maria

she hates us

I went to Costco yesterday, to get the tyre fixed. I got to the place and - surprisingly - the person behind the counter was a girl. Which is rare because it's the tyre section and usually they only have men there. I explained the situation telling her that no, the tyre had not seemed low, and I had the feeling that the neighbour across the street had deflated it. But I'd be glad to be proven wrong, you know, if it happens to have a puncture, then it's a lovefest and I'm just a paranoid bitch who happens to notice that there is a bent out of shape wire clothes hanger close to her car as her tyre just happened to have gone flat.

I waited the required hour and a half for the workshop to be able to check the tyre, fill it back up with nitrogen, and change it back for the spare. While I waited I read some more of "Absurdistan", sat at the deli. Good times.

I get the car back from the girl, who said only this: "Yep, she hates you."

So that means there were no punctures in the tyre. We parked the car elsewhere last night, which I can only assume she can read as "We know you did this and you now know that we do", but I am itching for something. Which is petty, I know, but. Still.

I won't, though (unless the opportunity just showed up, and then I'd be powerless to resist it, I know).

This is the kind of thing that makes you wonder about people. I've spoken to her a few times. Once, I had just moved in and she approached me to... I don't know, welcome me? (More probably, to find out everything about me so she could tell it to everyone else, which I don't resent. I understand that, being curious about new neighbours) The second time, Will had already moved in and was working at the school, she told me, like, from across the street, you know, not in a "come in, have some coffee" suited way, that her grandchild goes to Will's school. "Oh, really? That's great!". Things like that. Overall, nothing that I could think back to and go "Oh, she's pissed off about that!".

Unfortunately, my mind is trying to make sense of it, and I know it probably never will. Some people are just nuts like that and there's not much to do about it. But how do I react when I see her next? Smile and wave, give her the finger - better yet, give her two, which she easily will misinterpret as a friendly gesture? I don't fucking know.

It's one of those moments I wish for instantaneous karma but at the same time I want to go and ask her why she hates us. Or hates the car. Or what the hell it is that would provoke her to do something like that. Theories?

flat tyre

I was going to tell you about this, but this morning we got a flat tyre - and we are almost nearly sure that the neighbour across the street 1) doesn't like us and b) is totally responsible for said flat.

This has sort of cramped my style, wrecked my mood and fucked with my head all at the same time. I wish it was Friday already and we could just send the car to the shop and get the reverse dealt with so that I wouldn't have had to park in front of the neighbour's house and my mood wouldn't have gotten ruined. Nothing like pissing you off in the morning to just sort of get things going.

the car, the car, the car

So the car will go in reverse only when it wants to. My - admittedly very little - knowledge of cars is enough to know that this is transmission related. if this was a horse, we'd take it out back and shoot it. Transmissions are a bitch.

And so the very cunning plan we had to wait until the summer to get a new car has been moved ahead to Easter. The plan is to get a Jeep Liberty. An old one. I don't think we want a new car. I can see the advantages of a new car, but given that we don't have a garage and people will absolutely and without thinking about it steal an old camping chair, I think I can do without the ulcer. The other reason for this vehicle... well. It's a small SUV-type-thing. Now, I know, the planet could totally do without me buying an SUV, but... this vehicle has been trail rated! And this is Tijuana! If any city demands that you have a vehicle that can withstand the wilderness, it's this one, where the jetta has to zig-zag on half of the roads we have to take just to get to Will's school because of the many dips, speed bumps, and potholes.

Not that we would totally throw caution to the wind, I mean, you still have to take care of your vehicle, but we'd be better equipped, is all I'm saying. And it's six cylinders. So. Not four, like this car, so a bit more petrol, but not eight, like a full fledged SUV. So.

And it's been enough, hasn't it? I haven't really fallen back in love with it since the accident - and probably before that, I'm not sure now - and it just doesn't feel safe to me anymore. This may or may not be me, admittedly, but that is irrelevant. It manages to break down - not completely, but enough to be a worry - almost every two months, and so we never quite manage to get into a stride, transport-wise. So it's settled. We need a new car, we like the thought of a small(ish) SUV, the city demands it, and it seems like we can do it.

I know how much of this depended on me wanting to get a new car. And I want one. I am just sorry we didn't do it before. I wish we had. Although I am glad we didn't because we would have gotten a golf and it would still be too low on the ground for this city, and this just seems like a much better idea. So rock on.

atonement

So. Started "Atonement" last Friday. Thursday, maybe. I can't remember. I finished yesterday afternoon. I don't want to give anything away because Will has just started it and he should read it without knowing any of it - which is why we are waiting until he finishes it to watch the film -, but it is gorgeous. That's as good as my reviews get, so there you go. I've started "Absurdistan", which someone recommended to me, for the life of me, I can't remember who it was.

