American Dream

Alright - I'm totally stealing this from Rebecca, but I like it.



This is from PostSecret.

Zombies

I like me a good zombie movie. One thing I wonder about, which I wish a director would address, is where's all the zombie poo? You know, they're all over the place, chowing down on people. That's a lot of people. Why aren't the cities covered in zombie doody? I doubt zombies are toilet trained.

I don't suggest anyone make this a major part of any movie, but I think it's an important issue that needs to be addressed by the film industry.

I asked Hernan about this.

"What do you think the zombies do? Do you think they poop?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"So, do they use the toilets, or what?"
"No. But it doesn't matter?"
"Huh?"
"No. It's not like the zombies are trying to get laid. So it doesn't matter how they do it."

That's all.

In The News

I'm not going to blog much about this, because I'm not interested in getting abducted, but this is an interesting topic.

Regarding the army's involvement - is anyone really surprised?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126906809

and

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Drug+drug+deal/3058760/story.html

The Beverage

I believe that we all experience certain moments in life, during which we see our lives with exceptional clarity. Suddenly, events will unfold in a certain way, and we're granted a brief opportunity for unclouded reflection on our experiences. It is during these times that we are able to confront ourselves with the honesty of our true desires, and it is with the lingering memory of this realization that we are able to align our behavior with these desires, empowering us to experience greater satisfaction and integrity.

I recently had such an experience. It was while lying in a thick pile of dead leaves and cow manure on top of a mountain, miles from my shower, with my naked ass voiding itself in one direction, and my abused mouth doing the same in the other, and, between the two, my stomach playing some kind of evil game of organ Twister, that I looked up at the stars above and thought, "I could really use a glass of lemonade."

Yesterday morning, barely recovered from the food poisoning activities of the night before, while carrying my backpack and sleeping mat back down the mountain on my wobbly spaghetti-legs, I woozily recalled the epiphany, and since then it hasn't left my thoughts. I would still like a glass of lemonade.

Actually, I very specifically want a glass of Santa Cruz brand lemonade OR the lemonade they serve at a restaurant in Palo Alto, because it is gently flavored with rose water, and roses smell like delicious.

Now, the rose-y lemonade I can't get, but the jar of Santa Cruz lemonade is available at Super Lake, the fancy pants import grocery store out east of Ajijic. I could take the bus over there and buy it, but my innate miser refuses to shell out the money for such an extravagance. Why should I pay all that money that my broke ass doesn't have when I could just stay here in town and make perfectly good limeade?

But here's the beautiful part of my conundrum. So long as I hold out and don't get this glass of delicious, thirst-quenching marvel of a beverage, I've got my life by the balls. You know? If someone asks me what I lack, I don't have to say "a job" or "community" or "the opportunity to live in my own country with my husband" or even something unobtainable, like "a super-sized trampoline" or "my very own velociraptor". See? All I have to say is, "Gosh, I could really use a glass of lemonade."

Macho, Macho Man!

There are many a thing in this world of which I am a fan, such as eating, bicycles, mummies, and shuffleboard. Machismo, though, is not a thing of which I am a fan. Machismo is a thing by which I am frustrated.

Most frustrating is the fighting, but that I'll save for another post. Today you get to read all about housework.

Women love cleaning. It's a fact. We can't get enough of it. It's our instinct. Quitting my job and becoming a housewife and mother has pretty much fulfilled all of my innate desires. Cloud Nine.

The occupation of housewife is made all the more stimulating by the following factors: (1) I up and had a baby. (2) The side of the highway is an incredibly dusty, dirty place. (3) Our house is "open" to the outdoors, and all that dirt and filth just comes sashaying right in, asking for a cocktail and a footstool. (4) Weak washing machine + laundry lines. (5) All meals must be prepared basically from scratch. (6) Men do no housework ever. (7) My mother-in-law and I are far out-numbered.

