Random Big Sister/Little Sister Childhood Conversation Remembered

BS Lisey: Hey, I bet you can't think of a boys' name that ends in A
Me: I bet I can! Let me think!
Lisey: Then think.
Me: Umm..... Ira?
Lisey: No, that doesn't count.
Me: Ummm..... I don't know!
Lisey: God you're so stupid. The answer is Data.

Conversations with Mom and Dad

Dad: Well what am I supposed to do? I can't stick around here with all those ladies
Mom: We'll find something for you to do
Dad: I'm going to leave the city, go somewhere far away
Mom: I'll turn off your On-Star

Total Evidence

During the countless flights back and forth between Mexico City and California over the last four years, I always look forward to the passing over of the crop circles. These circles, which are actually sand circles, not crop circles, are located on the mountain tops in the middle of absolute NOTHINGNESS somewhere between the USA and Mexico. There are no roads within a several hundred mile radius of them, so how did they get there?

Watching Tennis with CC

The US Open finals game between Serena Williams (USA) and Jelena Jankovic (Serbia)


CC: Who is that, her father?
Me: Yeah.
CC: Jankovich's?
Me: No, Serena's.

(Pause.)

CC: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Me: HAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

Speedwalking

During the Olympics I was delighted to watch the Speedwalking event for the very first time. That is because it's one of the few Olympic sports that Mexico has won a gold medal in (in the history of the Olympics, not this year) and competes in regularly. Mexicans have some pretty decent speedwalkers, so it's big news around here and televised as a main event. Here it's called the CAMINATA, which is where the cuteness of the sport begins.

Because it is the cutest sport, ever. For those who haven't watched it before, it is highly entertaining. The swaying of the hips! The hurried little steps!! The rules!! The whole, "is this for real?" factor!





So the other night I had a dream that I was speedwalking.

I was in the middle of a 25K boulder-hold speedwalking race. That is, we had to speedwalk while holding big boulders over our shoulders. I'm doing great but when I'm about 25 meters away from the finish line I trip and fall. I look behind me and see that coming around the bend comes this girl named Beatrice whom I went to high school with and that I haven't seen or thought about in years. I try to get up fast but I can't, so when she gets near enough I grab her leg and try to bring her down with me. She doesn't go down and instead breaks away and crosses the finish line. I cross the finish line finally and find out that I've just won the Bronze medal representing my country (not sure which one) in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

At first I felt sad that I hadn't known it was the Olympics, because I would have tried harder and maybe could have gotten at least the silver medal, but then I'm suddenly overwhelmed with pride. I'm the third best speedwalker in the WORLD. I kiss my bronze medal, wave at the cheering crowd, and wake up.

Oh, and then there's Pimp Speedwalking, which is pretty much a TTASFICST.

Thanks Mummy

I live in Queretaro, the mosquito capital of the world... (not really, but it seems like it). I don't remember Merdead as having PLAGUES of mosquitoes, so my guess is that it's definitely got something to do with being closer to the equator. And the rain. It's rainy season right now, which means that we get a two hour-long MONSOON every night, which is exciting.

We also like to leave our doors and windows wide open all day long because we have a burglar proof steel-gated house and a state of the art alarm system and moat and a ferocious, rabid, killing machine of a yellow lab that patrols the moat's edge, so don't get ideas). Sometimes we come home after a monsoon and find that we've forgotten to close up the house and everything close to an open window is soaked. We'll also find that our house is buzzing with disgusting, nasty, annoying little mosquitoes that loooooooove my blood. When this happens, CC goes into "The Mosquito Hunter" mode, where he climbs on top of furniture and stares at the ceiling with this look of determination in his eyes. His motivation is to kill (by hand) every single mosquito in the house, even though we use those raid plug-ins, which totally work. He just hates mosquitoes that much. I do too, and unfortunately, even with a real live Mosquito Hunter in the house or raid plug-ins contaminating the air from every light socket in the house, sometimes you can't avoid being bitten.

But alas, Mummy came through as she always seems to do and ended my suffering once again, albeit unintentionally. According to a blurb in Women's World magazine, one of the scholarly US magazines that she left me with after her and Diddy's visit last week, if you've been bitten by a mosquito and the itching is driving you nuts, all you have to do is roll some roll-on anti-perspirant on the bite and the swelling will go down, causing the itching to stop completely and immediately.

Apparently, as the Kenneth Haller, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics at Saint Louis University (?) states in the blurb, the aluminum salts in the antiperspirant help the body reabsorb the fluid in the bug bite, so that it can't cause a reaction anymore.

It so works and the application was so much fun that I wished I had more bites to quell. All you do is roll it on and the itching stops after about 30 seconds. I'm actually not sure if you should use the wet kind or the dry kind, because I used both, one right on top of the other. I used the gel one first, and then thought that the powdery kind sounded more "correct", so I slapped some on top of the other one. I'll have to wait until I get attacked again and then try them both on different bites just to make sure.

I just wanted to let people know, because this has been such valuable information to me.

Cheers.

:)

What's that up ahead

TTASFICST #4

"Don't let him catch you staring at his horns. He's very self conscious about them. He files them down in order to appear more normal."

Good News/Bad News

Bad News: We demoted Pippen from Pedigree to generic dog food. It's called Sportsman's Choice and it claims to be made of Lamb and Rice.

Good News: Pippen LOVES Sportsman's Choice!!! He ate two bowls of it right away and wanted more. And it costs half the price of Pedigree! We also bought the 25 kilo bag, which means that we won't have to buy dog food for a LONG time!

