send

pretty satisfying - got off 2 long catch-up emails today. still a bunch more to go. i'm tempted to send them this link, and not have to write separate emails to everyone all the time (as if i write to people all the time!), but i don't want it to inhibit me from actually using this the way i wanted, which i think was maybe as a diary, but maybe as a blog, or maybe just for some pretty distracting procrastination... anyways, feels good to click that send button to fire off a good long email.

jungle winter

will i ever get used to this? winter meaning that it isn't too hot to do stuff! nice warm day today and we spent it having a picnic in the country at m. and l.'s, a little hiking, kids 'fished' in the pond, played with sticks and things. mate. bizcochitos. tank top. beautiful sunset.

boo :(

once again, no time for a real post, but a mini-update maybe i can squeeze in. all is well and fine, or at least my mood is at this particular moment, but i am missing having friends and being able to get out and about on my own in the city. here we are all hunkered down because of swine flu, plus i never go to the city anyways and when i do i have to run around like crazy and lug the baby everywhere and i don't know where to go to get or do anything anyways...

i am bored and frustrated with our only friends here - m. and l. they don't listen, especially m., and they don't seem to show any interest in knowing anything about us (especially me, but maybe i'm just extra-sensitive, f. thinks). they love us and want us and our kids to be a part of their lives, which is great. but can only go so far. it's hard to be around Such Great Parents all the time. if we could just talk about all the stuff that comes up with the kids without so much Advice coming from them, or if it came out in a different way, it would all be different. i'd still get bored talking about housecleaning and Perfect Parenting with m. all the time, even when i too am considered to be part of Padres Como Nosotros, but it would also have its good moments. it does have its good moments, in fact, but right now i'm not feeling it so much. we were talking about the monster and eating and his growth and m. weighed in with her opinion, which normally i would welcome, but it came out way too much like Words of Wisdom, without stopping even for a breath to hear what f. or i had to say.

anyways, there we go. hopefully we'll have better moments.

today was a lovely family day, out in the backyard in the lovely winter sun, the monster digging, the baby sprawled in the dirt, some mate, cleaning the house, the afternoon post-siesta at the beach, beautiful sunset, monster and baby both ate well. all good.

two moments with the monster

one:
you came home from school and opened up your 2nd package from your bubby (1st one was a ball and mitt), grabbed a piece of sidewalk chalk and we went outside to draw. i wrote your name, then you grabbed the chalk and said: i know how to make an e now. but i start with the ... then the ..., wait it's missing this (the vertical line)... now the .... you did it!! you wrote your name for the first time that i know of. and it was the first 'e' i've ever seen. i asked you if your seño taught you how to do it and you said nope, that i had taught you how. wow.

two:
one hour later, a beautiful sunny day, me sitting on our favourite lawn chair on the front lawn, you on my lap, wearing your helmet, your cape, the pants you haven't taken off in several months, the white long-sleeve shirt you haven't taken off in several weeks, your white shoes with cordones, and constantly pulling your white socks all the way up to your knees. the two of us peeling a mandarine and grabbing sections to eat and spit out the seeds 'for the pájaros and the hormigas'. such yumminess.

doña rosa

somehow, doña rosa is a big part of what i'm interested in studying. common sense, gender, class, legitimacy, media, popular culture, political implications - it's got it all. but not sure if there is anything analytically interesting i could do with that other than describe it, which is only interesting for non-argentine academics...

related article:
el regreso de doña rosa

custom-built furniture

what could possibly make me feel more grown-up? maybe a mortgage, but still, this is pretty big. a few weeks ago we spent $300 on a nice handmade chest of drawers (is that what they're called?). it seemed like a great deal and we needed the storage and we finally bought something we liked instead of whatever used piece of junk we could somehow cart home on a sidewalk in canada, or of course, the standard fallback option - ikea. we figure we're only going to be moving around within argentina now, so we can start buying things we actually like and cart them around to our new homes as necessary.

all this, to explain our new custom-built kitchen piece. it looks great, provides a little bar-type separator between the kitchen and the main room, and has badly needed shelves for dishes, pots, pyrex, etc. even with a cute little shelf for the cd player. only failure - in our efforts to keep it small, we didn't calculate the depth we would need for things like ladles and spatulas, and now they only fit in the drawer diagonally, without the tray we bought for them.

still, i love it. and in the eventual dream house that we will inhabit and own and love, it will be adaptable to wherever it's needed...

terminal de omnibus

through contacts (el gordo, who had gone to high school with the woman at the registro), we were told to just go to the registro civil and we could change our domicilios, without having to present any kind of documentation proving our new addresses here or anything. in fact, i could go alone and do it for both of us.

i was told that the registro was in the terminal de omnibus, and sure enough, huge terminal de omnibus sign, biggish building, and little registro office inside.

off i went, one hot morning, baby in the sling. while processing everything for me, the woman obviously tried to get as much gossip out of me as possible - why was i here, what do we do, were we going to stay, how much were we paying for rent, etc. a few fingerprints, signatures, 8 pesos, and my DNI with residency here in macondo. she did f.'s too, and said he had to go whenever he could to do the fingerprints and pay the 8 pesos. easy squeezy.

about a month later, he finally got around to getting his prints done. no problems.

while there, a man came in and asked when the next bus was coming. he was told that it was no longer the terminal, which was now in a different part of town. f. commented that it would be good to take down the sign. yeah, he was told, in fact, it hadn't been the terminal for a long time now. in fact, the sign went up after the building was no longer the terminal.

what??

shopping at la señora

i love going to the señora around the corner to buy stuff. it feels so authentic. it's such a great little combination of having everything you might need (bread, oil, milk, milanesas, balloons, hair gel). i feel like such a typical señora ama de casa, running out to the store with baby in tow to buy the butter/potatoes/bread or other basic whatever to prepare lunch for my family.

communicating for social change

probably lots of good pickings here:
Communication For Social Change Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings

mothers' movement

worth a read? seems interesting but very likely way too irrelevant to life in macondo... could such a book (secret wish: movement) exist here?