So, it's the two of us against my father-in-law, his mother, my husband, his two brothers, my eight-year-old nephew, and the two babies (my mother-in-law watches my niece six days a week). Three meals a day for some seriously picky eaters. Laundry. Mopping. Blah, blah, blah. It's really fascinating, isn't it? Shall, I blog more about mopping? I know it's captivating. Shut up, you love it!

Anyway, this wouldn't be so bad, except the men are all macho guys, who need extra special care. As in, they can't serve themselves food. No, really. My father-in-law and brother-in-law can't serve themselves. My mother-in-law has to. And she's not supposed to start eating until she's served them and her mother-in-law their plates. Then, if they want second helpings, she has to jump up and serve them that as well.

My father-in-law is a very traditional man. He's a farmer. He bathes once a week before going to mass. If my mother-in-law is not at home, he doesn't know how to reheat the meal she left for him in the microwave or warm tortillas. He's probably never washed a dish. He taps cigarette ash onto the floor and throws the butts there, too.

My brother-in-law is married, but because his wife isn't home to make him breakfast or lunch, he comes to his mother's house every day. She'll be busy watching his daughter, making lunch, serving her husband, and who knows what all, but he'll still call to her from the table that he wants her to bring him a glass for his soda. He has never changed his own daughter's diaper.

I thought Hernan and I had been making progress when we lived in California. He sometimes helped around the house and occasionally cooked, particularly if friends were over to witness it. But now, living in Macholand, with his mother (no less!) that's all over. Now he can't let anyone witness him cleaning or picking up after himself, because the other men will ridicule him. He can't even carry plates to the sink outside (the kitchen itself has no running water, so the sink is outside). That's women's work. If I don't launder his clothes, he carries them downstairs to his mother.

I don't really care how the other men in the family behave. It's between them and my mother-in-law. They understand that I'm one of those modern women and a bad wife, which is pretty much exactly what I want them to think. It's my husband who's in the doghouse. I feel like the victim of a bait-and-switch, so I call him off all the time. He comes home and says, "Baby, I'm hungry" and then sits down to watch soaps on TV. So I say, "Alright. Well, I'm feeding our baby, and then I'm giving him his bath, and getting him ready for bed, and getting him to sleep, and about a hundred other things, so unless you feel like helping me you can have yogurt for dinner." But this never results in him lending a hand, because by the time I come back downstairs to my in-laws place, I see that his mom has made him dinner and he's already eaten.

So it's me that gets yogurt for dinner.

There are macho things I do like, I suppose, like how my husband can build and fix things and how he's great at killing cockroaches and rats. But mostly macho makes me mad.

The other day, while we were seated for lunch, my mother-in-law came in from the kitchen to ask what is was she'd been yelled at to bring in. Hernan told her, "Forks!" and she went back to the kitchen to get them. I looked at him and said, "What? You don't have any legs or something?" And then immediately realized that he had only been repeating what his brother had said. Naturally, my brother-in-law assumed I was criticizing him, so he got real quiet and confused. Everyone was kind of amazed that I'd just called him off, since nobody calls him off for anything. Ever.

After a few seconds everyone realized what had just happened, and since then the new joke in the family is to ask my brother-in-law whether he has legs or not. I'm glad it didn't cause a family rift, but my inadvertent criticism hasn't effected any changes either.

Ah well. So it goes.

El Lago De Camecuaro

To celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday, I suggested we take a family day trip to El Lago de Camecuaro (Camecuaro Lake), a national park in the neighboring state of Michoacan.

You might wonder why we bothered to drive six hours round trip to go to ... a lake, when we live about 50 feet* from one. But then I would remind you that our lake is super polluted and nasty and that raw sewage runs straight into it, and then you would stop wondering.

Lake Camecuaro, though, is pretty. The water is super clear. I was in deep enough that I couldn't touch the lake bottom, but I could still see every stick and rock down there. I was happy to enjoy the water without worrying about emerging as a mutant.

The trees are beautiful. Their thick trunks grow in twisty turning angles, and the roots are a jumble both on the land and in the water. If anyone knows what those trees are called, please let me know.