Bad News: We bought a 25 kilo bag. Sportsman's Choice gives him the nastiest gas EVER, comparable in frequency and room-clearing ability to that one time when we thought it would be a good idea to give him a whole bag of cat food "because look, he just loves it so much." We're currently in talks over whether we should go buy a bag of Pedigree so that he can continue to live with us inside the house or if we should make him move out of the house until he finishes his 25 kilos of Sportsman's Choice.

Little Sister Syndrome

LSS gives me a deep urge to annoy and to please and to seek approval from a higher-ranking sibling who is older than me but not by much. And it makes me blissfully happy to get screwed over and think I'm getting a great deal. The following dialogue is an example of a typical childhood conversation between me and my big sister.

Me: Lisey, will you jump on the trampoline with me?
Lisey: No.
Me: Please?
Lisey: No.
Me: For five minutes?
Lisey: No.
Me: Why not?
Lisey: I don't want to.
Me: I'll let you have one of my toys!
Lisey: One?
Me: Yes, any one you want!
Lisey: No.
Me: Ok, I'll let you have all of them. Just five minutes on the trampoline with me.
Lisey: I'll think about it.
Me: (returning from bedroom, arms loaded with toys) Are you done thinking? Here are all of my toys. You can have all of them. Just jump with me for five minutes.
Lisey: (pause) For three minutes. And I get all of your toys.
Me: HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!! (Does annoying victory dance all up in her face)

I have realized that the lack of having a big sister around has forced me to find a surrogate. CC is a poor substitute for a big sister, but my LSS is brutal and it drives me to annoy and to please and to seek approval however I can.

Our conversation yesterday:

CC: Jose called. He is coming over to get the sweater he left here at the party. If I go answer the door, he's going to want to talk forever and I just want to lay here and watch sports all day. Will you go and give it to him when he comes?
Me: No. That's a remnant of your party. You deal with it.
CC: (gets cocky "you'll regret it" older sibling-ish expression on face) Okay.
Me: LOL!

(20 mins. later, coming up the stairs)
CC: From now on, I will always remember that you never did me that favor.
Me: Whatever! (laughing up in his face all annoyingly)

(3 hours later, coming home from Costco)
CC: I forgot the garage door opener. Will you go open the garage door? Can you do that one favor for me or is it too hard?
Me: I'll do it if it makes up for the favor I didn't do earlier.
CC: Nope. It only counts for a little.
Me: 80 percent.
CC: Nope. Five percent.
Me: Then Im not doing it. 50 percent?
CC: Ten percent.
Me: Okay!

(2 minutes later, unloading stuff from car)
CC: (Bag rips, cans of Coke Zero roll around on the driveway) Damnit.
Me: If I pick them up, does it count towards my favors score?
CC: 1 percent each can.
Me: Yes!!!

Party

This weekend was long and fun and sober and exhausting. I planned a bachelorette party for my friend who is getting married this weekend, and while it was fun, I'm so glad it's over and done with. It took way too much out of me. I'd never, ever want to be a party planner. I had a ton of help from one of my friends, a should-be party planner who helped me think of and create our own games and make a LOT of posters and hang decorations and buy food and drinks and gifts and all of that stuff.

My best contribution to the party was "Memory", which was a posterboard with MemoRIA!! written on the top in bright gameshow letters, and below it 12 construction paper question marks hiding 12 face pictures of Memo, the groom. 12 Hilarious face pictures, which I happen to own TONS of from previous parties over the course of almost 4 years. Basically, all the bride had to do was match the 6 pairs and take a penalty shot of tequila when she messed up. So funny. As the game went on, the more she drank, so it got harder and harder. Plus, it turned out to be her favorite game. Everytime a face picture was revealed, she squealed in hilarity and with love at the sight of her FIANCE. SFIC'ntST.

I also bought cucumbers (a ridiculously large one for the bride and funny shaped ones for the rest of the girls) and condoms and we had a race to see who could put their condom on the cucumber the fastest. Maybe it sounds cheesy, but it turned out to be hilarious, especially when the bride couldn't get the wrapper off and lost. We made her finish dressing her cucumber and then she had to drink another shot of Tequila.

We had the party at my friends' apartment because the boys decided to have a huge party here at my house while we were gone, which we crashed at around 2AM. Their party turned out to be boring. They set up a huge flat screen TV in the dining room and somebody brought a Playstation 3 and all of them (except CC, of course, who never gets drunk as a skunk) were drunk as skunks. Clumsiness, singing, and typical pointless but passionate conversations ensued. I stayed up until 5AM participating in these conversations, giving my opinion on things, like: "yes, I know that you two are as close as brothers, Yes, I think that you should lick the nasty table to prove it." It was fun.

TTASFICST pt. III

3. When Pippen thinks that something is fun, (i.e. somebody throws a ball, spontaneous dancing) he tucks his lip curtains into his lower lip and it looks like he's trying to smile. I finally got a picture of it.

In other news, he may be dying.

Pippen thinks that anything on the floor made of paper or cardboard material is his. Unfortunately, while searching the grounds, he found a Raid Mosquito repellent thing that goes in the light socket to kill mosquitoes at night and we found him playing with it later. He had chewed it up so much that it turned from blue to white. We gave him two Tums last night in an attempt to curb the pain of the poison that's probably killing him inside.

He seems to be unaffected so far. Pippen's got a crazy effective immune system. If we can make it through tonight, I think he's going to be fine.