On completely unrelated news, it was a rainy weekend and we stayed home watching films on the DVD player. Danny and I watched "The Hitcher" which was as predictable as these films get and was obviously terribly bad, but she enjoyed it and so. I realise we should have watched the previous version, which, according to reviewers, is much, much better, but I hate Rutger Hauer. I don't know why, he has this face that just... gah! And so we got through the film and it wasn't incredibly gory or suspenseful - and that's what they were going for, keep in mind - so Danny was OK. After that we watched Izzard's "Circle" - which is not as fantastic as, say, "Glorious", but, OK - and much fun was had by all. I look for things like these to do with her because I realise that she's growing and I don't want to lose the conversation. She's only twelve and so far we've managed, but there's a long way to go.

I'm worried that she doesn't read as much anymore, though. I gave her a book to read last Saturday afternoon, so that she could maybe take it to bed, which she did, but then by the morning I found the book - "The Unthinkable Thoughts Of Jacob Green" - and a Lenore book on the bed. So. Obviously, you can see what's happened.

I love Lenore. I do. It's one of the very few comics that Will and I sort of "own". You know, together - OK, that's not fair, we own a great deal of things together, but we found this one together -. And so it's cool, but. I also want her to read books - and by this I don't mean that I don't believe in comics as an art form, I don't want to get anyone's feathers ruffled, I love comics, I do, I just think that books are a different medium and we should all just try to appreciate everything -. And of course I thought TUTOJG was a good place to start because it doesn't really take the intellect of a genius to just enjoy the book. And I know she's not stupid, so. What I have to think, then, is that she's not interested. I'm not worried-worried, but I am worried. Does this happen to every girl? Because I don't remember it happening to me. I mean, I had my shallow areas. Have. Have. But there are things I never left behind. Like books. And so. Should I be worried-worried? And would that even make a difference? Somehow I don't think so.

the tutoring

I'm going to tell you something. But you are not to tell anyone. Promise? Come closer, so no one will... read?

I don't hate kids. I think they are bloody awful in groups, but if you sit down with one child and talk or play, they are quite nice.

I wasn't going to tell you, ever, but lovely Croila has asked how the tutoring went and it is impossible to explain without you knowing that I don't hate children. Or not impossible, but you would have gotten wise to it and it would just have seemed like I was hiding the fact.

So this girl came over for maths tutoring. At first, it didn't seem she needed help at all. We did some addition with decimals and she did fine. I get it it that it's fairly easy, but what I'd heard about her made her sound like she could not do a single thing. Or more like everyone is confused what to make of her. Things like "She's not thick but she's not clever". Hmm. So. We moved on to subtractions with decimals. And she tried to add them up. Which is fair enough, she's just met me, she's nervous and, OK. She got it almost immediately and, again, doing everything correctly. Multiplications with decimals were still OK, except, of course, I can tell that she is going through the times tables in her mind. And getting them wrong sometimes. But she's got the process down and... OK, her process was still a bit "dirty", a bit "messy", and I cleaned that up, mostly because, I don't know if you know, but I've slight dyslexia and dyscalculia (which is a fairly new diagnosis but it explains a lot) and so I absolutely need people to be neat in their writing, calculations, and methodology. I also find it helps kids to do things neatly, to understand what they've done better when they are going over it. Anyway. We went back to additions - to clear up a point - and she was moving the decimal point around like you do in multiplications. Explained that again, but began to feel like in changing a light bulb I'd broken the fireplace. I went into divisions - and did them like Will does them, with the subtraction within the division and stuff (long division? is that what you called it?). She had no idea what to do with the decimal point and she was trying to treat it like she did in multiplication. I explained that. There was a moment when she turned to me and said "I'm not confused anymore", and I felt like hugging her.

I didn't. But still.

We did a small review and I realised that she can only hold one thing in her mind at a time. She's the goldfish of students. And that wasn't the end of it. Her dad came to pick her up and... my heart aches for this man and his family. He has two daughters, one of them with cerebral palsy - which is not the same as saying someone has cerebral palsy in the first world. It is saying someone has it in Mexico -, the other one is this girl I've been tutoring (which I can bet made you all sigh with relief). He is paying for the most expensive school in the city for her. He runs a business from home and it's not doing so hot. Just this week, they've ran out of gas and suspended service for both is land line and his mobile. The wife lost a baby and her mum and so things are pretty crowded.