The water is cold. Not everyone wanted to get in. I summoned the shreds of my Oregon pride and dove in. The water was delicious.

This was actually my second time there. We went last August, too, while my sister was visiting. I wish we were closer, because it's so nice to get in the water!

I will say that the place is a great deal more park-like than I anticipated. I guess I think of "going to the lake" to be a very natural experience. This place is definitely A Park. If you go, you'll probably encounter gads of people, almost all Mexican, many probably from Morelia. Many will be playing music, quite possibly a certain song you hate. There are vendors that walk around molesting you to buy a statue of Jesus on the cross. Hordes of children will scream as they run right over your picnic blanket. One side of the lake has restaurants. Another corner has a sizable playground.

Speaking of the playground... yours truly got a stern reprimand for playing on the structures. I took Hanix for his first slide ride. Then we got crazy and I sat down on a swing with him in my lap. Well, not five seconds later, a terribly serious-looking guard came over and made me get off the swing. At first, he wouldn't even talk to me. He just wagged his finger at me and looked at me like I had just spit on baby angels with acid monster saliva. So I got up. But I stared at him, because, seriously? I can't take my baby on the swing? But he had been giggling! Who stops a giggling baby?

So then he said (in Spanish) "No, no. No. Only kids. No." Alright. I get it. Bad dog. I'm a sore loser, so I gave him a dirty look and then laughed at him, to show him that, you know, he is without joy in this world, and I took my nephew and my baby and his adorablitude away.

So unless you have your heart set on swings, I recommend the lake for a pleasant afternoon.

True story.


* I'm a terrible judge of distance, so it might be more or less than that, but basically it's right there, you know. So don't mock me if you know that I'm wrong about this.

Beer In A Bag: My Trip To San Luis Soyatlán

In Mexico it's quite common to drink beverages out of clear plastic bags: juice, choco milk, tejuino.

In all cases, the bevvy is poured into a bag, a straw is thrown in, and a rubber band ties the bag closed around the straw.

Never had I had beer out of a bag, though, not until a little trip to San Luis Soyatlán.

San Juan Soyatlán is another town on Lake Chapala, but on the south shore. It's roughly across the lake from us here in San Juan Cosalá.



As you may notice, San Juan Cosalá is not on this map. This is because nobody is interested in coming here. San Juan is between Ajijic and Jocotepec, over on the northwest shore.

Anyway, back to the discussion of beer... there's a quite popular street stand there on the main drag through town. It's popular probably because of the sheer quantity of liquid they dish out.

Alright, so here's how to order, in case you find yourself thirsty in San Luis.

(1) Locate the booth. This should be easy to do. Just look for a long line of well dressed Guadalajara people looking excited.

(2) Get in line and begin contemplating whether you want to drink a "small" or your own weight in liquid.

(3) When a spunky woman approaches you yelling, holler out "chico" or "grande", but don't bother specifying what drink you actually prefer. That comes later. She will hand you a small or large plastic bag, which you should then open and hold out in preparation for step (4).

(4) Someone will walk down the line pouring ice into the plastic bags. Have yours ready, and hold it open with both hands.

(5) When you finally pass by the fifty-odd crates of rotting produce that precede the drink counter, you are ready to order your drink. The Vampiro is a tequila and fruit juice mix. Micheladas are like a Mexican Bloody Mary: beer and clemato and pepper, and whatever else they throw in.

(6) Keep waiting. Yes, step (6) is to keep waiting, because so far they've only given you the mix. You don't yet have any alcohol in your bag, so don't start sipping away yet. Stay in line.

(7) After proceeding past the sliced fruit and about two hundred wasps, you arrive at the other end of the counter. Now you need to hold open your bag again so that the man at the cash box can pour in either tequila or beer. If you order a michelada, as I did, you'll be getting a whole caguama poured in.

(8) Pay. And Enjoy.


And for good measure, here's a picture of my baby admiring his mama's drinking skills.

Spazzy Personal Update

Excuse the craziness, but I've got news!