TTASFICST Pt. II

2. I think that I've heard of something like this before, maybe in a joke, but here it is in real life, in the very city in which I live! So funny I can't stand it. Both sides are packed at night.

Things That Are So Funny I Can't Stand Them

Installment One

1. Unexpected and Spontaneous Dancing- in real life but (occasionally) in the movies, like this:

Movie Night with CC

CC: mumble mumble
Me: What?
CC: mumble
Me: WHAT?
CC: SIGOURNEY WEAVER
Me: . . .
Me: You shouldn't even know that

Basketball

The 2008 San Juan del Rio Basketball Tournament Championship Finals ended today in bloodshed and a near riot as hundreds of onlookers rushed the stands to get a better view of a fight provoked by a disgruntled player, nearly resulting in my own death by human stampede.

It looked sort of like this, only more Mexican:



But it was still exciting because the fight began as the game ended and the players were shaking each others' hands, after a really close, intense game that was won in the last fifteen seconds or so by the team that had been down only a half a minute before. All the players were pissed at each other. Everyone was getting technical fouls. It was hot and stuffy in the gym and the people in the stands were hot and stuffy with way too much passion for their team. It was the right environment for something to happen and actually I KNEW something was going to happen, and I actually told my friend to get her baby off the floor where she was playing on her blanket because, like Deanna Troy, I had a feeling.

The fight started when Pablo, who unfortunately was on Team Qro, sucker punched player #15 under the eye instead of shaking his hand in the "good game" lineup thing that teams do after games. Pablo sought refuge in the stands next to his girlfriend, who was sitting next to me, while #15 and his bleeding swelling face followed him, bringing his whole team and the rest of the gymnasium with him. It was scary. The crowd was aggravating the situation and people were holding cameras up in the air and recording the whole thing, probably to put the video of the fight on YouTube.

To be honest, when I saw the whole gymnasium coming towards me, I stood up and walked up the stands to the very top so that I wouldnt get trampled. Death by Stampede is on my mind, because of the recent tragedy in Mexico City in the News Divine nightclub when well nevermind Im too lazy so here http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/world/americas/21briefs-10ARETRAMPLE_BRF.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin.

After being blocked in for about 15 minutes, I was finally able to escape death and made it to the other side and out the door, and the last I saw of Pablo and his girlfriend was him sitting in the stands looking all dejected and below him like two hundred people shouting at him and the police trying to grab him by the arm and his girlfriend standing in between them and screaming in the face of one of the officers. I think what happened is that #15's teammates went outside and threw a rock and broke the windshield of her car, thinking it was his.

So, lots and lots of ghetto drama today, thank god, and a special thanks to Pablo and the nosy, destructive people of San Juan del Rio for making it possible. And for bringing the drama to me, because unless it happens right in front of my face, I never get to see it.

I Do Cultural Stuff

Last night I was asked to be an edecan at The Ballet, which means that I got to stand at the top of the stairs and hand out programs. Nobody took a picture of me, so unfortunately I cannot post one of me in action, but it turns out that I am the best edecan ever. Here is what I said to each and everyone in attendance last night at The Ballet:

Bienvenidos! (Big Smile)
Aqui tiene! (hand them program)
Adelante, Por Favor!
(Big Smile)
Que disfrutan el show! (Just kidding I didnt really say this line but I wanted to)

Which was pretty much my script for the night. Before I left, CC helped me practice by pretending to enter the bathroom door where I'd be standing and then I'd say my lines to him. It served me well, because I didn't make any mistakes and the night was a success, except for when people came up and asked me questions like, "when is this act going to be over?" or, "Where is the bathroom?", which I hadn't rehearsed and didn't know the answers for anyway. But I made it through and I hope I get asked to edecan again.

BORING MAN

Yesterday, our best friend couple (and our padrinos de velacion) took us out to dinner for our anniversary week. It was lovely. We had a heated discussion about the movie Juno and whether or not it will influence teenagers to give their babies away and whether or not it matters. Then CC and the Padrino forced me to watch IRON MAN, on pirata, at our house.

IRON MAN is everything I hate about the movies. Stupid story, stupid cool explosions and stupid "awesome" special effects, stupid "coolest man on Earth" protagonist with freakishly large rib cage that is going to depress all men who watch the movie because they cannot be him.

I'm willing to bet my life on the fact that IRON MAN is plagued with all kinds of basic scientific errors, too (obviously the whole concept of IRON MAN is ridiculous, but Im not talking about that), carelessly thrown in because story isn't an issue and because most people are just like me and too dumb in science to know any better. But even if I don't exactly know what mistakes were made and probably wouldn't understand even if they were pointed out, I know they are there, and that makes it worse.

In other news, I finally tracked down the only copy of the third season of The Office on legal DVD known to exist in the entire city of Queretaro, so I bought it and that's what we've been doing this week. We love The Office. So far, the second season was better, but this one is really good too. Maybe it will get even better now that they've just merged the Scranton and Stamford branches together and Jim is around again. I like the new guy, Andy.

We let Pippen watch the Office with us, but first he has to earn it.

Conversations with CC

CC: You look like Juno

Lisa de Golfo

They're practically GIVING it away!!!

