maria

we go to the zoo

With Nikos, because Danny had a day with dad. It was fun. Nikos took some pictures, I took some pictures, we saw the elephant oddissey thing that the zoo has going now - it's fantastic, we loved it, and, cleverly, they set it up so that, essentially, you are in the furthest point from the exit when you see it, so you pretty much "do" the whole of the zoo. This is not a complaint. It was a good day.

it's been ages so we won't even get into that

Everything changes, everything is the same. Danny tells me that her father broke down and started crying the other night while tucking her in for the night. She has no clue as to why and thought she should tell me about it. After having a short discussion about the context - there was too little of it to gather any clues, really, and I don't know anything about his life these days - I told her that this was his issue and she should, obviously, try to be kind to him, but not feel at all responsible. We went into what a depression entails and what little I know about the shape it takes on her father.

I am terribly pissed off about it. I think it's irresponsible of him to get his crayons broken in front of Danny. Especially as it ends up making her feel responsible - why are girls like that? - for his well-being. Get a partner already! Man.

Nikos is the same. Which is awesome in a way, but troublesome in so many others. The school can't seem to get a handle on him and neither does his father. It all seems to work so well when he spends time here, but there's really no way of knowing if it is to do with the fact that I am his mother, or the fact that when he misbehaves at school or at home I  seem to be the only person to hammer down with the wrath of the gods. In a good way. I know how it sounds, believe me, it's good.

Will's being sued for divorce. Which is nice. We have a teeny bit of an issue, though. The court needs a UK address where it can send documents because (we think) they don't want to spend the extra money for international postage. Will naturally assumed it would be ok for him to use his brother's address. Except his brother thinks bailiffs will eventually come to take his television (I hear the whole getting money from dad's in the UK is super enforced. Except, think this through, Will doesn't have to support his kids because they are adults), so he said no.

Unfortunately, it took his brother more than a little while to reply, and because the documents had to be back within a week, and we have to send them from the US, we had already sent them, so now we have to send an amendment (with what address it remains a question). We still gave the PO box address to his brother, to forward anything that might show up there, but of course now he thinks he gave him the PO box address instead of our normal home address because he is somehow hiding.

In truth, it's because it can take up to six months to get mail from anywhere to Mexico. And obviously, time is of the essence.

It's my fault, I assumed that because they are family, this would be an obvious choice.

We've been very unhappy about the whole thing. Me, because I see how much it's surprised and hurt will to have this reply from his brother, and will because this was very unexpected.

It's funny how things like this end up becoming so big, isn't it? One hopes it's not very damaging to the relationship they may have in future.

our weekend comes and goes

And we barely even feel it. We don't have a long weekend, like the US does, so tomorrow it is back to work for will. I have a thing with danny. Her school makes a mother's day/father's day/end of the year presentation, for which they've been rehearsing for about six months. She learnt half the choreography for "Dangerous" and is winging the other half of it. She is placed behind EVERYONE on stage, so she'll have no problem pretending to know. Nevertheless she's very enthused about it and I shall be there.

Nikos wasn't picked for the dance his grade was doing, which I find very odd because he's a great dancer. But obviously, I'm biased.

Anyway. Nikos had a playdate today. We are watching America's funniest home videos and I bet the first crotch hit would be at the 7 minute mark at the latest. I still think I won but will happened to not have been looking at the screen when it happened - he's reading "Lucifer", and I think that if he is reading and the crotch hit happens, then I win, regardless of what he thinks because it's not my fault he's reading.

little trees

I've always wanted a bonsai. It's one of those things, you see them, they are lovely, but then, man, I kill every plant that comes my way. Will, though, he's great at plants. Ask him to show you his avocado plant. It's now nearly as tall as Nikos, and Nikos has taken YEARS to grow that tall. The lemon tree is hanging in there. You know, growing. Steady and sure.

So I went and got a couple of bonsai trees. One of them is a wisteria, which is nice. It's huge, though. Like a small shrub. And it's never been given any direction, so. Today I trimmed off all the damaged bits of it, gave it direction with some copper wire, trimmed off some more extra bits and nothing left to do but wait. And water it. And watch for bugs. And growth. And maybe flowers? I hope for flowers.

