Ciao Amore….

Cartoon copied from The International Herald Tribune, August 13, 2012

I would like to dedicate this blog post to my Italian husband, Gustavo Piga.  When I saw the above cartoon in the International Herald Tribune I immediately thought of my husband and myself, the ultimate social media parents.  I showed the cartoon to my male colleagues today at AP Television in Rome, announcing, “Hey guys, look, this is just like Gustavo and me.”  Pietro took one look, “Yeah, but Gustavo has a “pizzetto” (mini beard) and no hair on top and you don’t have big big boobs and big lips!!”

“That’s not the point dingbat,” I answered, “don’t you get it? we’re just like that!”

And so it is.  I have my blog, and my twitter account @mozzarellamamma, and my facebook account.  Gustavo has his blog ( www.gustavopiga.it and his twitter account @gustavopiga and he’s on linkedin.  We blog, we tweet, we email and we text, and sometimes we forget to talk.  Ah, the fine art of conversation, is it disappearing? Over the past year sometimes we have found ourselves at 1am with all the kids in bed sitting at opposite ends of the dining table, computers open, blogging away. (You would think we could think of something better to do at that hour).

So here I sit in steamy Rome on the eve of one of the most important Italian holidays, Ferragosto.  On Ferragosto, nobody, but nobody works in Italy. With the exception of the Pope who has to celebrate the Mass for the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, and me.  Everyone else is at the beach.

Gustavo is at the beach with two of our children, and I imagine he must be beach-blogging, beach-tweeting, or beach-texting.  So here’s just a brief post dedicated to him to say “Ciao Amore, Happy Ferragosto!”

Let’s see if he notices this post, if not I will have to tweet him.

 

14 thoughts on “Ciao Amore….”

  1. I know it is widely believed that NOBODY works in Italy on Ferragosto…but spare a thought for the people who live at the beaches where everybody esle goes on holiday. We work, and we work extremely hard, not only on Ferragosto but every other day of the season from April through to November, often without a day off! (And there’s no such thing as extra pay on festive days either!)
    Buon Ferragosto from the office!

  2. . . totally relate to this – J and I sit opposite each other at the kitchen table doing our thing(s) – sometimes, our laptop lids have more contact than we do! I’m sending her this cartoon in lieu of a game of Scrabble.

  3. It is true; nobody works in the city except a few supermarkets, a few “farmacie” and of course the urgent services but it looks really empty and all offices are closed. All the people are on holiday but of course they go to the sea or to the mountains so in such locations they all work but I would like to swap my situation; they “the ones who work on Ferragosto” to take care of the people on holiday, work only a few months every year; we work 11 months per year and more. The only one who works all the time in Italy is the Pope. (you are not lucky!)
    And now while your husband works on his blog at the sea side you wll have to deal with “CALIGOLA” tha new heat wave that will hit Rome for the next 12 days. I shall have to start working again but I’ll fly away from Rome in the North of Europe just in time to avoid Caligola, at least I hope.

    1. Trisha Thomas

      Thank you Dario for your comment. My husband did manage to tweet an acknowledgement that he has seen my blog post and wishing me a Happy Ferragosto, but still no blog comment.

      Are you kidding about CALIGOLA??? For my blog readers I will explain. Italian meteorologists lately have been giving some frightening names to weather systems. We just got through a horribly hot “anti-cyclone” that came up from the Sahara that they named “NERONE” — remember the emperor who played his lyre while Rome burned!!!

      And now CALIGOLA — in case any of my blog readers don’t know about this lovely Roman Emperor, I will quote the Encyclopedia Britannica – “he showed great cruelty and engaged in despotic caprice.” So, that’s the weather descending on Rome….can’t wait!

  4. Hi Trisha,

    Dear me, with a name like Caligola, you ought to prepare for the worst! We have had triple digit heat here for over a week, but I think it is breaking now. Our meteorologists have yet to adopt names foe weather systems(with the exception of hurricanes.) I can only imagine the names they would come up with. Somehow I think it would be characters from Hollywood films.

    It is good to hear that Gustavo tweeted an acknowledgement along with his best wishes for a good holiday. Do you suppose he realized how perilously close to a mass tweeting he was treading? Just put out the word, and we’ll oblige with mass tweets to Gustavo! We can’t have the guy ignoring you, after all.

    On the subject of tweets & emails, I do worry that the fine art of conversation may join the endangered list, if it has already not done so. I do not tweet much, and I do not text at all, so I have to laugh when I attempt to read some of these communications and find that they are, as the saying goes, Greek to me. I suppose it makes those family dinner conversations and language essay classes all the more important.

    I can relate to you and Gustavo working on your computers. It is the same for Bart and me. It’s the constant tap, tap,tap of the keys punctuated by the occasional laugh. My, how things have changed!

    1. Trisha Thomas

      It’s great to hear from you Adri. I have been thinking I really need to do a separate post on the names they’re giving to these saharan winds– we got through Nero, we are in Caligola and they say next week is Lucifer. And I was thinking about the US meteorologists and the naming of Hurricanes. It seems to me that they give such sweet, girlish names to horrible hurricanes. The name makes you think of a girl with pigtails skipping through the woods collecting flowers and then I can just hear the weathercaster now “Hurricane Betsy has slammed into the Florida coast with 100 mile an hour winds–uprooting trees, shearing roofs off homes and bending lamp-posts….”

      Is there a rhyme and reason to all these names, or is it just the meteorologists idea of fun?

      And on to the fine art of conversation….I am a big believer in it. I really need to do something about this situation.

  5. I am lying in bed reading this on my ipad, my hubby is lying next to me reading his ipad. He’s more likely to look at this cartoon if I email him it rather than lean over and show him. Enough said!

    1. Trisha Thomas

      I love it!! My husband and I aren’t the only social media induced dysfunctional couple!! Interestingly, he hasn’t bothered to comment on this post, but at least he did a direct tweet acknowledgement.

      1. Funny, but I never fully realized just how crazy Bart’s and my communication trail is until I read the comment from BacktoBodrum and your reply. Bart and I will be sitting at our desks, no more than 7 feet from one another and I say “Oh, honey, you have to see (or read) this.” His response “Email it to me” Seriously. You and BacktoBodrum are not alone.

        1. Trisha Thomas

          Wasn’t Back to Bodrum’s comment hilarious! It really is a crazy, social media world out there.

  6. Here I am, the Italian husband. Just making sure that you all know that, even in the golden age, we never did anything better at that hour. Not now, though, and this is the great news: it is fantastic to face each other and work on our blogs at night. Fantastic. Perfect silence, outside and inside the house, and every 10-15 minutes chatting about something interesting or stupid is simply great. Ciao amore, we miss you here.

  7. i have to say, because i don’t have any facebook or any other social media account this
    doesn’t fit with me but i find this post is very funny, great post T.
    give a big hug to Ca. and rest of the member of Piga/Thomas members…

    1. Trisha Thomas

      Thank you!!! And given that I know your wife is a bit of a social media junkie, I suggest you stay the way you are….no need to become like the rest of us crazies, one in a marriage is more than enough.

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