Fun with Literature

Today I ran out of books, so CC (who knows how annoying I get when I run out of books) shoved me in the car and drove fast to Ghandi, the only bookstore in Queretaro that has a decent selection of books in English. At Ghandi, I saw 2 books for the price of 1, a package deal for only 149.00 pesos. Which I bought. :)

The two books, Oliver Twist and Trainspotting, came as a set, wrapped in cellophane. At first I thought to myself, "Wow, someone at Ghandi has either got a funny sense of humor or is totally illiterate". But then it hit me- funny, illiterate or just mindlessly doing their job, the person who paired these two seemingly incongruous books to be sold and read together has very appropriately paired two fictional representations of degenerate societies in Britain, the Old vs. Modern, and that makes a whole lot of sense.

Pippen at the Park

I thought that this video merely showed Pippen's extreme fondness for water sprinklers, but as CC pointed out, it also serves as a nice example of his separation anxiety issues.

A Story About Happiness

Ever since I can remember, people been telling me “Cristabelle, you ain’t that smart.” They been telling me that so long that it don’t bother me none and it never bothered me none. They let me know when I was real young so I could adjust to it and know my place on the brain scale, and I’m glad as hell they did or else I’d be bustin’ my butt to be like Annabelle and then I’d never be happy.
My big sister Annabelle is the real smart one. She went to beauty school and got herself a diploma when she was only sixteen years old. Dropped out of high school when she wasn’t even pregnant and went and signed up at the beauty school. She learned how to do everything so good and now she works at a fancy hair salon in Ryers, the kind with big chairs that you sit in with water tubs down at the bottom that you stick your feet in so you can get your toes done if you want. Annabelle, when she come visit, don’t give no services for free even though she practically a millionaire from all them tips she get. Not even to our Mama who was in labor for sixteen hours before Anabelle decide to finally come out. And Mama need a haircut bad sometimes and ‘cause Anabelle won’t do it I do it and I don’t cut straight so I keep cuttin’ and cuttin’ and tryin’ to even them hairs out. Then Anabelle come home and get mad cause Mama’s hair look like an ugly gray rug that the cat scratched up. But she don’t try to fix it. Anabelle, she’s like that. She don’t like to help out Mama. She don’t like to think about where she come from because if she did she’d never get nowhere.
I don’t care that I ain’t smart like Anabelle, ‘cause if I was then I couldn’t work at the Quikmart and I love working at the Quikmart. I don’t have to think too hard with the math either, cause all I do is put the items under the scanner and then the machine tell me how much the customer owe and how much change he need back. Then all I need to do is smile real wide and say “Have a nice day”.
I been working at the Quikmart for so long and I ain't got no plans to quit. I love the Quikmart cause it’s right next to the freeway and all sorts of people come in there. I seen every type of person there is on this planet to see, I bet. I seen gay people before, and all the time people be coming in from all over the world. One time I got a bus full of Chinese people all the way from China, talking Chinese. They didn't understand no English, either. All kinds of people come in the Quikmart. I bet Annabelle sees the same people all day everyday, and that’s what I’d be missing out on if I was born smart.

Another Pippen Post

The Overdependent Labrador

I think that most dogs pick up on the routine in a household and eventually reach a point where they know instinctively where their owner is going to go or what their owner is going to do next inside the home. I think Pippen knows too, but I don't understand why he doesn't just pick a central corner in our house and watch me move from room to room on my extremely mundane THE SIMS-like movements. He comes with me no matter where it is I'm going, even if where I'm going is two feet away from where I've been. When I go to the bathroom he always tries to run past me and I always have to struggle for a few seconds to shut the door in his face or push his sixty pound tail thumping body out so that I can go in peace. When I open the door, he's there with his tail wagging, ready to accompany me to wherever I'm going next.

Pippen's dependency issues are so severe that he has a hard time separating from us to go to the bathroom himself. I rarely ever see him go outside to use his restroom. Because we spend most of our time upstairs, he has to wait until I go downstairs for something, then dash outside as fast as he can to go to the bathroom and get back in ten seconds or less. I've watched him do this before and it never fails to make me laugh.

Sometimes we throw the ball down the stairs and then we hide from him and listen to his paws scratching against the tile floors in frantic race through all the rooms to find us. One time we hid in the shower and watched him running back and forth and back and forth in a frenzy, until I couldn't take it anymore and started cracking up. I have a very hard time being quiet when something is funny. Then he found us and now that I think about it, those "games" probably make his separation anxiety even worse.

I wish that Pippen could gain some independence, however I know that I am partially responsible for his Mamitis because I baby him too much. It's just that I feel for him because we're all he's got, and labs are very social dogs.

SuperShopping

When I first moved here to Qro, there was only one supermarket in my area. It was called "GIGANTE", and it used to make me cry.

It was like a ritual. I would go to "GIGANTE" with a mission: to make some recipe from Epicurious. I would be so optimistic, starting out, with my recipe in my hand to make something that always had this ridiculous title, like "Hazelnut Praline Torte with Creme de Menthe mousse and Chocolate Ganache, Infused with Cherry Liqueur". I would walk in the store and immediately get overwhelmed. Grocery stores here are not like the ones back home. They're massive, with names like GIGANTE, MEGA, and SUPERRAMA. They're like if Safeway and Target merged and made one big superstore.

Unfortunately, as my good friend Nikki noticed, I am an unorganized person when it comes to grocery shopping. I scramble up and down aisles and haphazardly crisscross my way through any store to get what I need. For example, I'll need milk, so I'll go to the dairy section, all the way in the back, and then go and get the bread, which is in the front, and then go for the butter, which is next to the milk, etc. I can spend HOURS in the grocery store and when I'm finished shopping my legs are so tired and I have a headache. Grocery shopping can really stress me out and it is something that I have grown to dread.