Stunned: The New Generation of Women Having Babies, Getting Angry and Creating a Mothers’ Movement

multi-tasking

well, still haven't actually done any of the things on my list for today (translate journal abstracts, clean bathroom, put away clean clothes, prepare lunch, sweep floor), i did manage to eat something, drink mate, feed the monkey, nurse the monkey, change the monkey (including catching poop in the potty and rinsing out the potty), wash the dishes and take out the garbage (but still haven't wiped the gunk out of the bins or put in new garbage bags). still, not bad at all, and all with the monkey relatively happy and i even paid a moderate amount of attention to him.

the clincher: nurse him, then do squats with him in arms until he's asleep! if he gets harder to get to sleep, my legs will only be the better for it...

half a day

~2am - monster wanders into room, whining, f. has a headache. get up, climb into monster's bed with him, cuddle back to sleep.

~4:30am - hear monkey crying, confused, forgot i was in monster's bed. stumble back into my room, get monkey, get into bed, nurse him back to sleep. and nurse, and nurse, and nurse.

~5:45am - monster is on top of me, won't go back to his bed, f. has a Really Bad Headache. convince monster to keep still and quiet in our bed. nurse monkey occasionally.

~6:30am - monster really wants his lost sock, and it's time to get up anyway. keep quiet so f. and monkey don't wake up. get monster's bread and butter, my mate, morning pee pee, pack a snack, find the water bottle, sweep spilt mate, run up to monkey before he bugs f., nurse monkey, change his diaper, brush monster's teeth, my teeth, find clothes for me, convince monster he has to wear his uniform shirt, he has to wear a sweatshirt, he has to wear a jacket (the rest is easier because he slept in it last night), pack the computer, the diaper bag, get kids into carseats, find favourite song on favourite cd (brujas song).

~8:10am - we're off, my first solo car ride to the city, with 2 kids in tow, to find a parking spot near monster's daycare.

monkey sleeps the whole way!
i don't get lost!
monster is in a good mood and we sing together and chat!
i find parking!
i'm not more than half an hour late!
i leave monster moderately happy!
i go to the health food store!!
monkey patiently lets me buy everything i want!
i get some new white socks for monster,
and make it to the wi-fi cafe by 10am!!
monkey sleeps and lets me work for almost 30min!

~10:30am - nurse monkey, keep him happy with lip balm case, cuddle and translate, cuddle and translate, nurse and translate, cuddle and nurse...

~11:15am - finish translation!! nurse a little more, pay, get to monster's school on time!! he's happy to see me, a big hug, an agreeable walk to the car.

~12 noon - kids in carseats, favourite music playing, find my way out of the city, monkey sleeps, f. texts me that he misses me, monster still in good mood.

~1pm - get home safely, monster eats lots, i eat something healthy that i actually cooked the other day with the express purpose of having leftovers, monkey eats, f. eats.

~2:45pm - monster goes to sleep, i sweep, clean the table, put away toys, organize dishes (but don't wash them!) and sit down at the computer to keep working.

~3:15pm - nurse monkey to sleep, keep working...

all in all, being totally exhausted and a bit stressed about My 1st Venture to the City Alone with the Kids, it worked out pretty ideally. now for some mate and a bit of time with f., if we can squeeze it all in before the monsters wake up...

...nope, there's the monster now...

sick... blech...

yuck. not terribly yuck, but yuck enough. at least this time i finally got to be the only one sick, so i had the luxury of sleeping, and just generally not doing... i really needed it. life is kind of a blur, so tired all the time, all is well but too tired and blah to really get all i can out of it, and give all i can to the little monsters and the big one. hopefully i'll be well and full of energy and have enough time to write something decent here and catch up on the translations and clean and organize and cook - and then i'll be able to play with the monsters with all my heart. i know it should all be the other way around, but i can't seem to get it together. sniffle sniffle...

'no se suspende por cortes de luz'

yeah, right. that's what the circus ad here said when we first moved here... nothing was going to get in the way of the littlest motorcycle rider ever... not even a blackout...

but in my life the only thing that doesn't suspenderse is cleaning the house and nursing the monkey. well, okay, i did actually manage to get in a walk to the beach, too. but my much-awaited 'the house is finally clean, monkey is asleep, internet is working, i have a million things i want to get done on the computer' was totally thwarted by this millionth blackout since we've been here. anyways, here i am, and all my supermama food in the freezer didn't even thaw, so all is good.

and the monster ate a good lunch! yay.

horse poop

went for a walk on the beach ALL BY MYSELF (ie. no baby sling, no snack, NO KIDS) and came back to a pile of fresh stray-horse poop on the lawn.

also made cookies and 2 meals that the monster didn't eat :(

and had a good day with a hilarious, talkative monkey.