maria

you may wonder

You may wonder where I've been. Well, I've been here, just, I have been reading other people and other stuff. Like about itching (did you know that only 20% of the nerve fibres getting to the brain's visual cortex come from the retina? the rest come from sections that govern the memory and such. So we see with our memory, mostly, which is lovely); 11 best foods you're not eating; and the reasons why if you're going to exfoliate at all, you should do it with St. Ives apricot, instead of that Dove thingie.

I'm trying to sleep laying on my back side. Which is proving exhausting. I sleep, but not as restfully. There are simple reasons for me to want to do so, and they have to do with a)pillows touching my nose - which you already know I don't like and 2. my face getting a particular wrinkle. I can see my future and I like it better when I sleep facing up.

This week was exhausting. I felt like it should have been Thursday by Tuesday, but fortunately it's the last week before the holidays. Tonight we are having dinner with friends, and I've been looking forward to that. I've been slacking off on some of the details for the opening of the estate, but no more, I tell you. I am picking up the phone now.

Right after I go get another coke.

fun, fun, fun

The play was fantastic. I cannot tell you how proud I am of the work Will did, it was wonderful. The party was so busy there was little interaction with our hostesses, and we survived Will's crash down, after all the stress. And I do want to go into more detail, but I have a graduation to go to.  I will tell you that everyone was very nice, and someone asked to hug Will "while Maria isn't looking!". Thoughts?

still

My grandmother has driven a Nissan car for as long as I can remember. OK, well, no, not for as long as I can remember, but for very long. And she was the kind of person who would never ever get out of her car if she could avoid it. Say that she had to go to the store, she'd take me with her and then drop me off at the entrance, so she could drive around, find a parking spot she liked - in the shade of some tree, most likely - and wait for me there. If she had to drop something off at my mother's home, she'd call ahead, drive to my mother's and then honk the horn. We'd come out to get whatever it was she was dropping off. Quickly. If you didn't come out within what she thought was a reasonable time - 1.3 seconds - she'd honk the horn again. And again. And again. But she would not ever get out and ring the doorbell. Because she'd called ahead, you see? So she wouldn't have to.

Now, this contradicts everything about the way I was raised. No one could come out if someone was honking the horn outside. If it was a friend of ours who needed to get a term paper from us that was due now and was in a terrible hurry, they'd still have to get out of their car, ring the doorbell, wait for one of us to come out. And we could not rush out because what are we? servants?

I love my mum.

In any case, we were all trained to distinguish my grandmother's car from every other car, because we were not the only house in the neighbourhood and other people's rules about that were very different from ours, so people would show up, randomly, somewhere in the area, and honk the horn to get someone's attention. God forbid it could be grandma and she felt we were ignoring her.

But, but, but... there was no need to know the sound of her car, because she called ahead! You will tell me. Yes. She did. Except, one thing I did not mention was that my grandmother drives very slowly. Very, very slowly. So by the time she arrived, it was three - sometimes four - hours later, and we had all forgotten about said phone call - if we had indeed been told about it at all -. So we had to know what the car sounded like. If we had lived anywhere else, it would have been as easy as looking out the window, but my mother had designed the outside wall so that it was good defence against terrorism, bears, boyfriends, neighbours, and the high tide. We could see nothing outside our own home, so we would have to run (yes, running is OK when you are going to get a new dish drainer from grandma, not that we need it, but grandma thinks we should have one) out to get whatever she was to give us, and no one wants to run out to find that it was the wrong grandma. So we knew how the car sounded.

I live more than a thousand miles from my grandmother now. And I can't help but look out the window whenever someone honks the horn in a Nissan the way my grandmother does.

HA!

I was, I am

I don't know why people start blogs. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I am still writing this one. Mostly because I forget to write, but that's only part of it. When our blog lives imploded, I didn't want to write again. I did, mostly because Will and I talked about it and eventually I decided to keep it up. He likes it and sometimes I like the blog too.

Not always, though. I love the friendships I've started because of blogging, even the ones that I couldn't keep very long - I learn something from everyone, I think -, but I don't always love the blogging itself. It seems contrived or something. I understand why other people keep blogs - because I find them interesting, I suppose, and so I like that they keep them - but I don't often understand why I keep mine. Presumably to keep the link alive or something. I don't know.

But I keep it up. And so here I am, telling you that last week was the longest week. The kids stayed here from Tuesday on and in trying to keep every gear lubed up and everything flowing, I found myself feeling a bit nutty in the interest to keep everything organised. Does that make sense? It was all this should be here, and let me put this thing there, and do you have everything ready for tomorrow?