So this is what I used to do in GIGANTE, and this is why it made me cry. I'd have this long, long list of items I needed to make my ridiculously snotty recipe, take two hours crisscrossing in a store bigger than a USA Walmart, and then finally I'd be ready to leave . . . as soon as I found my last ingredient, the one that had been evading me for two hours, two pounds of hazelnuts, or whatever. It was always the most important ingredient in the recipe and I always waited until the last moment to find it. Why? I don't know.

But if I'm not organized when it comes to shopping, I am proudly organized when it comes to cooking, so I would have ready a translation of all the products needed on my list. Avellano, if you care to know, is how you say hazelnut, in Spanish. So I would look for avellano another twenty, thirty minutes, and then finally ask an employee for help. My conversation with the employee would go something like this.

Me: Excuse me, will you tell me where I can find avellano?
Employee: (not making eye contact) Avellano?
Me: Si.
Employee: The bakery.
Me: Gracias.

So I'd walk away, towards the bakery, thinking about the pleasant evening ahead of me, when all of a sudden common sense would grip me. The Bakery? I would ask myself, and my finely honed sense for common sense would tell me that the employee was wrong. But, being an American, and coming from a country where excellent customer service is something to be taken for granted, I would trust the employee and make my way across the store to the bakery.
When I finally got to the bakery, about a ten minute walk from that last helpful employee, I'd look around by myself for another ten minutes before finally asking for help from the bakery lady behind the counter.

Me: Excuse me, will you tell me where I can find avellano.
Bakery lady: Avellano?
Me: Si.
Bakery lady: Produce.
Me: They told me that I could find it here.
Bakery Lady: No, you need to go to produce.
Me: Gracias.

So I would trek on over to Produce, which would be on the opposite side of the store, a ten minute walk, of course, but at least it made sense, this time. Once in Produce, I would look around for another ten minutes, find the nuts, peanuts, cashews, walnuts, pecans, but not hazel nuts. So I'd hunt down the nearest employee (which always takes another 5 minutes, at least).

Me: Excuse me, will you tell me where I can find avellano?
Employee: Avellano?
Me: Yes.
Employee: I don't know. Sorry.
Me: What do you mean, you dont know?
Employee: Oh, you mean avellano?
Me: Yes.
Employee: We don't carry avellano here.

So I'd walk away and the tears would start to form. I'd push my cart into the center of the store, filled with items from all over the place, and just walk out.

Since those days, I've grown up a lot and can now handle stores even bigger than GIGANTE with relative ease. Plus, I never have to set foot in GIGANTE again if I don't want to, (and I don't) because Soriana bought out Gigante recently, so soon it will cease to exist and is currently transforming itself into another Soriana. Plus, in the past two years, my area has become supermarket central. We now have Walmart, Soriana, Superrama, Gigante, MEGA, and Sam's Club in a five mile radius from my home. I am always surprised at how quickly Queretaro is growing.

I'm a Superrama girl, so up until yesterday, I had never been to MEGA, which they just finished building about 5 months ago. The experience was amazing. When you get to MEGA, you notice that its a HUGE building with two floors. The first floor is a little shopping mall, galleria style, and the second floor is MEGA. To get to the second floor, you have to grab a shopping cart and make your way to this really long, steep escalator that has a no slip surface. You get on the escalator and slowly make your way up to the top. You can't push your cart and walk up the escalator rapidly, either, because the grips on the belt to the wheels of the shopping cart wont let you. You have to not move and make the slow ride up to the top. I felt like this little shopper on an assembly line, going to the factory to be assembled. Once you get to the top, they give you a map like you're in Disneyland, and that did it for me. Because of that map, I felt like I was on an adventure instead of doing boring grocery shopping.

Plus, inside MEGA is a little cafe next to the bakery, where you can take a break from the madness and have a cup of coffee or hot chocolate and read the paper, and so that is exactly what I did, and that is going to be my routine from now on. I am done with stressing myself out at the grocery store.

Best Name of the Month Awards

The award for Best Name I've Heard This Month goes to:

Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo of the Houston Rockets.

And because he sounds exactly like Cookie Monster with just a touch of Yoda, he wins Best Voice of the Month, too. Here is an example. Its much better when he speaks in English but its the best sample I could find.

The winner for the female category of Best Name I've Heard This Month goes to:

Dra. Ladydiana Guitierrez Rodriguez of Michoacan, Mexico.

Unfortunately, I do not personally know Dr. Ladydiana but have been informed of her existence by excellent sources not known to lie. Therefore, the above representation is only a rough estimation of her physical appearance.

Late Night Conversations with CC

Me: Yeah, but you know what's even sadder?
(Pause)
CC: Saturday

Today's Suicide Watch

TIM DUNCAN

Despite being Tim Duncan, He always looks so sad.

Transplant

Last night I had a very strange dream.

I was in the backseat of my mother's car, laying down, and my mother was driving. My sister was in the front seat and explaining the details of the medical procedure I was about to have. She then leaned over and put this thing in my mouth that looked like an inhaler for asthmatics, but it had this long connector thing that she pushed up into my mouth and down my throat. In case this isn't obvious, as it was to me in my dream, she was giving me anesthesia for the operation that we were traveling to. I had the feeling that for some reason, I had done something to interfere with the anesthesia's effectiveness and decided to worry about it later.