Today I went to a real pool. Yes, the kind that gets "built" instead of "inflated" The kind that I can fit my whole body in.

See, my hubs goes out all the time without me. He has friends. They go to bars, or pools, or wherever. They do carne asada. They drink. They don't invite me. It's been established that his friends don't feel comfortable having wives along. But tonight I got invited along. I think the reason was that Hernan has really been wanting Hanix to go in a pool, and this was the big chance. So we went.

Actually, I might not have been invited. When Hernan called this afternoon to tell me to have our baby ready, he never mentioned me being ready, too. Ready, though, I certainly was. The dudes showed up, and I had my bikini on and my towel in hand. If they wanted my baby they were gunna have to take me, too.

But this is only half the news.

The guys largely ignored me, but whatever. I was with my baby and we were in a pool. But then! One of the dudes left to go get more beer, and when he came back he had his wife and baby with him.

!!!!!

Do you all realize what this means?

You know all that talk I just did about parental bantering? Well, I cornered this woman and layed it on, and I even got invited to drop by her house sometime.

I'm doing a happy dance.

I'm officially friend-stalking this woman now.

I have told Hernan so many times that he needs to help me meet people. I told him that if his buddies all brought their wives and girlfriends we could hang out together and leave the men alone (since they want nothing to do with me). But he's unhelpful. He goes out every night and leaves me alone and won't invite me or give me phone numbers or anything.

So now I'm going to wait a few days, because that's what you do when you want the relationship to work out, right? Then I'm going to go drop by (because apparently no one uses phones down here.). Then she and I are going to become BFFs, and I'm going to go out all night and not call home and leave Hernan alone with the baby to worry what happened to me.

That's my news. I'll of course tell you how it all works out.

Cuetes

It has been my experience that Mexicans love their fireworks. Not the fancy ones that leave a glittering image of a unicorn leaping through a ring of flames, just old-fashioned explosions. One big BOOM! after another. They call them cuetes, though I've heard that cohetes is the correct word. I have another word for them, in English, but I won't write that here. In might offend the sensibilities of some of my readers.

Cuetes go off roughly every all the friggin time. And most of the time we no longer notice them. It's hard to pay much attention to the sound over the din of highway traffic, neighbors screaming at their kids, kids screaming at each other, dogs barking, gas truck jingles, bullhorn advertisements, the TV downstairs, bottles breaking, La Cucaracha car horns, drunks whistling and hollering at other drunks, and the lady with the hyena laugh.

But sometimes the neighbors get overly zealous. And then they set of, like, fifty. At 11:00 at night. Or 5:00 in the morning. And I have to ask - is this a special holiday? Is it the day of an important saint? Is tomorrow the remembrance of an event of great historical significance to the nation?

Because, if not, why in tarnation are you waking my baby up?

Secret Parent Club

Watch out - I'm about to get all mommy on y'all.

Mothers' days just passed (In the US it was Sunday, in Mexico it was Monday) and this was my first year being a mom on that day. Sure, last May I was knocked up and as big as a manatee, but, as my in-laws repeatedly reminded me, I wasn't yet a mother. I thought, "Damn well close enough, right?" (my son was born a month later) but they stayed firm that I didn't qualify. I was going to have to push him out and keep him alive for a year if I wanted flowers.

Well, baby boy was born, and suddenly I gained membership into the secret parent club. I didn't even know it was a club until I'd joined, that's how secret. Yes, suddenly strangers would smile at me and say, "My son's about his age! Here, let me help you with your bag." or "Aren't they sweet at that age? My daughter just turned two. Let me get that door for you."

I should be more precise about this though. I gained entry to the US secret parent club. In Mexico I'm still just some gringa, same as always. Instead of offering me a seat on the bus (because I'm carrying my baby and three bags of groceries) they just stare at me and think, "I wonder how that gringa's going to manage holding on to all that stuff while the bus is moving. I hope she doesn't drop that bag of beans on me. It would be funny, though, if she fell on someone. Gringos are so ridiculous."

