San Juan Gossip

Town gossip. It's terrific. And San Juanecos are into their gossip.

I imagine I don't hear most of the gossip that's about us, or I hear it and don't realize they're talking about me. I still don't understand Spanish unless I'm actually paying attention to whoever is speaking. If I'm just passing by, lost in my own thoughts, I tend not to hear what's being said.

I do know that there was a rumor going around for a while that we were growing and selling drugs. Marijuana, I assume.

And then, after Hanix was born a great deal more güero than other Mexican babies (um. yeah. it's because I'm white, people.) there was speculation that Hernan wasn't really the father. (And that may be the right way to write 'güero', but I went out of my way to include the diácritic just for Stuart.)

The latest gossip involving me appears to be that my mother-in-law is working me to the bone. Here's how we found out about it.

I went downstairs last night, to my in-laws part of the house, on my way to take the trash out to the street. My mother-in-law was visiting with my husband's aunt and cousin. When I passed through, Aunty exclaimed, "Ah! La Bebé is too skinny!" 'La Bebé' is how everyone refers to me, by the by. I'm pretty sure most of Hernan's relatives probably don't know my name - they just call me 'Bebé'. And, yeah, even though I'm pretty much always eating, my enormous child eats even more. Somehow he ended up gigantic and chubby and I ended up with a tortilla butt. But that's not the point of this post. Aunty then goes on to talk about how I'm altogether too skinny, and clearly it's the hard life I'm living here with my in-laws.

So my mother-in-law points out that I eat probably more than anyone else in the house - more than my husband, more than my teenage brother-in-law... I just pretty much always eat, which was kind of my hobby before I started nursing 'The Machine' anyway, so I'm thinking of going pro. Then Aunty concludes that really it must be because my mother-in-law works me too hard, just like they're saying.

Yeah, word on the street seems to be that she's a regular slave driver.

That's pretty much not at all the case. My mom-in-law is great. She cooks amazing food and lets me devour as much of it as I can. She watches Hanix for me all the time, giving me time to shower and eat (and blog). She's funny and kind and I really couldn't have hoped for a better mother-in-law/housemate. I hate to think of what kind of a mess I'd be without her. And I'm fairly convinced that if I ever think to pop out and rear another child, it won't be without family to help out, because I've been spoiled, and doing it all alone sounds hard.

So now my mother-in-law is very worried that the town is gossiping about what a terrible mother-in-law she is, to be working me down to the bone. She's been explaining to everyone who's come by today that it's just that the boy eats so much. I can tell she's kind of worried about it.

Here are my conclusions. (1) Apparently I have become altogether quite accustomed to my body and appearance being topics open to general discussion. This probably would have bothered or embarrassed me when we first moved down here, but now it's old hat. (2) I need to make an effort to eat even more, for my mother-in-law's sake. (3) I'm not really a small-town kind of gal. This gossip business might be amusing at times, but it's not for me.

What's next, I wonder? I can imagine it might have something to do with devil worship, since I've already been asked (by strangers, no less!) when I'm going to baptise my baby. When I replied that Hernan and I aren't Catholic, so we don't plan on doing the whole baptismal thing (do Christians baptise too, or just the Catholics?), I then got asked whether I didn't want someone to baptise my baby for me then. "No, really. Thanks. We're good." Since strangers are asking me about this, I can only imagine word is getting around about how we drink blood and whatnot. Who knows. I'll be sure to post about it when I hear it.

La Cucaracha

I would like you all to know that someone in my neighborhood has a car horn that plays La Cucaracha.　

Poor Food Choices

Sometimes when I'm hungry (read: always) and the kitchen is bare I do ridiculous, misguided things with food.

Example: I was living in Budapest but hadn't yet gotten the hang of grocers closing up shop Saturday afternoon and not reopening until Monday morning. I was used to 24 hour food access. So I forgot to stock the cupboard and lo and behold, by Sunday night I was desperate. So. I made pancakes. Except all I had was flour and water and salt. Come and get 'em!

Example 2: I once cooked a package of pasta by frying it instead of boiling and then frying (the latter option is delicious). It was a hunger-induced mistake. Don't ever do this. I ate about 2/3 of the results before a housemate intervened on behalf of my stomach.

Example 3: Limes + old tortillas + serrano chiles does not equal "casserole". Nuf said.

My other trouble is that I keep trying to bake even though I'm no baker. I shouldn't really migrate from the stove top. It's that I try to bake the way I cook, and I never cook with a plan. I constantly fuss with the food (because I'm impatient and hungry) and add additional ingredients, and then throw in leftovers, and then add more cumin, and then decide an egg would add some protein, and then maybe throw in some chile peppers, to "liven it up"... and it usually works out ok when I'm cooking, but that's not the way to bake, it would seem.