We pull up to the operation site, which turns out to be a Chinese androgynous person sitting on a little stool outside of an Oxxo or am/pm or one of those sleazy mart convenience stores and I get the feeling that he or she or it is my doctor and the operation that I'm about to have is some type of eastern new-age homeopathic procedure. In front of him, laying on the floor on a red blanket are his tools, scalpels and rusty looking sewing needles and blades and even a thimble, and I worry about infection. My sister tells me not to worry.

The doctor tells me to lay down on the ground and I do, but I tell him that I can still feel my stomach (interesting) and I imagine him slicing it open with the rusty blade. He tells me not to worry, and then tells me that he's already halfway done. I look up and see him holding my brain in his hands. He lets me look at it for a moment and I see that it is really gray and disgusting looking matter. There are scars all over it and holes in it and suddenly I feel very excited. I'm getting rid of this faulty brain and getting a brand new one.

A brain analyst comes out of the am/pm and hands a piece of paper to the doctor, and then walks back inside the store. The doctor looks at the paper for a moment and then shows it to me. Its a brain evaluation that they've just done on my brain, and the doctor points to areas on the paper, proving that the brain transplant had been absolutely necessary. I remember only one point from the printout: my IQ was only 90.

So the doctor shows me my new brain, which is huge and shiny and pink and throbbing like a heart in his hand. I'm ecstatic now, as I compare the brains side by side and see that my new one is going to be much, much better. But then I panic, there's something wrong. If the old brain is there and the new one is right next to it, what's inside my head right now?

So I ask the doctor, and he tells me that they haven't finished the procedure yet, but not to worry. You can still think, can't you? He asks. I think about it and realize that I can. I think, 2+2 is 4, 4+4 is 8, 8+8 is 16, 16+16 is 32, 32+32 is 64, yeah, I can still think.

Mysterious

It had just happened. Jimmy was too late to see it, arriving to the town square just a moment too late (from what he could surmise). He heard the screams before he’d seen the cause of them: the body of a man in a gray suit and tie lay dead in a pool of his own blood on the concrete of the square, directly in front of the very office building that Jimmy was going to.
“There’s a word for this, you know,” a man said loudly to the crowd that had gathered around the dead man. “It’s Defenestration.”
“No, it's Tragedy,” a very fat woman retorted, her hands on her large hips and her face screwed up into a grimace. “This kind of accident doesn’t need a fancy word to explain itself.”
“An accident?” the man gave a short laugh. “This man was defenestrated. Which means that somebody pushed him out of that open window on the twelfth floor. This was not an accident.”
The woman, wide eyed, looked up at the window and back at the man. “How do you know he didn’t jump, or fall out accidentally?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” The man asked impatiently.

Restaurant Review

On Friday night CC took me out to dinner. We were going to go to Rosso, which is our favorite restaurant in Queretaro, but we've been there a million times before. Lately, they've been erecting restaurants like crazy here and we're a little behind on trying them out, so we decided to go to this restaurant called Equinoxio totally based on looks. We love trying out fancy restaurants and Equinoxio took the cake for being fancy looking. So we went.

Once inside, we realize that the food is this weird french-Mexican Indian fusion and that the chef got way too creative with the dishes. Basically, all the dishes were traditional Aztec or Yucatan or Oaxacan cuisine (think like chiles and nopales and even Cuitlacoche, which is literally diseased corn) fused with high end french food. The mix sounds like a terrible idea and even though Im usually so open with trying new foods, I couldn't decide on ANYTHING. So finally I settled on Baby Lobster with Fettuccine. I'd never heard of baby lobsters but I like lobster and love fettuccine. It was really the only thing that sounded at all edible. CC played it safe as usual and got steak.

So Im starving and the food takes forever to come, and when it does, the waiter places it down with a flourish in front of me and I look down at it and seriously almost start to cry. Im so hungry and we're at this fancy restaurant and I am unable to eat what they just served me.

Sitting on top of a bed of plain fettuccine noodles in some kind of beige butter sauce, are two crawdads.

For most of my childhood life, I lived on Bear Creek. On Bear Creek, we had a little canal that ran across our property. In the summertime it would fill with water and frogs, minnows, tadpoles, the occasional fish, and hundreds and hundreds of crawdads. My dogs would catch them and bite off their claws and eat them. The thought of eating one is equivalent to eating a cockroach. It's something I would never dream of doing. I know that people do eat them. But to me, they're a nasty nasty creature that grows in disgusting places like Bayous of dirty still standing mud water and in Bear Creek, where I believe they once found a three eyed monster fish.

Anyway, CC didnt believe me and thought I was being a huge drama queen. So we took them home and I showed him online what crawdads are (they dont exist in these parts) and he was finally also disgusted. Then I served them to Pippen and he didn't even want to eat them.

CC said that Equinoxio will fool 99 percent of the people who go in there into thinking that they're eating "baby lobsters". Maybe they think that's what they are serving. I should have said something but I think I'll write a letter instead.

Jack Dogger Disciplined

Last night Pippen got in big trouble. We took him to the park. It was late, around 10pm and nobody was around, so he was having a lot of no-leash fun as usual. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a chocolate lab puppy of about 10 months appeared on a leash and attached to him an owner. The chocolate lab puppy was really cute and happy, just kind of bouncing along, and then Pippen and the puppy saw each other. CC told Pippen to come, but instead, Pippen decided to attack the puppy and pin him to the ground while making scary growling noises. CC went to separate the dogs (the other dog was still on the leash and the owner looked petrified), and grabbed Pippen by the collar and spanked and verbally abused him all the way home. CC was pissed and Pippen was not allowed to come inside the house for about an hour. Now, Pippen is grounded until further notice. No more trips to the park.