Thus it was only while traveling in the US this last month that I discovered my recently acquired membership. I was stunned. I also lacked practice. At parks, in grocery stores, at OMSI, everywhere I went mommies and daddies would try to engage me in parent banter, and I had to think fast to keep my side of it.

"How old is he?" some mommy would ask.
"Uh. What? My baby?"
"Yeah, is he your son?" She was already suspicious that maybe I wasn't really a member.
"Oh! Yes. My son is ten months."
...
And then I'd remember to ask, "How old is your son?"
"He's 13 months."
"Oh. That's great." How am I supposed to respond to this?
"Is he walking yet?" she asks. Great. Another question.
"Not yet. He kind of cruises around while holding onto things, but he's not really walking on his own yet."
...
"Is your son walking?"
Other mommy stares at me because her son is, in fact, walking around in front of us at that moment.
"I guess so, huh." I say lamely. "Well, how great that he's walking." But really? What does one say?

But then I realized how great it is to belong to this club, because in San Juan all of my attempts to meet people and make friends fail miserably. They couldn't fail more if they were attempts to run through a brick wall. But in California and Oregon I found myself with thousands of people happy to engage in conversation with me. So my next attempts at parent banter were at least more enthusiastic, even if no more successful.

Mommy and child sit down next to us. I smile at them both waiting for the right moment to initiate parent banter. Babies are both playing. Other mommy smiles and says hi.

"Hi!" I respond. "How old is your daughter?" Using what I've already learned, I cut right to the chase.
"She six and a half months."
"Ah what a sweet time!" I say, my face nearly breaking in half from all the smiling I'm doing. "She's darling."
"Thank you." Mommy smiles. "And how old is your son?"
"He's ten months." Mommy looks like she's about to return a compliment, but as we watch he grabs all of the baby girl's toys and tosses them one by one over his shoulder. Then he looks around for something else to throw and reaches for the girl's bottle.
"No, no, no, sweetie. Here. Look at your book."
"He's sure an active little guy." Mommy says of him.
"Oh, yes. Thanks!" I make it a compliment. "Yep, he's always... uh, exploring."
Mommy becomes distracted with her daughter. I can't let the conversation end.
"So, do you live around here?" Oh my God. I sound like I'm trying to pick up on her. Then I realize, I am trying to pick up on her. I'm cruising for friends at the park, and using my baby to do it. Oh! the shame.
"Yeah, just a few blocks away." She says. "Where do you two live? I haven't seen you around before."
And then I realize the folly of my question. Now I have to confess that I live in Mexico; I'm only visiting. I can't make play dates or talk about child care. I can't bump into them another day. This is a one-day stand friendship at best.
"Oh, uh. No. We don't live around here, unfortunately. We're just visiting..." I try to think of some way to save myself. "But we'll probably be back for another visit soon!" Like she's going to write me in to her calendar and make arrangements to be at the park that day.
"I see. Well, it must be nice you get to visit." Then mommy starts packing up her toys, smiles and says good bye. And off they go. Just like that. They walked out of our lives forever.

I think if we had stuck around I would have become quite adept at it, and by now we'd have more play dates than Elmo. But Alas! we're back in San Juan. The club here works a little differently, and you don't have be the parent to belong. You need only be over six years-old and the closest one to a baby at the moment. Membership sounds like this:

"He's hiccuping! He must be cold. Poor baby, are you cold? Why didn't your mama put a sweater on you? Poor thing. Tell your mama, 'mami, will you get me my sweater?' Poor baby."

"Look at that mark on his arm!"
"Yeah. It's a mosquito bite. We had mosquitoes in the bedroom last night."
"No. I think it's a rash. You must not be bathing him enough. Rub some lime juice on it!"

"Oh my God! Where are that's child's socks and shoes! He's going to catch pneumonia and die! Put some shoes on him. Walking around with no shoes on! Poor thing. He's going to die!"