But for now I just want it to stay alive. It had some black powdery something on leaves which may or may not have been mildew - but I am just guessing - and loads of leaves were getting dry on the tips, so I have no idea what that indicates. There were some bugs that had eaten circles on the leaves, and so. Let's cross our fingers.

The other one Is much smaller, I've no idea what kind of tree it is - it looks like a Kusamaki, but I might be wrong -, but it's obviously been taken care of well. I removed a copper wire from one of its branches, which was already trained and the copper was rusted. Not knowing how long it had been there, I thought better safe. This one had brown spotting under some leaves, which may or may not have been fertiliser, but so far I've read that it could also be a type of bug - it wasn't very sticky, though, so I'm not leaning towards that. It might be wishful thinking.

In short, I know nothing about plants. But I'm very excited about this. So. I hope I can get enough information quickly enough that I don't do too badly.

facebook and the neighbours.

So we have new neighbours. Downstairs we have an undetermined number of university aged girls. I've only met one. She gave me the hairy eyeball while she said to the woman who rents the flats: " I thought you said the upstairs neighbour was a foreign man." "This is his wife.", the woman said. She hmph-d at me and walked back into her flat (we were all stood outside the building because I was discussing with the woman the possibility of changing the lock on the gate). So. I didn't have to find a reason to hate them, because they now hate me. Awesome.

**I feel like I have to explain right now that a). I usually have that effect on women, for some reason. It sucks. and b). single foreign men are seen as an incredible catch here in Mexico. They represent dollars, a chance to live in the united states, and, of course, lovely foreign looks. And so I am the luckiest woman in the world and I'm not even that pretty. How did I manage to land the blond foreign man? (whitchcraft, obviously)**

Now I've met the neighbour on flat four. No reason to hate her yet. I think she might have a dog, though. Or a small whiney thing. We're certain we heard something but it hasn't whined since the first day, when she moved in, so it might be gone or it might have not been hers at all. Who knows.

The university girls had a party saturday night. I hate their music. I hate their music. I hate their music. I don't mind loud music when I like it, but there is so much that is wrong about the music that they like that I can't help but seethe when they listen to it. Now, I know will says it wasn't tremendously loud or annoying, but, to be fair, he couldn't distinguish from one type of mexican music to the next, while to me, the music they like is teeth-grindingly awful and it will kill me.

I've left facebook. Again. I was very happy with the stupid farms, the stupid invites from people I haven't seen in 3000 years to send them a flower, give them a shove, listen to the stupid song they dedicated to me. Everything. It was fine. My cousin, a girl with whom I never before had a relationship, began e-mailing me and it was all going well. The thing is the status updates. Status updates are fantastic. You link them to your twitter account and you're on a roll. Except. I have a friend who is crassness on a stick. If there is a double entendre somewhere, he will find it, point it out and focus on that. Which is fine, if you're ready for it. Except, that is all he is (Do you know one of those people? I think we all know one of those people, but I could very well be wrong), and so it gets really old really quickly. He was commenting on nearly every status update, making it really annoying to say anything, and then having to explain it to upper management and being all around embarrassed. In real life you can keep your different circles of friends separate. Facebook makes it a bit more difficult. I could de-friend him, but I can't see that going well in the real world, having to explain or not even that. We rarely see him or his family, but still. I've known him since I was in college, and, like I said, if you're ready for his mindset (and you are if you know you're driving someplace to meet with them), it's fine. So I blocked my status updates, so he couldn't see them, thereby making it impossible for him to comment. I'm still his friend, we are still cool, I just didn't let him see them.

Until Friday. When he made a comment in one of them. Which should have been impossible, but clearly wasn't. This, of course, made the whole system questionable. So I'm done with it.

I think I will miss the eternal poking and shoving and the everything else. Really.

But I don't yet. So. You know.

still here

And still healthy. I've had the sniffles for a bit now, but that could very well be allergies. Or not. I don't know. There were those days a few weeks ago when I was really ill and was running a high temp, but being a). mexican and b). not dead, it might just have been regular flu.

In any case, we've been mostly stuck at home, aside going to the post office to pick up a package from amazon, we've not done much at all. The kids stayed with us for a few days last week and they will be staying with us until classes resume. It's not so much that I don't think they will be fine with R., they would be, but he does depend on a lot of people to be able to go to work and keep the kids fed/tended to. We can lock ourselves in and have absolutely no need for anybody.

