The thing with the supermarkets

So, this is the thing about the supermarkets. They are not open on Sundays. It came to me in a vision (um. not really.) a few weeks ago. I'm sure you can guess on which day of the week I had the vision.

Because of the thing with the supermarkets, there is something that is not a good idea. You know what it is? Forgetting to go grocery shopping on Saturday. Particularly twice in a row.

Because you end up noticing, as you wipe up the crumbs from your last breakfast roll, that the combined contents of your fridge and cupboard are as follows: 1 can of green beans, half a jar of nutella, some dry pasta, butter, and 1 cup of (expired) strawberry yogurt. You vaguely wonder what you will eat for the rest of the day before wandering off to shower, read, fold the laundry you did last week, and try to convince yourself that washing the windows would be a good way to spend the morning (this last is likely to be an unsuccessful venture).

The problem comes up again towards lunchtime, when you get hungry. You host a mini-debate inside your head: stick your face back in the cupboard in the hopes that something appetizing will have materialized, or get dressed and go outside to find food. Option B will probably win out, in the end. You enjoy a pleasant walk down the stairs and up the street and smoothly negotiate the acquisition of a speck and brie piadina. This transaction even provides you with the opportunity to feel slick and superior as you order your sandwich and make all of the relevant decisions (warmed or cold; for here or wrapped to go) smoothly, without missing a beat, while next to you a tourist struggles to understand what "speck" is. (Speck, as it happens, is a bit of a mystery. It's some particular cut of ham, but which exact cut or why it's called speck is a topic that may merit a Google search.)

So you're set for the afternoon, apart from an unfortunate craving for chocolate towards four in the afternoon that's annoying but not quite strong enough for you to go all the way back downstairs and try to figure out how to procure some.

And then comes dinnertime. You still haven't procured any additional victuals, and that's how you come to be staring into your kitchen cabinets, pondering the compatibility of green beans and fusilli, which is probably something that would horrify your Italian roommates possibly into unconsciousness. Since you have no desire to shave years off the end of their lives, you are trying to convince yourself that you really do see the appeal of pasta with olive oil on it when your roommate returns from her weekend away, bearing mushrooms and offering to make risotto for the two of you.

And that's one of the reasons for which, sometimes, living in Italy is just delightful. Maybe things are more inconvenient sometimes (the washing machine that takes two and a half hours, the supermarkets whose hours only overlap with your free time once a week) but it all evens out in the end. If I lived in America, I'd have access to a faster washing machine, but I also probably wouldn't have so much free time during the weekends to begin with. And I could pick up and go to the supermarket at any time of day or night I pleased, but the likelihood of someone offering to make me mushroom risotto and engage my sorry B1 level Italian in conversation over it would be slim indeed.