He cannot pay for this girl to come every day this week. He is very embarrassed and he half knows what he's dealing with. I say half knows, because he thinks it's confidence this girl lacks. I think she doesn't, but, OK. There are many reasons why I am not the expert here. The thing is he can only bring her one more afternoon. I give him a free hour because I think she needs it.

The next day she came over and stayed for three hours. I think there was smoke coming out of her ears by the time she left. I have no idea how much she held. We did fractions and mixed fractions and all of that, and percentages. Same thing happening over and over. She doesn't get it, she gets it, she practices it, we move on, we go back and she totally doesn't get it again.

I gave her some exercises and stuff to take home and I am hoping that with some practice... I'm not sure, but. Fuck, I hope she does well. The test is Monday morning, and we shall see.

monseigneur

I have been burning Bowie for most of the morning.

We have a huge Bowie collection that is just taking up disc space and making the shuffle insufferable. Don't take me wrong, I like Bowie. I like him lots, if I could only take music by three different artists with me on a trip, Bowie would be one of them, I promise you, but when it is 70% of the music in your hard drive, it can drive you spare.

And so 9 data discs later, I find that I am about half-way through. Which isn't that bad, really, I don't think.

Also it will allow me to clear up that space in the hard drive, which is always nice.

- Of course, as I am listening to this just now, I can't believe how unbearably beautiful it all is.

David Bowie 01.Life on Mars_.mp3 (Right click, save as, you know the drill)

the missing chair

Last night, before going to bed.

Will, from the balcony: "Maria, did you take Rene's chair in?"

Me: "No, why would I do that?"

I went out onto the balcony and there it was, the big empty space where the chair used to be. Rene brought that chair here when he came over because we didn't have that many chairs back then. We don't have that many chairs now, but we do have a couple more. That chair was moved to the balcony because it's one of those beach chairs? No, not like that one, like this one. OK, a camping chair. Whatever. So but it wasn't the best for sitting at the table. You could, of course, but you couldn't reach your food, is all I'm saying.

Anyway, it was really comfortable for sitting outside with your feet up on the balcony railing - is that what it's called? That fence type thing around the balcony? God! I really should get going on that search engine [does anyone you know develop? because I think this idea is essential to day to day living. I know that there are search engines now to find definitions and stuff, but what about a search engine for that word you just forgot? You know, when you kind of know what the word means and you know what you want to say but it just escapes you? Yeah. Get on it!], if I only knew how! -. And now it's gone. Stolen. Or taken by aliens, I suppose. It looked red neck-y, you know? Maybe.

Of course, my first reaction was to laugh, because how funny is it that someone would take the trouble to climb up on the balcony for that chair? But then? Then I realised that they had taken something else. And the other thing they took? Well, that really upset me.

They stole a half full - see? being positive there, or negative, because it was stolen and so it's not great, but, OK, where was I? - they stole a half full 5 kg. bag of powdered clothes detergent. With Downy. Like, blended in. The brand new scent of downy, too, released only for Mexico. Bastard!

Our lives will never be the same.

unfortunately, dust bunnies don't photograph well.

But that wasn't going to stop me. In conversation with a close friend, it came out that one of the reasons I had been depressed was that I fell short of my idea of Will's expectations. That is, short of what I thought Will expected of me. Whether Will expected it or not is completely irrelevant. I thought he expected me to look absolutely gorgeous all the time and if you could see how far short I fall of a Victoria Secret model, as I would have me look all the time, you'd be as disappointed as I am in myself. I also expected him to expect an absolutely spotless home all the time. And I am absolute shit at it.

And so because it's embarrassing, and because she's asked - and that's probably the wrong order to put it - a collection of photos trying to depict the dust bunnies that crowd our lives. I say trying because dust bunnies are hard to photograph. Sorry. But I've done my best here. Anyway, so that's what those are. Dust bunnies, hair, layers of dust. It's all very appealing, as you may notice. But this is what you do. And so, this is the horribleness. I'm afraid they are not as bad as I would have hoped but I cleaned far too recently. Except for the printer, I don't think that's been cleaned since it was bought.

I might feel better after this. Or not. But that's it, the horror!