Which is nice.

We have new neighbours downstairs. I have not met them. I'm sure I will hate them soon enough. It's a rule with neighbours.

I owe some of you e-mails (I think) and also some people who don't read. And so I should probably be doing that. I just thought by letting everyone know we're still alive I at least got that out of the way.

Still NO cases of the terribly deadly flu that kills the mexicans in Tijuana. No earthquakes. No cricket plague - this is not a locust friendly area -, no rivers have turned to blood - unless we speak of metaphorical rivers, but that is completely unrelated -, I think we're doing well.

You shouldn't post when you've been drinking and listening to Christian Kjellvander

So, whatever I've said in the mp3 file, i've probably said too much because i'm so totally drunk, so. I won't post the mp3 file and I will finish the Jameson's and wish you all a fantastic weekend.

what we've been up to

What we've been up to (mp3 file) 

Book 3: "Rayuela" by Julio Cortazar

I wasn't quite as young as most of my friends when I read this book. My parents didn't have it at home, my grandfather didn't have it in his bookstore. I had heard of the author (seriously, of course I had) but there was so much to read and I didn't have any friends who read, so.

But then I got friends who read. And the surprise in their faces when I said I had not read it, well. You might have thought I had just said I was fucking their mother. So a friend loans me this book and I read it. In, like, two days. And it... I don't know, much like DFW changes the way you see the world and the way you feel words and things, Cortazar, in "Hopscotch", changes everything. I started writing again, I felt good again, and there was a whole group of phrases that were folded into my day to day speak and only made sense if you had read it yourself. 

I had found a bit of red cloth, so to speak.

I have bought that book several times, and always manage to lose it/give it away. Currently we own a version in English - god only knows why, since I don't think Will is ever going to read it - and if I ever find the version with the annotations that were left out of the final printing, I will sell a kidney to purchase it.

Book 2: "Instrucciones Para Vivir En México" by Jorge Ibargüengoitia

I started to read when I was either two or three years old (different people vary in their recollections of this, my mother claiming she taught me how to read when I was 9 months old through the gestalt technique, which I know works, but I know she didn't actually have time to do this, so who knows, really). I hate saying this because some people think this is bragging, which makes no sense to me now since we are all adults and clearly you can read also since you're doing it now, effortlessly, but whatever. I say it because it's relevant to this post. I think. It might not be, but it's too late. 

Anyway. My family, or rather, my mother's family, owns a bookstore. My grandfather started it when he was young and pretty much kept at it his whole life. The bookstore had all kinds of text books and literature. Except. My grandfather is a very opinionated man. Something that he passed on to everyone in the family. My mother and uncles always have an opinion on everything and their opinion is the right one, you have a different opinion? You're a fucking moron.

Anyway. Yeah. Lovely people. The thing is, books were an essential part of life. But not just any random books. Good books. And good books by their standards (this is why Bukowski was deemed "Garbage" by my mum. Burroghs was also crap. And Miller, except for his "Colossus of Maroussi", which my mum thinks is the only good book he ever wrote), so the scope of things I could read was very limited. They would stock books that my grandfather didn't approve of at the bookstore, but they hardly ever sold them, the customers were treated with infinite contempt if they insisted on buying them.

One of my friends told me about his trying to buy a book from my grandfather without knowing he was talking about my grandfather. Very funny story.

But my mum married my dad, and he was not to be bullied into throwing his books away. And that's when I learnt that books could be funny. Jorge Ibargüengoitia wrote articles for a Mexican newspaper that were later collected in several books. "Instrucciones Para Vivir En México" is one of them. This man had a wonderful and irreverent sense of humour when it was not stylish to have one, especially in Mexico, where we are all very serious about our drama. Or used to be, I don't know. 

Tracking his books down when I had a bit of money, I realised he had novels and theatre plays, all kinds of stuff. And all of it absolutely wonderful. He opened my eyes to mexican literature.

I don't think anyone has taken the task of translating his books, probably because it would be very, very hard to get the humour just right; if there was ever any reason to learn Spanish fluently, Ibargüengoitia would be it.

Ah, but look at this (go to page 96, or maybe in the index click on whichever essay by him you find. Not as funny as in Spanish, I don't think, or maybe it's the subtleties that are missing, or maybe that's why some people don't always find me funny).