So, this brings me to Example 4. I've been going through a crisis this week because I really want cookies but I have no butter. I can't find any butter in San Juan, because it's a luxury item and all they sell is lard and margarine, and I'm on my snobby high horse this week and don't want margarine cookies. Actually I did make margarine cookies, and I ate them (of course I did!), but I was left disappointed because for some reason the margarine flavor, at least the kind for sale in the shop next door, just puts me off. So, snobbery admitted, I wanted non-margarine cookies.

I found a no-butter cookie recipe that seemed quite good. I almost managed to follow the recipe, and the cookies turned out almost really good. But I made so much that I had leftover batter. No problem, save it for later. Until later: I get hungry, think "I'll make some more of those banana almond cookies" and decide that I'll throw in the leftover french toast mix with the cookie batter (start shaking your head here), because milk and eggs and cinnamon are tasty, right? And then it's too liquid-y, so I toss in a handful of flour and some ground almonds, and some chocolate shavings and some more cinnamon and stir it up and then throw in some salt, because salt makes anything taste good (no it doesn't) and then mix it up and pour it on a cookie sheet and think I'm so, so clever. (Continue to shake your head.)

And yes, I'm eating the results right now. I wouldn't say "good", but I would say "it's a good think I resisted 'livening them up' with chiles".

It's not quite an apple pie substitute, but... I'm now finishing off the last one, so I suppose this wasn't a complete flop.

I guess I need to learn to always begin preparing food before I reach hunger-crisis moment. Or have more snacks on hand. And maybe to just stay away from the oven.

Teach, You're Wrong.

My sixteen-year-old brother-in-law came home from school today and told us he learned that the majority of children who grow up with homosexual parents are traumatized for it and that's why gay couples shouldn't be allowed to marry or adopt.

I could spit nails I'm so mad.

I told him I didn't believe that a bit, and asked who had told him such a stupid thing. When he told me it was his teacher... ooooh, I feel like marching (or taking the bus) over to his school and having it out. I'm so mad.

He said that his teacher told the class that kids grow up traumatized because they have two dads or two moms instead of one of each. You know, because all the other kids come from "normal" families, raised by their moms because their dads are in the States working to send money hone, or raised by grandma because both mom and dad are dead or gone, or bounce between mom's house and dad and step-mom's house, or (like my brother-in-law) have fathers who are alcoholics and are for all purposes out of the picture, or who have wonderful heterosexual, devout Catholic parents who beat them, or ignore them, or tell them that if they ever find out their child is gay they'll disown them and so help them God hope to see them burn in Hell. But surely having two moms or two dads will really screw them up.

I was pleased to watch Hernan jump right in, too. He really cares about his little brother, and often treats him more like his son than his kid brother. We were both really upset to find out that his teachers are saying this kind of thing in school.

I told him I'd like to read the "study" his teacher claimed to be referencing, and if he could please get the name of it or the author or a copy, I would love to read it.

Oh! I'm so mad. Even madder than a month ago when he told me that someone at his school told him that Darwin's theories had been refuted and were now popularly considered defunct.

On the positive side, I hadn't realized how good my Spanish had become until I started firing off reason after reason why I think that's the stupidest thing I've heard in a long while, at least since his aunt told me that brown eyes are healthy and "colored" eyes are inferior and "sick". I guess there's nothing like stirring up a person's passions (or a strong beverage) for getting that foreign language to come tumbling out a kilometer a minute ("kilometer" because I'm so metric now.)

At least every time I hear that gays traumatize their children, and blacks are all uneducated and lazy, and Chinese (which I understand to mean "Asians") are all ugly and smart and know kung-fu... and that goblins are going to steal my baby's soul, and so on and on... at least every time I hear it I can say that it's not true and hopefully that does something.

Especially with my kid brother. He really looks up to Hernan. I'm glad to see he listens to his big brother. Still, we're only two against all his teachers and all his friends. He's a smart boy, though; I think he'll wise up.

Oh! But I'm still so mad!

Dear Google

Dear Google Alex,

Please hire me to work on your speech recognition projects. And can I work from home?

Thanks.
Ember

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/automatic-captions-in-youtube.html

I Did It For The Flowers

S0 if you're going to trespass, you should wear your glasses. And I'm not talking sneaky, throw 'em off your trail disguise sunglasses with fake mustache attached. I'm talking prescription eye wear. Because blind ladies like me shouldn't be sneaking across fences without them. The reason: there might just be someone watching you sneak onto their property, and you wouldn't know till you're right in front of them, because you forgot your lenses at home.

It's because I'm slick like that.