I never, ever would have suspected Pippen to show signs of aggression towards anything except maybe a cat or a bird. Least of all not a dog, unless he was provoked and the dog was trying to fight him. I still think that the cute little brown lab said something derogatory to Pippen in dog language and he had no choice but to defend his honor-- that's the only explanation that makes any sense since Pippens is such a nice dog.

I think he deserves another chance. After all, this is his first strike. But CC is still very angry with Pippen. We are currently in talks over his future.

The only good thing out of all of this is that now we know that Pippen isn't as gay as we thought he might be, because of the fact that he only lifts his leg to relieve himself about 40 percent of the time.

Scientific Study

Directional Tail Waggage in Canines,
A Study:

It has been reported that dogs wag their tails to the right when they're feeling positive about someone or something, and to the left when they feel negatively about that someone or something. Right Brain Left Brain bla bla bla science. If this is indeed fact, will our cute little science experiments express their cute little emotions negatively or positively towards the cute little testing engineer? (Me)

*Full Tail Required to Participate as subject in this experiment
**I have left 3rd testing subject Suki out of this experiment, because stub movement is unreliable; suki is unable to produce full waggonal movement.

Hypothesis: Owners will walk into a room where the subjects will be and repeat their names over and over again in high pitched "baby talk" voices, which will result in significant right sided tail waggage. Test subject B predicted to show less right side waggage than subject A, Or, both A & B will produce 100% right-side waggage no left-side waggage whatsoever.

THE SUBJECTS:

A: Pepe Le Pieu
B: Daisy Mae

Notes: Theres lots of fluffy fur on subjects making it difficult to observe straightness of tail. Any freak tail curvature might taint results. And its pretty hard to get them wagging their tails (especially A) long enough without either A) test subject A Barking and backing up slowly, shaking its small, hair-framed head side to side with each bark, blocking view of rear view tail wag thats diminishing anyway on account of the barking (negative Reaction? Not likely) B) Test Subject A rushing at your feet and jumping up on your knees, demanding to be pet and to be given all attention, and refusing to wag tail if said attention is not given and standing still without wagging while receiving attention C) Test subject B running at your knees and running away again or backing up all hesitantly and sitting down and doing short brisk tail flips (to the significant right, but tail flips are not currently accepted as conclusive to the study). Scientist suggests using 2 scientists to conduct this experiment, one to interact with subjects and the other to watch and record wag movement.

RESULTS: Subject A produced significant left-sided tail wag and no right side tail wag in any of the trials. Tester feels this could be from the aggression the subject may have felt in fighting for total attention from experiment engineer/scientist against his competition: the tall leggy blonde subject B. In contrast, Subject B displayed an abundance of right-wag and body wriggle and absolutely no noted left-wag at all during the trials.

Unexpected Variable: When Father of genius experiment engineer/scientist (variable) entered testing site (the kitchen) and called out "Anybody want Chinese Food", engineer scientist noted subject A skulk away from kitchen and towards the front door, wagging his tail to the left while skulking away. When G.E. Engineer scientist extraordinaire went to said kitchen to serve herself said chinese food, the G.E.E.S.E. perceived immediately that the variable seemed to be exhibiting hypoglycemic behavior (a downward moodswing). At this point, subject B was nowhere in sight and when located was observed not wagging tail but sitting quietly watching the house from a significant distance.

Conclusion: Subject A hates everyone. Subject B loves everyone. Inconclusive results. Test subjects must be subjected to more tests. Uncontrolled environment.

Percent Error:

(50 - 45)

Percent Error = -------------------------------------------------- 1

x100%





=500% Error

Cooking and Infidelity

So today la Señora officially became my cooking instructor/cook in addition to being my cleaning lady. I asked her to show me how to make enchiladas, and then she did, and they turned out to be the best enchiladas that I have ever tasted in my whole entire LIFE. CC said that we should pay her extra for that, so that's what we're going to do.

So that's good, and little does she know that while she's teaching me to cook, she's also giving me SPANISH CLASSES (score). She talks a LOT, and I mostly just sit there and listen. Today she told me a story

about how she was working for this family that lived here in downtown Queretaro and one day the lady of the house asked her if she would accompany her to Mexico City for a doctor's appointment because her husband was working and she didn't want to go alone and the Señora said well I can't because I need to take care of my kids and I can't be gone all day long from 6AM until 1 or 2AM in the night. But the señora was desperate, so she begged and begged her to try to work it out because she really needed to go to the doctor, and so finally the Señora agreed. The next day she went to work and they got in the car and drove to Mexico City, and when they got there, the lady said "Look, I lied to you. I'm not here to see the doctor, I'm meeting a man. He's arriving at the airport in half an hour and I'm going to pick him up, and then we're going to go to a hotel. I'm going to drop you off at the park. I'll pick you up at 5pm." So she dropped her off at the park and so the Señora had to wait. She waited, and waited, and finally the lady showed up at the park at 9PM. Then they drove back home and that was it.

I just really can't believe that someone would make this sweet little old lady wait all by herself in a Mexico City park for so many hours with absolutely nothing to do. It's not like she reads, and since Mexico City is so dangerous, it's not like she could really explore the city, so I'm guessing that she just sat there for ten hours straight and only moved to find a restroom. And maybe to eat something on the street. I don't know. Selfish Ho.

My Dog, Pippen

My dog Pippen deserves a post. There's a lot to say about him.