And now that they've gone back to their dad, I realise just how much I needed to sit down and just be. Oh, I miss them terribly, of course - and Danny took my earbuds! Even though I said I wanted them back, twice! -, but I am also a bit relieved. We don't have as much space as their dad has and it is really hard on everyone when they stay for long periods of time.

Of course, the summer is coming and then it will be different. Because we won't have to wake up earlier to get everyone ready and out the door in time to drop them off at school and get Will to work. We will just be. And I like the thought of that.

Of course, whether they will want to stay for long periods of time remains to be seen, what with their dad having more space, more money, more stuff.

Anyway, I know it's all a bit disconnected today, but at least there is something. Good times.

hope

There are things about Will that bemuse me. This apologising thing - yes, I understand, I do, in Mexico, we are taught to say please, excuse me, thank you, so on and so forth, it's a social lubricant, politeness, but apologising in your sleep is a whole other business - for starters. But I love all of them. I love him. I like that I know who he is, and that things may throw me, but they are looked at from a perspective of love, trust, and understanding.

And the hope. You know he is happy, you know he's creative, he can tell stories like no one else - except perhaps other members of his family, or that's what he says and I believe him -, and you know about the avocado pits. And the lemon seeds. And green stuff.

He's been trying to grow an avocado, he's been trying to grow a lemon tree. It hasn't quite worked out how he would want it to. But he continues trying. He has hope. I love him for that.

The kids have been here since Tuesday. No socks have been lost yet and all seems to be running smoothly. Of course, during this time, we've found out that Danny cannot dice a tomato to save her life - she's never had to - and that when the hem in her uniform goes, she tapes it - with masking tape, because apparently it lasts longer than most other kinds -. She was going to have the maid do it, but I've taught her how. She did half of it and gave up. Argh.

Oh, and this made me really sad today. If this is what's happening in America - the world? - then what can we expect in Mexico?

life's too short

Ileana and Efraín had been planning their kids' birthday party for about a month now. Not like obsessively planning, but, you know, planning. We were invited - which was very nice of them - and it was implicit that we should take the kids. And we were going to. It was on a Saturday, so we were going to.

Knowing that the kids were going to be with us Saturday, and this week from Tuesday to Sunday, we decided to go out last Friday night. I had read on Pajiba about The Strangers, and decided maybe horror films weren't that bad if they were done well, so we went to see it - liked it a lot - and afterwards, we went to buy beer at BevMo.

There is no good reason to go buy beer all the way to BevMo unless you are looking for a specific beer. And that's the thing. Last Thursday - was it Thursday? I don't know, really, I'm just making it up now - at the 91X morning show, they had Beer for breakfast (ah, it was on Thursday) and they had Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA. Which they rated higher than they had ever rated any other beer (Now, this show, the morning show, is relatively new, and the people who took it on have had to struggle a bit against the love that people had for the previous DJ. I have to confess that at the beginning I felt pretty much the same. But they've grown on me, and so we listen to them every morning now - I think I even like it better than the old show now... or maybe not. But then, who remembers? God, I'm terrible), and I thought we should try it. So we went to BevMo in Mission Valley, which just happens to be right across the parking lot from Borders.

About an hour later we are driving back with two four packs of Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA, Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley, The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel by Michael Chabon, I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley, Saturday by Ian McEwan, All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren - the original version, not the new unedited version, which I heard does the book a disservice by even existing in the same universe -, joy in our hearts, and about 2 dollars. All was well with the world.

We get home to receive a call from the kids - oh, surprise of surprises, since they never, ever call us, it is us calling them, always, and by "us", I mean, of course me -. They were cancelling on us. Yes, you read it right, they had scheduling problems due to another party. A party with so-called relatives - which they are so not, it's one of their cousin's cousin, and they never see this people. I'm sure my ex doesn't even like them, but of course, who is he to decline the possibility to screw me out of a thoroughly planned day with my kids and fuck my entire weekend? No one. He cannot possibly. And to prove how fantastically well he has planned this out, instead of talking to me himself, the coward sends the kids to do his dirty work for him.

Understanding how it is not the kids' fault, I did not chew their heads off, accepted that we would see them on Sunday instead, and thought about how I should have taken the shot back then. Idiot. It's terrible that the one time they call us - as opposed to me calling them -, it is to cancel.

And so. There's us, showing up at this party without children. We sat down and their lawyer friend was nice enough to sit with us and talk football a little bit, which was very nice of him. A couple of conversations were had with them and other people, and that was that. We both felt terrible about the absence of our kids, and a bit weirded out that we were there without them, but we had bought the presents, and these are our friends! What were we supposed to do? Somehow, not showing up just didn't seem like a choice at all. I still feel weird about them, like there's some sort of weird distance thing or something.

