Chapter 9 of “Sposala e muori per lei” [“Marry her and die for her”],

by Costanza Miriano   –  traduzione  Caterina Poggi

The main problem, the reason why I cannot really blame too much my friend Cecilia for her complaining, is that she does have actual reasons to be unhappy. She works at a job she doesn’t like: she wanted to paint and be a photographer; instead she has to fill out forms in an office with a low fertility rate and female coworkers all wearing leopard-print and sequins already at eight in the morning, who grow more and more sour every year (I think that must be the local headquarters of the infamous Office for the Complication of Simple Affairs). To commute to and from this torture chamber, she drives for three hours every day at an average speed of seven miles per hour; when she finally gets home at night she has just the time to wipe the milk and cocoa spilled by her pre-adolescent kids who are playing video games, to open the door of the laundry closet and shut it again immediately, before the pile of clothes collapses, to put on those sad slippers that I have been scolding her about for years, before she eventually welcomes home a man whose eloquence, whose verve, whose sparkle would make Kim Jong-il pale in comparison. Continua a leggere “Smile Please or Being cheerful is a tough job, but someone has to do it” →