First, My dog Pippen has a ton of nicknames. We call him

Pippens

Chickens

Trickens

Frickens

Rickens

The Baby

Richard Parker

Jack Dogger
Jessica

Pippen will eat anything. Once, when he was in pain, and I was too lazy to go downstairs and crush up his tylenol and mix it up into his food, I discovered that I didn't have to do all that. Pippen will gladly eat straight non-chewable tylenol like it's candy. He licked the floor when he was done so that he could get all the tylenol that fell out of his mouth while he was chewing. He also loves chewable antacids (who doesn't, though) and will come running when he hears the shake of the container. We give him one now and then because it's so funny.

He also eats frozen strawberries, bananas, and whole cucumbers. Anything.

CC and I had a conversation the other day on how much money we would sell Pippen for. I admitted that I would sell Pippen only to a farm with a good family where he would be happy, for 50,000. CC was much cheaper, he said he would sell him for 10.

Pippen's best feature is his Lip Curtain. When he thinks something is fun, he tucks it in so he looks like he's trying to smile. When he eats, it puffs out, like this:

Cheers!

Through the Looking Glass

`The horror of that moment,' the King went on, `I shall never, never forget!'
`You will, though,' the Queen said, `if you don't make a memorandum of it.'

Stranger in Strangerville

A Love Story

Once upon a time there was a man who nobody knew. His father had never known him and his mother had died when he was younger. Because they lived in a house in the middle of nowhere that nobody owned, the man just kept on living there after she died and nobody knew the difference. He could read and write and he ate squirrels and nuts and drank water from the spring. He knew how to do all of these things because his mother taught him when she was still living.
But then the man started getting restless, though he knew not why: he liked his life and didn't need anything else, or so he thought. What he didn't understand was that the restlessness he felt came from the simple and oh so controversial need to multiply.
And so one day he left and came upon the town of Strangerville. Everybody in Strangerville was a stranger. Sometimes they were strangers because they were exconvicts or pedophiles, and sometimes they just didn't like other people. The man fit into Strangerville like a glove and so was welcomed to Strangerville with open arms, or rather, closed doors, but the man didn't know the difference because he wasn't looking for anyone, unless it was female, and he didn't really know anything about that anyway.
One day a poor woman from the hills of Normalacia came to his home and knocked on the door. She had knocked on everyone else's door in the neighborhood but nobody had answered, because they were Strangervillians. But the man answered, because he didn't know about door knocks as a form of communication and thought that there might be a squirrel cracking nuts on his doorjamb. Or something. So he opened the door carefully and with a mallet in his hand, ready to catch his dinner, but it wasn't dinner, it was a woman wanting to clean his house.
She asked to come in and was surprised to hear his voice, high and not unlike the sound of broken harmonicas because it was horribly untrained. But she was used to accents down in the Normalacia valleys, and still wanted to clean his house.The man didn't understand why someone would want to clean his house, but he said okay because he liked the idea for some reason. The woman got to work right away and was surprised at his lack of furniture, toilet paper, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste or toothbrush, refrigerator, trash cans, trash, stove, clothing, but was familiar with the skinned squirrels hanging on hooks in the kitchen and his homemade soaps.

The woman cleaned the floors until they shone and since that was pretty much all there was to do, offered to roast the squirrels in the fireplace for his dinner. The man was surprised again, but shook his head jerkily, yes.When the squirrels were done, the woman packed her cleaning supplies, looked around the empty house and at the man who hadn't really moved from the doorway since she arrived, and sighed. The man didn't stir, so she sighed again, louder this time. The man stared at her curiously.

"Well my work is lookin quite done here," she said, and then sighed again.

"Indeed!" He squeaked.

They stared at each other.

"I'm a be headin' back now," she said, her eyes flickering to the door.

But she didn't move.The man, wide eyed, was jerking his head in small movements to stare for longish intervals on different sectors of the woman's dress and didn't wonder what she was waiting for. He did wonder why she said she was leaving. The man had only ever met his mother before, so by that experience he resolved that the lady who cleaned would stay there till she died.

It was getting dark. The woman wondered if she should just leave, but she needed the money. If she didn't bring back her pay she'd be beaten gravely by her step daddy, Carl, who was surely moonshined to high heavens by now-- she'd spied Uncle Jim and Uncle Willy's big yellow truck parked out in front that morning while heading out to Strangerville.

So she stood there and let out a few more sighs-- long, exaggerated sighs, which she thought garnered no reaction from the man (who, if she had asked him, would have had trouble responding given the reactions that had been garnered) and then finally gave up and sat down on the floor in front of the fireplace, welcoming herself to a share of the squirrel dinner she'd prepared for him. After a long while, he came and sat down next to her and she fixed him a plate, and they ate together like famished swine.

It was too dark for the woman to go back now, and so they fell asleep there on the floor, in front of the fire, curled against each other in an S.

The accent was what killed me

Last night in the middle of the night, this conversation took place. Im guessing it was around 4AM.

Me: CC? Hey, CC
CC: Hm
Me: CC... I can't sleep
CC: (without even a hint of hesitation) You ever try counting borregos?
Me: No.
CC: Imagine a fence, with borregos, and everybody's jumping
Me: . . .
CC: snore zzzz

Today I made Red Snapper a la Veracruzana from the Epicurious website and my maid and I bonded and she showed me how to make rice. Im glad that we bonded, but now that she's my new best friend, she got the courage to ask me what she's been wanting to ask me for a month: Can she bring her six month old baby and three year old son to work with her? I had to say yes.