I am very nervous because a girl who needs help with her maths is coming over today. They want her to be up to speed by Monday because she has her mid-term exam. Which is classic. They waited until the last minute and now, well. I don't even get to know her properly before I have to send her back out. They don't plan on keeping her in lessons, so that will have been that, presumably.

The thing is, I don't even think I remember how to do division. Will is giving me a refresher type course when he gets out - he does it with the subtraction right there in the division, like, written down, and I never did it that way -. Things like this make me very nervous. I think it would be better if I felt like I have more time to do it, but then again, you can't have everything in life, can you? So this girl will come over and spend about two hours here. I'm hoping it goes well. And preparing some stuff. And stuff.

Anyway, it's all very exciting. And that's the attitude I plan to have towards everything these days because this is a good year.

on books

We've bought more books. This is the hardest month of the year for us - and I'm sure for many others - economically speaking, and yet we've bought more books than in the last half of 2007 (I'm blaming 2007, which was a shit year altogether for us. We are still determined to make 2008 fantastic. The year has, so far, cooperated). It's fantastic. Right now, I'm reading "Oblivion" by David Foster Wallace ("Oblivion" also happens to be one of my favourite words). It's a collection of stories. I like DFW, so even though this is not his best work - if you were looking to know his work, I'd recommend "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" but you should be warned that his style is what would be called "wordy" so. If you're going to look into it, try reading a bit of it at the bookstore, if you like it, then by all means, if not, then don't even bother. - I am enjoying it enormously.

We had bought books about two weeks ago ( "Imperium" by Robert Harris, "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors" and "Paula Spencer" by Roddy Doyle, "The Steep Approach To Garbadale" by Iain Banks, "Atonement" by Ian McEwan, "The Secret History Of Moscow" by Ekaterina Sedia, "Slam" by Nick Hornby [which Will has reviewed here], "The Principles Of Uncertainty" by Maira Kalman, "The Dead Fathers Club" by Matt Heig, "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke, "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, "The Prestige" by Christopher Priest) and we didn't think we would be buying more this month, having spoken about the need to be sensible and whatnot, but then I got an e-mail on Friday night, announcing the fact that Borders was closing one of it's "Borders Express" locations, the one in Fashion Valley. 40% discount on books. How to resist?

We didn't. We went and picked out books from the, by then, already thinned out choices left before us (and when you find that there are no books left by some authors and then stacks of some other author's books it kind of makes you sad for the latter author that no one picks his book up and at the same time wary to do so, because you don't want to be the one idiot who bought the worst book in history). Some of them were things we had wanted and lusted after but had not bought because we were waiting until next month, and now, being on sale, were irresistible - "The Ghost" by Robert Harris - others were things we know and love but have not bought because there's always been some other thing calling out to us at that moment - "JPod" by Douglas Coupland, "Saving Fish From Drowning" by Amy Tan -, some have been recommended and so we kind of wanted to have them but weren't sure that we should spend our money without some guarantee that we will enjoy this book and so when everything's on sale, we buy them, it being a more acceptable risk - "Absurdistan" by Gary Shteynga - and a couple are merely experimental and might be the worst mistake of our lives but we hope not because we like both these people - "Between The Bridge And The River" by Craig Ferguson*, and "Born Standing Up" by Steve Martin -, besides, I think the worst mistakes of our lives are behind us and are called "88 minutes". Thankfully, because it's a film, it only cost us a bit longer than that [See what I did? Sneaked a review of the most ridiculously bad film I've watched recently just so that you know that I am not speaking of my previous life. See what I did then? Made you wonder if maybe I was! I wasn't. Or was I? No. I wasn't].

You can probably expect Will to review of each and every one of these books. Except "Oblivion". Or anything else by DFW. I probably won't be reviewing them, but I will tell you whether I liked them. So there you go.

*I am willing to admit that Will might have some more back story and/or love or hatred of Craig Ferguson because of Will's whole being English thing and so on and so forth. I just think Ferguson's funny. But then it's strange how people hold a different meaning in Will's mind because he has more information about them. But it's what's happening now, isn't it? People are different about their celebrities because of the amount of information that is available! I try to just know the work, but sometimes it's impossible. Like, say, I  grieve for Britney and think she's very talented, but I'm only aware of what's happening because it's everywhere, while I've always been aware that she's talented. Or Russell Crowe, who apparently has a life outside of acting that people don't like. Me? I just see the acting. The one moment where I learned more about the person behind the talent [Tori Amos] I hated her beyond understanding and it's never been the same since. So I try not to know anything about anybody beyond their work.

on the news

The good news is I didn't get shot. Unless you don't like me, in which case it's terrible and further proof that foul-mouthed, tattooed trollops never die.

