappreciated.
I realized the other night that doing this job is in a small way what it must feel like to be god, for this reason: If I do everything right, nobody notices or says a thing. If something goes wrong everyone is quick to curse me.
In Italy, nobody likes to go to work and italians are quick to think of excuses to skirt their jobs. An example of this is for Halloween. Here, everyone has some vague notion of a generic "saints day" on the first of November, and they use this is an excuse to take off an entire week. Well, I think most italians worked on Monday the 30th and Tuesday the 31st, but then took the rest of the week off. Leone, going to the American school, took Tuesday off as well. Anyway, so the family decided to go to Genova for two days to attend the Festival Della Scienza, leaving me in the house alone. This is fairly normal, and I don't really take it personally because a) I enjoy the time alone and b) Caterina usually says something like "Oh, we would take you with us but Alessandro rarely gets so much alone time with the kids and etc., etc." Anyway, so she said basically to just turn on the alarm when I leave and to make sure the dogs are fed and to enjoy the time off and that they would return sometime Thursday evening. It sounded good to me, so I relaxed, did some reading, hung out with Gaia, studied some Italian and had a nice time. Thursday night, at about 8:30, I was in Florence. I had just given an english lesson to this cool guy I met named Fabio and I called up Gaia to see if she wanted to eat dinner. So I went over to her place and Caterina called me. She asked if I was at the house and I said no, that I was at Gaia's about to eat with her. Caterina said that they were almost home and she wondered if I could be there to help make dinner (Frank and Darshani also got the two days off). I said sure, no problem, and, sadly, left Gaia's house without eating. When I got home, Caterina almost immediately started screaming at me because I wasn't there, making dinner when they arrived! Then she said it was too late to eat and that everybody was going to bed without dinner, that she was furious with me because I hadn't done any work around the house while they were gone (?? What?) and that I should think about these things. I said all the obvious things that someone in my position should say, such as "I'm sorry, you said I had the time off, I didn't know what time you were returning, if you were expecting me to make you dinner you should have told me, I did everything you said to do (setting the alarm when I left and feeding the dogs), etc." But all of these perfectly legitimate responses were treated like attacks towards Caterina. Apparently, I should have called Caterina to ask if they were going to be home in time for dinner and that she can't be burdened with having to think of EVERYTHING (Nevermind the fact that she had 5 hours in the car to think "Hey, maybe I should call Jimmy and tell him we're going to be home at 9 and hungry?"). On top of that, apparently, feeding the dogs was my only concern in addition to my other, never-before-stated duties that I didn't know about but that I'm supposed to be doing, such as straightening a bookshelf that has been sitting untouched in the kid's room since I got here and is only in minimal disarray (at worst), or preparing Leone's new desk for the next week of school, a desk which is nothing except an empty wooden desk with a pencil holder and Leone's backpack sitting on the surface, which cannot be any more organized as far as I can tell, or some other made-up-on-the-spot-by-Caterina-for-the-purposes-of-having-something-to-yell-at-me-for-not-doing duty.
*sigh*
I went to bed hungry, upset, and unappreciated.
posted by J.B.K. at 7:14 AM
14 Comments:
awww.... maybe allasendro keeps you around just so catarina has someone to yell at besides him....
only one update.... we demand more.
Whats new w/ gaia? how is the italin learning going? What have you seen or done that is fun? Are you going to be home for xmas.... etc.
your brother is right! you should write more about gaia and the awesome place you visited... ROMA! c'mon, we took thousand pictures, you should show them to the world! stop complaining about crazy caterina and tell everybody about the fun you are having -if you have...
MSG 4 MATT:
hey, i had a quick look on your blog... you like sopranos... why all americans i know are so obsessed with that??!!
nice pictures of your family, by the way... i wanna see texas!!
Gaia--Come to Texas! Bring Jimmy! We'll teach you how to say, "Ya'll." And feed you chicken fried steak and enchiladas. Not in the same meal.
Don't forget to bring Jimmy.
I'm hoping that Catarina doesn't know about this blog.
Remember to speak up for yourself in a tactful, firm way. You need to develop that skill. And thank god for the Peace Corps. It is your ace in the hole.
Love you a lot, and thanks so much for calling. Call anytime.
Love you, love you, love you,
Mom
What a bitch! I would have quit immediately. The very reason I'm self-employed. I'm no good at taking bullshit criticism.
More pictures please. Let's see what Gaia looks like. Is this all? Way to short a post.
Sounds like Catarina was frustrated about something else and took it out on you. I'm sorry you had to endure her rant. I hope a few days has given you the time to put it behind you, and you're feeling better. I want to see pictures of Rome and more! Hope to hear from you soon.
Two things:
1. I hope Caterina is as bad with computers as you said. If not and if she finds your blog, she'll kill you. Or worse, probably.
2. Quit listening to her. Pretend as if you were, use phrases like "you're right", "yes, I understand", "oh, I should've thought about that" etc. - that will shorten conversations like these a lot. Except for the length of the conversation, *what* you say will not have any effect anyways (like on the relationship between you and her) so might as well just forget about things like pride or logic where it doesn't help the tiniest bit. As soon as you make it obvious to her that she's wrong, it'll get even worse and she'll waste even more of your time, taking her frustration out on you.
Gaia,
It's not that I love the sopranos... its just good entertainment. I don't really associate them with real Italians; more as American thugs. If that makes you feel any better I don't know. As far as seeing Texas goes. I guess you will just have to come here someday. Don't forget your shorts and flip-flops.
Jimmy, just remember: God appreciates you.
As do I. We're essentially the same person, except I drink more coffee.
Que paso, mi hermano?
jimmy, you are a great person. i like everyone else's advice too. but, mostly don't forget to enjoy your life as well. like gaia said, you are doing lots of other fun stuff. and, like cristoph said, you don't want to let catarina spoil your fun or take her frustrations out on you. the worst that could happen is you lose your position. sounds like that might work out for you in the end.
what matt said about the sopranos let me think about something else... (btw, i'm not angry for the stereotype of italians on the screen).
what really worries me is that jimmy is having a bad image of italy living with those people in the castle. italians are not like that! so if he has problems at work, it's not a matter of culture like someone can think - it is just nobility!
i'm so tired of this wrong stereotype that italians don't like working... you should stop writing bollocks on this stupid blog
who was that idiot?
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