Wax on Wax off

I finally found a salon today to wax these catepillars off my face---my eyebrows had grown out of control, and w/o knowing the language, it's taken longer than expected to find a salon capable to handle a job this size!ha I was introduced to the salon owner by 2 friends of mine, who have had luck there w/ their haircuts, leg waxing etc. Thankfully, my friend Alexis has a Neopolitan boyfriend, so she's become fluent in Italian, and could take care of not only the introduction to the salon owner, but also communication of my waxing needs and cost negotiation. If you don't get a price up front, you're likely to be charged a lot more after the fact, so upfront price negotiations are always necessary. So, we stopped by the salon, and Christina, the aestetician said she could take me in 5 minutes and would charge 4 Euro to wax my brows. Wow..what a bargain, considering I pay $18 at InSpa in Seattle. Evan got all sorts of attention as I waited for my appointment, and once ready for me, Christina took me in the back room. The salon assistant, Angela, brought me espresso, as I waited for Christina to get the wax ready. While I waited they asked me if I wanted my hair shampooed, which I didn't, but the inquiry did make me a bit self conscious as I wondered.."what, does my hair look super greasy or something?...I mean, I know I didn't wash it today, but I didn't think it looked that bad"....ha So, without a shampoo, I just waited in the chair for my brow wax. Christina came back with the hot wax and a metal knife (sort of looked like one of those double-rounded knives that you frost cakes with),and I started to get nervous...I mean, heat and metal and sensitive eye area skin spell 'burn' to me, but I kept my cool to see what would happen. Christina first tested the wax on her hand, and deduced it was too hot. She waited a minute, dipped the metal knife in the wax, blew on it, and then headed towards my brow with it. All I could think of was being branded w/ a red hot poker! I totally screamed when she touched it to my skin! ha..just kidding, no I didn't, it actually didn't hurt at all, BUT the fear that it was going to hurt, did up my adrenaline for a second! Since noone in the salon spoke any English, and since my friends had left after negotiating the price for me, I couldn't totally describe how I wanted my brows, but at least they are cleaned up, and I don't have burn marks to remember the experience by...just coiffed brows, and a new salon to call my own:)

Now, for those of you following my bloomers saga, I tried to pick up my laundry yesterday, but due to January 6th being a big Italian holiday, the day the witch (or something like that) of Christmas delivers gifts and chocolate coal to kids (because all kids are bad at least once in the year), I couldn't get my laundry because it was closed. So, I left the hotel this morning at 8:30 to meet up w/ 6 girls for coffee, passed the lavandaria, and my poor undies were still outside on the rack. I think that because it rainded on them the other day, Nina, the laundress, must have had to rewash them, and then rehang them today. After a great day w/ the girls, I stopped in the Lavandaria on my way home. Since my clothes were still on the rack, she gave me 1/2 my clothes today and told me to come back tomorrow for the rest. The damage? 75 Euro, because we had 3 washloads full of clothes. Wow...almost 100 bucks, and again, my clothes were not even getting the electric dryer treatment!

I've learned a lot about laundry since being in Italy. In Naples, you are not allowed to vent your dryer, so most people don't even bother buying a dryer, and for those who do, it takes about 2 hours to dry your clothes, and that's putting just a few articles of clothing in at a time. Most of the expat women I have met, have dryers, but they usually just use their drying racks, since the dryers just aren't worth the effort. This dryer issue explains why as you drive through Naples you see clothes hanging off all the balconies. Rain or shine, they are out there. When it rains, rather than pulling their clothes off the line, people just drape tarps over them.

The water is also very 'hard' here. It's so full of minerals, that you have to buy special capsules of water softener to add to each cycle in your washing machine and dishwasher, otherwise, the minerals will build up and quickly freeze up your machine so that one day it will just stop working. I also notice the 'hardness' of the water in my hair. It seems to be pretty drying! And the clothes, forget it, they come out like cardboard...even when you are paying 75 euro to have them done. A lot of people iron all their clothes, underwear, jeans, sheets etc, because the heat from ironing helps to soften them up. I get poor Evan's baby clothes back from the Lavandaria and they are so scratchy and brittle! I thought for sure his sensitive baby skin would react to the roughness and the super heavy perfumed detergents, but so far, he seems to not notice..at least he doesn't 'complain' about it or seem uncomfortable. I rememmber one of my college roommates whose mom is from Italy, used to tell us how her mom would iron all of the families underwear, sheets, and how my friend used to get kind of annoyed that her mom would iron her jeans, because she would never like the crease her mom would iron into them. I used to think, wow..her Mom is little miss homemaker/martha stewart, but now I realize it was likely just a cultural thing and she was used to always ironing in Italy. Seems like a ton of extra work to me!