"You want some of my coffee? Hm. Little baby? Here's a sip..."
"Actually, I don't want him to have any coffee. He's just a baby."
"But one little sip won't harm him. You liked that? Here, have another taste."
"Well, also it's nap time, so please don't give him any more."
"Oh, it's ok. I'm just giving him a little bit because he wants it."

That's how the club works down here.

Motherhood. And you know what? In the end, I didn't even get any flowers.

First Communion After Party

You want to party, but you have no friends? No problem. You want to dance, but avoid the discotheque because everyone else there is fifteen? No problem. You want to pound a few beers, but you're too poor to afford a six pack? No problem.

The solution is a good, old-fashioned first communion party. Or a baptism. Or a wedding. Or a baby shower. Or a birthday. If your family is large enough, there will always be some kind of party to attend. And there will always be food, music, and beer.

Granted, sometimes this means you get suckered out of a nice afternoon of lounging half-naked and drunk in your kiddie pool (can you tell I'm obsessed with the pool?), but life is full of compromises. The flip side is that you get to go tear it up with the fan-dam. If you're lucky, the hosts have decent taste in music and maybe even have hired a band. If you're less lucky, you get to listen to that one really awful song that Mexico is obsessed with, and you don't know what it's called, and you don't understand the lyrics, but you know you hate it, and it sounds like this:

Ma ma- maton,
dabby da-b daton
bla bla- badon...
[repeat for twenty-seven minutes]

Whatever the music, you can pass off your baby to aunts and cousins, and you probably won't see him again until either you go hunt him down or he poops his diaper. In the meantime, you can hit the dance floor, have a beer, eat some birria, eavesdrop on the intra-family scandal gossip, explain for the four-hundred and ninety-fifth time why your baby isn't wearing a sweater, speculate on how lousy Mexico will do in the upcoming World Cup games, and then have another beer.

Not bad.

Hot, Dry, Dusty

For those of you who just can't wait for summer, here's a little over-sharing.

It is so hot here that I'm sweating not just from the usual places, but also from the backs of my hands. Who knew that one could even sweat from there? I'm not even a particularly sweaty person. Not like that guy you got partnered with that one time when your friends dragged you to a ballroom dance class. Not like him at all!

I admit, though, that it could be that I foolishly hung up my laundry in the sun with a 26+ pound baby strapped to my back that was what pushed my body to the point of such desperation that it felt forced to expel water from even my hands. Honestly, I should have just taken the wash and thrown it into a pile on the bed. It probably would have dried in an hour anyway.

Also, I'm sitting here considering what would be the least amount of clothing that I could get away with wearing today. I think a bikini would somehow be less inappropriate than undergarments. If I stayed in the house and didn't go out, I could probably get away with the bikini. If I fill the kiddie pool with water and get in it with my baby, then it even becomes almost understandable. "Almost", because my in-laws don't wear swim gear into the water. They swim in shorts and T-shirts.

Alright - the battle commences: should I endeavor to clean my house, lie on my bed wishing Hanix would nap so I could too, or spend the rest of the day with Hanix in the kiddie pool? Man, life is so full of tough choices.

Wilted

It's too hot.

I wish we lived near a body of water I wasn't scared to enter.

It was foolish to walk part way to the grocery store.

I'll be in my inflatable kiddy pool.

Home Again, Home Again

We're home again.

We're back with my honey.
We're back with my in-laws.
Back to having our own space and having nowhere to go.
Back to mosquitoes and traffic and barking dogs.
Back to dust everywhere, and house projects, and cockroaches.
Back to tamales and taquitos and chilaquiles. Back to knock your socks off spicy food for breakfast.
Back to small town gangsters looking for fights.
Back to food full of sugar and artificial ingredients.
Back to family eager to squeeze Hanix and give him treats.
Back to avocado. Back to mango.
Back to staying out of the afternoon sweltering heat.
Back to the TV always on. Back to sirens.
Back to our kiddy pool.
Back to Hanix's walker.
Back to shoes on in the house.
Back to bottled water.
Back to my bed.
Back to laundry lines.
To loneliness.
To Spanish.
To roosters.
To hugs.

We're home again.