It was about ten in the morning when I was typing up the Ubuntu post - Which, btw, I've set it up, xubuntu, in the old laptop, and it's great. Thank you neil! -. Or I was sat in front of the computer staring into the screen, willing words to come to my mind. Or something. I heard a few gunshots. They sounded pretty close by, so I messaged Will to see if he had heard them over at school, since it's fairly close, I thought maybe. He was in class and I knew this, so I didn't expect a reply.

I had to go to the bank and so I left. As I was leaving the house, sirens could be heard getting closer, and I saw an ambulance leaving the site, coming towards me. It looked like something had happened at the end of the street and there were already a few trucks from the police parked all around the area. The ambulance sped past me and I thought that was that, you know, execution, dead person, ambulance. At this point I imagined the police were just trying to gather clues.

I left for the bank, noticing - barely - that there still seemed to be a generous number of police trucks, cars, and vans heading towards the area. Policemen carrying their guns, donning their balaclavas, the usual. Just a lot of them at the same time.

The bank is four blocks away from here. I went and cashed my cheque and came home. The goal I had set myself for the morning was to maybe finish the letter I was writing to Miguel. I got home and the amount of policemen down my street, one block up, and four blocks down was fucking massive. I parked outside and came into the flat. There was more gunfire and I thought damn, it's still going on. I thought it best to leave at the moment thinking that this was maybe a situation where people were trying to escape the police and I didn't want to be the one person who was home to be held hostage, so I finished up the letter - hastily, I think I wrote something on the line of "There's been a bit of gunfire outside and I can only guess that police are chasing bad people because there are a lot of cops here, so we are just going to go mail this, ok? And by 'we' I mean you, reading this now, and me, the person who writes it. Love to all, kiss the kids, get better. Rocio (that's how he knows me, that's how I sign)" - and I left for the post office, having to navigate in between trucks and whatnot. It was still what I thought to be "normal" in this, the lovely city of Tijuana.

I went and checked our mail and drove back. It couldn't have taken me more than an hour. When I got back, the circle that the police were controlling had grown larger. I found it very difficult to get home because the streets were blocked and you had to manoeuvre around all these people milling about and the trucks parked in the middle of the road and whatnot - and I was in a bit of a rush because I needed to pee, so you can see how this was all just very frustrating - I parked right outside the building, got out of my car and was yelled at by not a few policemen. I have no idea what they said because I was running into the building. I went to the toilet - relief! - and when I came out, there were more shots outside. From different weapons, from different sides, a lot of shots. I went out onto the balcony and got screamed at from policemen who could see me from across the street to get the fuck back inside and get down on the floor. I came back in and thought I should probably find out what the fuck was going on, so I tried the computer. That's when I noticed there was no electricity. I looked out the window and realised that my car was the only car parked on the road. At the end of the road policemen crowded the corner. I started wondering how thick the walls are. Which is never a good thing to have to start to wonder, I think. More gunfire was going off. I decided to leave. I messaged Will again and ran to my car among the screaming policemen that I should get back in or fucking leave already. This coincided with a spurt of gunfire from further away and the policemen started shooting back - which leads me to tell you that I was surprised to see that yes, fire does come out of the guns as the bullets blast out, who knew? - and so I got in my car and drove.

I stopped at the corner and told an officer to be careful. He said "You be careful", to which you think, fair enough, he has a gun, right?

And so I left for a coffee shop where I spoke for a bit to the attendant, who says to me that a friend of his has been in his house laying on the floor for the last couple of hours and did I hear about the whole thing over at Ermita (that's the name of the street that crosses with ours). A man arrived to get some coffee as I was on the phone with Will and I realised he was a cop when I saw his gun. He was telling the kid - who he obviously knew - about the goings on. I spoke to Will and read my book. I picked him up from school and we went to the Tijuana Bar. I didn't want to drive home. When we finally did, there were no signs on the street of anything strange happening. Which was nice. Had an extremely quiet night - "too quiet" I found myself thinking - and today I find out that they found seven corpses inside the house, they suspect that six of them were kidnapping victims and the other one was one of the criminals, four municipal and federal officers were injured, five men were arrested, and this morning, one of the federal agents which was injured, died in the hospital from his wounds - which makes me really sad, these people don't make enough money to compensate for the risks they have to take -.

And I didn't get a single photograph.