They came over Sunday. They will be back tomorrow, and they're staying all week. Will has a long day at school today, and all this week, because of rehearsals. This is going to be a long week.

this says more about me than about her, really

As my sister swings from being moderately thin to being morbidly obese to (now) being incredibly fit - and working out through the day -, I wonder what made us so different. This is something that I think about often and I worry about it because... I don't like her. I like her, I love her, but I really don't. OK, I still love her. But her personality repels me and at the same time I find myself constantly looking for her approval - which I'm never going to get and even if I did, I wouldn't believe her because as far as I know she lies to everyone -, which is bizarre because she's younger than me.

We have very different experiences of the same family. For one, I was around before the family was formed. Product of my mother's previous marriage, I was there for the courting phase. I did not like my dad all that much at the beginning, and I clearly remember biting him one time when he was tickling me. I must have gotten told off, but I barely remember, what I remember clearly is the terrible feeling of having genuinely hurt him and the chest-crushing love I felt for him then, looking at me, surprised that I bit him, in pain that went beyond the physical.

So my dad won me over in that one clear moment, when he was no longer showing off for my mother, not trying to be fun. Just hurt. I don't know what that says about me.

My sister came along a couple of years later, maybe less than that. The marriage was off to a rocky start and unfortunately remained that way, my dad was too independent for my mother, had a tendency to cheat, and my mother refused to have yet another failed marriage, so. Alex. She was lovely and tiny, I adored her. When she learnt to speak she would mispronounce my name in such a sweet way that when she finally learnt to say it right I missed it.

And then we both grew up. She was in many ways similar to me: opinionated, hard on her judgements, independent. Except. She was like that with everyone. I couldn't be that hard with her. Or my parents. Or my friends. So she's more like a harsher version of me. And maybe also I have gotten softer with time. I don't know. Her experiences of my parents together were completely different from mine and she was definitely more tolerant of my dad's relationship with Bebe from the start - It took me pretty much 15 years or so to get to a point where I liked her and could have conversations with her -, which must mean something, although I don't know what.

And of course I realise that my perspective is flawed because I can only see my sister from my point of view and that definitely limits me, but there isn't much I can do about that. I still don't like it that she thinks of me like a fool because I spent so much time in school, so much time reading, instead of being "out there", "experiencing" life. Which always sounds to me like something someone who was high on mushrooms would say. But, see? I just find it hard to be nice to her because I don't really like her and I'm just all vitriol today.

organising

We bought a bookcase in IKEA last Tuesday. The plan was to get this one actually, which we would place on its side and it would serve as a sort of bench type thing along the window, but upon thinking about it, we really did need more storage capability than that (hell, for a moment there, Will was making a great case for this one, but in the end we decided it would take away too much light). The one we picked looks perfect.

One of the things I keep forgetting about these things is that whenever you get more room to put things in, immediately you need a little more than what you just got. I have been trying to re-arrange everything and put away documents, bits of paper, and knick-knacks. And what the hell are knick-knacks for, dammit?

But then I like them. I complain, but I really do like them. There's something to the cow, The elephant, the rhino. I've always wanted a Raku giraffe, too, but there's only so much stuff I can buy, and honestly, I've spent the morning putting away the owl, the whale, and the frog, along with a whole bunch of papers, bills, and letters that were tucked away between books while I pretend that either I will get back and pick them up later or I will leave them there because that will make them easier to find. Which is a lie because in the end I forget what I put where. Now, I've just piled everything inside a box. The same box for all papers. It will still take me a long time to find anything, but it's a consolation to think that if it exists, it's in there.

on apologising

Sometimes Will will apologise randomly. For. No. Reason. I love him and he apologises. I thought it was... odd, and yet... you know, him.

I was wrong. He wrote that and then Alan - who is lovely - commented. Immediately Will thought he'd said something wrong, which prompted an e-mail. Which prompted an e-mail back from Alan. Which... yeah. Crazy apologising loop ensues. It's a wonder they have time to do anything else.

Anyway, my guess is that, living in Mexico, Will doesn't get to do his daily share of apologising, so he will do so at random moments in the day.

He comes out of school and I am sat out in the truck reading. "I'm sorry - he will start - I was held up talking to... " It's 2:20 PM. He's on time.

He makes dinner and serves it in front of the TV and I get up to get drinks. "I'm sorry - he says - I was going to go get that... " His hands and forearms holding dishes.

We're in bed and he needs to turn over to be able to sleep "I'm sorry". He will even apologise in the middle of the night. I'm sure he's not even awake when he does that - He also says he loves me in his sleep. Which is adorable.

Yes, he apologises if I step on his feet. What is this apologising madness?