Riposo Drives Me Nuts

When I was small I hated nap time. I remember laying on the couch staring at the ceiling and wondering when I would be big enough where my toes would reach the end of the couch and I wouldn't have to take naps anymore. My mom, on the other hand, would love nap time. I probably ran her into exhaustion. She sat on the chair across from me to ensure that I wouldn't escape and sooner than later I would hear her snore. Her mouth would slowly drop open and she looked dead. It used to scare me thinking that maybe she was dead so I often woke her up to ask if nap time was over.

In provincial Italy (small town Italy) riposo is the official nap time after lunch. Stores close, the church closes and the streets are empty of any human life. It is pretty creepy. You are more likely to see a vampire or walrus in the street at that time than a human. If you are alone in the street you may as well walk down the middle of the highway since you are likely to be the only human around. Now, what time is riposo? Ahhh....you are being too precise! It can be anywhere from 12-4/5/6/7 PM. Yeah. Now THAT is what I call a lunch break. The elderly and those who get long lunch breaks shut down shop, eat a meal at a slow pace then some go off to nap and it is a mystery to me what the young people do. Riposo drives me crazy though. As a girl who worked in Baltimore eating a sandwich at my desk, sometimes, others just having a tall coffee for lunch, I don't see any value in taking a 3-6 hour lunch break. The streets are dangerously empty, the stores are closed. Even if I wanted to go twiddle my thumbs in a fancy department store I couldn't because all of the workers are snoozing with their swollen feet propped up on their mothers living room pillows.

The stillness, quiet and utter silence of riposo drives me to silent despair. If I were Queen of Italy I could grant a 2 hour riposo but never one longer than that. Not one minute. I would wake up my trumpet blower and have him blow his trumpet and have my Quasimodo ring the heck out of the bell tower to wake everyone up. But I am not Queen, even though when I was seven I thought I could grow up to be a blond German queen, not being blond or German, of course that makes sense. During riposo, I get jittery. My ascendant Virgo pops out wanting to pick the minute details of things out, or better yet clean. Here are a few samples of what I have done during the eary silent hours of riposo in normally loud and vibrant Italy. See, that is the other thing. Here, in Abruzzo people are chatty, loud when they are happy, the cars honk, the moms yell for their kids to hurry up then it is like zombies make them all with their noise of life just drop dead during riposo. Unreal. I don't understand. But here is what I have busied myself with.

Drawing

Blank page like the blank streets.

Skip to the dootle.

Making lists of how many purses I own, how much each cost and what the cost per use is for each one to see what style is worth purchasing or getting rid of in the future.

Virgo, you see? Nit picky! But, this is fascinating, my Coach purse has cost me 3 cents per use whereas my cheapy one has cost me $10 bucks because I hardly use it! Quality quality!

Cost per use, purse name, years had, usage (daily / hardly)

Cleaning! Ahhhh...to be a Leo with a Virgo Ascendant! Everyone is snoring, no one to get underfoot. I look left: El Gordo (Fatty) looking blankly at me. I look right: Bentley winking his eyes sleepily.

Minding his manners

 I go quietly like a thief in the night to slip on my purple cleaning gloves, my bucket of cleaning products and go scrub away all the bacteria you can't see but exists. It is so refreshing like taking a shower after a hot sweaty day. Clean! Cleaning is so much more of an art form than a duty. There are ways to clean, to make a house warm and inviting, to keep your family safe from growing bacteria, to work out even while cleaning. Did you know that in NYC people take a Butler Aerobics class? Some idiots actually pay for that! Whoever invented it is a pure genius, I tell you. Seriously, sweep under the table, the bed and you have done 5 loooong squats at least and the air you breathe when you sleep is cleaner. Anyways, riposo is a great time to clean. Wash down those walls and doorknobs! Seriously, who knows who scratched their who-knows-what then picked their nose and opened your door...or office door. Clean that thing! If you ever want to read my favorite cleaning book, the do exist, check out Home Comforts by Cheryl Medelson. Other than being a Harvard Graduate and attorney, she is an expert cleaner and homemaker and her book gives great advice on how to get started becoming a domestic diva. Another favorite is Emily Posts "Etiquette" where she says exactly how many pairs of everything you should own under each condition of life. All of these books were read during....guess.....riposo!

Read. 

I have to be careful choosing what to read during riposo. Risposo is eerily quiet and creepy and long enough for me to sit there and read Russian history and how Peter the 3rd Czar of Russia beat the heck out of his dogs. That is to say it is better to read more comical history like "The Gospel According to Coco Chanel" than to read about how Prince John Doe killed Queen Jane Doe. Even if it is historical and should in theory make me smart and brilliant I can't take reading things that make me sad when riposo is already annoying and theoretically depressing.

I found a stack of great books! Edgar Allen Poe in Italian! What's up Raven Fans!

So there is riposo for you. Some consider it a dream but I consider it a boring long creepy nightmare and waste of time. If riposo were eliminated I bet the economy would pick up. Those are 3 hours of work eliminated that could be used for jobs. Just saying. Is nap time over yet?