So, I offered to water my mother-in-laws plants for her, the flowers we planted at her father's gravesite. I try to go at least every other day to the graveyard here in San Juan. I bring a bucket, which I can fill from a cistern there at the graveyard. The last three days, however, there's been no water. Dry as dust.

Yesterday before I even entered the panteon a little girl stopped me, saying there was no water. She pointed across the road, though, to a ranch and explained that she was getting water from a well over there. All well and good, I thought, you're a cute little girl, you can slip through the barbed wire and no one will care, but I'm a weirdo gringa with a baby in a carry pack, and I doubt I can slip through that barbed wire without getting stuck and then drawing the attention of exactly one third of the town, who will probably come yell at me for trespassing.

I considered it, though.

And I got home, and kept considering it, and thought of those poor, thirsty plants. So today I left Hanix with his grandma, so I could have half a chance getting through the barbed wire. And you know what? it worked. I got right through, with my two buckets, to boot.

But now we come back to the topic of vision and the eye glasses I should have been wearing. Li'l ole me, so proud to have made it through the fence, starts sauntering up to the well, only to realize someone's been standing there watching me approach the whole time.

Ooops.

I thought about turning around right then, but that seemed even more embarrassing, since it isn't as if they don't already know or will not soon discover who I am. And gossip spreads fast in this town, so I sucked it up and said my good afternoons and asked if it wouldn't be alright for me to fill my buckets from the well.

The guy seemed so surprised to see me, I think he didn't know what to say, so he just nodded his head and watched me dip my buckets in the well and then teeter off as fast as I could without spilling the precious liquid.

Way to go, Slick.

So, in the end it all worked out, and I think the plants will survive, but I was sorely embarrassed and will have to find a new means of getting water if the cistern remains empty.

Not so bad. But I have learned my lesson. Don't go traipsing onto private property without my spectacles.

Mari II

I look forward to getting old. Maybe not the part where my body gradually poops out on me, but definitely the part where I start being able to get away with everything. Yes, I fully expect to be a batty old broad when the time comes.

Mari, Hernan's grandmother, gets away with a lot, and she fully deserves to. After ninety-six years, during probably eighty of which she awoke at five every morning to take the corn to the mill, to grind, to bring home, to make into tortillas for breakfast, I think we can all cut her a little slack.

Just now she woke up Hanix. This is a pain, because for some reason my giant child doesn't care to sleep much. His naps last about 30 minutes tops, and I can only get him to nap on occasion. (A line from the movie The Ring keeps coming back to me: "She never sleeps!") Mari woke him up by hollering at who knows who that she didn't know where the people who live in the house were, who knows when they'd be back. All the while my mother-in-law was there shushing her.

But like I say, the woman deserves some slack. Besides, although she may have woken him up just now, there are plenty of times when she prolongs his sleep by rocking his little hammock-crib thing that we suspend from the pig hook in the ceiling (Yes, the pig hooks in the ceiling for hanging pig carcasses from and pig scales for weighing huge babies). The movement keeps him happy and asleep. Sometimes she even does me the favor of rocking the crib when Hanix isn't in it. Just in case.

And for the most part she gets to do what she pleases. She rakes the back lot, for example, even though the back lot is just dirt, and, especially now that it's the dry season, raking just stirs up a huge dust cloud that comes billowing into the house.

I mentioned in an earlier post how things disappear into her room. Recently my mother-in-law tried to store a bag of my sister-in-law's belongings in Mari's room. Mari opened the bag up and started sorting through the objects, picking out what she would keep and what she didn't need.

And yesterday we were eating lunch in the back lot, where we'd moved the dining room table and chairs on account of the new floor project going on. When my mother-in-law told Mari to come sit at the table with us, Mari refused and decided instead to perch on top of a heap of boxes and scrap wood and bricks. It couldn't have been comfortable, but why not let the lady do as she pleases?

I usually can't understand what Mari says. Between my poor Spanish, her old-person accent and vocabulary, and her missing teeth a fair bit gets lost between us. I did understand her, once, when she told me that she hadn't bathed in some six years or so. Let me tell you, I believed her too. Since then, however, my mother-in-law has started to shower her once in a while, which Mari protests vehemently. She refuses to get up, and even fakes a cough to get out of it, since we all know you can't bathe when you're sick. Even in May, in the scorching heat, she complains that a shower would kill her, on account of the cold. My mother-in-law puts adult diapers on her at night, but when Mari manages to remove them she sometimes then soils herself. My mother-in-law is then firm about the shower.

So maybe there are some downsides to getting old too, such as being showered against your will and wearing Depends. Still, I'm fond of the woman, and I hope we help her enjoy her last years.