maria

talking

People come over and they almost always ask Will about his country. He tells a great story. But you knew that already.

to the consulate

Running out to go to the Mexican Consulate in San Diego, but I leave you with this image. Runner up but not chosen to go in the cover of a CD that Danny has made for a boy.

A boy? I hear you ask, yes, yes, there is, apparently, a boy. It's very exciting.

Anyway, she picked another photo, so you get this one.

at a school thing last month

Some of the kids were excited to have their parents come and watch them perform. They had dances and songs and poems planned. It was going to be awesome.

Some others were already bored.

Hidalgo was properly honoured with a statue made from a garbage bag and some latex gloves. Sexy.

Nikos had two dances.

tired

Will has had a couple of really hard weeks. These upcoming free days will be nice.

covered in bees!

Will is back in school and things are nearly back to normal at home. I miss him, though. It’s weird, because you sort of forget that the summer break is exactly that, a break. And so when things go back to what they should be, it’s a bit disconcerting.

Slowly it’ll become routine. And then there will be the Christmas break and it’ll be weird all over again.  Good times.

rice, ice, water

Negotiations for the kids coming over this weekend start early because lately, raul has just been ripping the piss. The arrangement used to be sat. one weekend, sat.-sun. the next, and please, receive them before 7 because they must go to bed early what with school the next day. Except. That probably lasted about one weekend. Then it was please, receive them before 9 because, seriously, Nikos has to sleep at some point. It degenerated from there, and so last weekend it was fri.-sat.-sun., to be dropped off after 11 at night because he wouldn’t be in until then. Nikos had his first day of school this monday and he tells me that the teacher has been working really closely with him and really seems to like him.

She’s good, obviously.

And so but anyway, this meant that this weekend I should have them fri.-sat., but, just in case, I text today, and he wants them to stay the whole weekend. Again.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we love the kids, but. We spend most of the weekend at home, and the flat is rather small, and so we all go mental. Plus, they haven’t really spent time with raul that much these days (to be fair, danny doesn’t like her dad all that much right now, no matter how compassionate i assure her she is, so she couldn’t care less about spending time with him, but i really want her to patch things up with him) and Nikos loves spending time with his dad, even if it is just watching tele at home.

And so I said no. Blamed it on work this weekend. I expected him to balk at it, but he didn’t because since he refuses to speak to me, and so we have to text, negotiations become rather difficult when you are sat in an office and have to, like, work.

Did that sentence make sense? Because it did to me at first, and then it didn’t, so i moved things around a bit, until it did again, and now it kind of doesn’t again. bleargh. I have to get ready to go out and give biscuits to people we love.

behind the screen

The summer was cool and nice up until about a week ago. Right about when will was scheduled to go back to school – he hasn’t, for different reasons, all perfectly legit, but I won’t go into it, ask him if you want to know –, when the temperature started going up and going out became an absolute drag. Nikos went back to school today – on too little sleep, thank you, bastard ex – and Danny has been back for about two weeks now.

Remind me to tell you about her friends and what’s been happening there. Right now, I have to sort out the flat. We have people coming over today, for dinner. Will is making Indian food (not native american, as my idiot computer keeps suggesting, but food from India), and my task is to get the flat in a livable state before they get here. I totally had it down until yesterday, when I realised that the bathroom tap was wonky. Water was coming out but in a spray pattern that managed to get everything wet without actually having water land in the basin. So. I am used to this problem because the water we get in Tijuana comes from the river and pipes are constantly being repaired and whatnot, so pebbles and stuff are totally normal. It is also very hard water. And so I figure I’ll clean the filter in the tap. Except I’ve never done that before, because it’s not a screw-on filter. I have to uninstall the whole thing to see how to get it out. And once I do, I realise that it is a whole unit type thing so that I cannot just remove the filter, I have to buy the entire assembly. Which is brilliant of them, really, you know, to make it so that you have to buy a whole other water tap assy? Nice. Except of course, what maybe they didn’t think of, I’m not buying the same one. But. You know, you can see where they were going.

Anyhoo, this little project landed on my lap maybe on not such a good day for it because now the bathroom is a mess. BUT. I’ll get it sorted, and it is definitely a better plan than handing our guests raincoats before they go try to wash their hands in the bathroom. 

Will makes curry

The incredible boldness of it is that, even though he’s sort of learning to make it, he still decides, upon getting all of the ingredients that he needed, which would have been impossible to do if we couldn’t go across the border, that we should have friends over for this. He’s brilliant.

salt cellar

I can’t remember the last time I wrote on here.

 

I have been very busy with the photos for the school kids. Well, I had been, because now I am done. At the moment, I feel like I could never take on a project of this magnitude ever again. We’ll see how I feel when the holidays are done. I suspect I might feel differently about it, but who knows. Right now, I have a cold and that sort of affects everything.

 

We are well. Will is finally off school, and so are the kids. Danny is now going into her first year of High School, she is going to Colegio Mexico, and Nikos might be moving there as well, although how true that is I do not know. I only have Nikos’s word on it and he is less than reliable when it comes to information of any sort.

 

Everything has happened, nothing has happened. I went to Danny’s middle school prom. I was ill at the thought of having to sit at a table with the ex and his sister, but in the end, it just turned out to be infinitely dull. I came home early and fell asleep waiting for Will to come back from Disney – the Disney trip that I ended up not going to because, after arguing about the date for months, they settled on the date for Danny’s prom. Priorities.

 

Everything annoys me (Stupid people, mostly, but lately that seems to be everyone). Will thinks it might just be the cold I have, but I think he gives me too much credit. I might not be able to just be nice. Maybe it’s time to get a front lawn, stand me there with a walking cane in hand, and I’ll start yelling at everyone.

 

And so the summer holidays begin.

I have been gone for a bit.