Huh?

I am truly exhausted and burnt out. Three chapters (90 pages) in three weeks. And I am still working on the final chapter and I am not sure how I am going to do it. My hands hurt, my back hurts, my brain hurts.

On top of this, yesterday I had to return to the world of the living. I am a teaching assistant this semester so as to get money to pay my share of the rent and food. This means I need to break away from my hermit's life of writing (well, hermits were never married nor had a dog, so I guess it really is technically not a hermit's life) and be social once again. My sections do not start until two weeks from now, but I do have to attend the lectures. The first one was yesterday and we had a lunch meeting with the professor after class. So much social contact in such a short period of time had me in a daze. I guess I am still recovering.

This weekend is going to be spent writing and writing. Sara wants to go to a particular store, so I might take a break for that. I also would like to see the Super Bowl because the local team, the New England Patriots, are playing. Even Sara might watch it, or at least part of it.

I might post here if I need a short break or have something I need to get off my chest. But if you don't see me until next week sometime, you now know why.

For your reading pleasure, should you wish to be entertained (then again, I am not sure it is entertaining)...whatever. Here is a little story I am using to start this last chapter I am working on:

Catch 33?

Among the many items my wife and I needed for our residency permits, or permessi di soggiorno, was a lease to prove to the officers at the Questura, or police station, that we had a place to reside. We had done this before, so we thought we knew what to expect. The rental agency through which we had found our apartment was only a broker between the landlord and us. Initially, rental agent and the landlord expected to rent the apartment without a lease, since that way it would be off the books and thus they would not have to declare the income. We then pointed out to them that we needed the lease to get our residency permit.

“Then we need to get it notarized and you will have to pay for it,” the rental agent told us.

“Fine,” I replied.

“I will need your fiscal code (codice fiscale, something akin to a social security number).”

“I don’t have one.”

“I cannot notarize the lease without it. And I cannot give you the lease without notarizing it. You need to get one.”

After researching how to get a fiscal code, I went to the appropriate government building, found the line I needed to stand in, and waited several hours to talk to the appropriate person. When I finally got to the front of the line, the functionary told me, “You need your residency permit to get a fiscal code.”

I asked whether I needed the full residency permit, which takes up to three months to receive, or if the receipt you get when you file the application was good enough.

“I need to see the residency permit, not the receipt. Come back when you have it.”

I explained my situation and why I needed the fiscal code in order to get the very residency permit he was asking for.
“I do not know what to tell you. I only know the rules here. You need the residency permit. Good bye.”

I was stuck. To get a residency permit, I needed a lease; to get a lease, I needed a fiscal code; and to get the fiscal code I needed a residency permit. And round and round I went, trying to convince someone to cave in so I could break the cycle so that my wife and I could be legal residents in Italy.

Such are the workings of Italian bureaucracy and the obstacles immigrants in Bergamo face everyday.