A Mexican (Food) Stand-Off

She says in Spanish, ‘Is there another salsa? A green salsa?’ The waiter replies in Spanish that there is a cilantro, creamy green sauce that is kind of a topping sauce. ‘Yes, could we have that also, please?’ He agrees and thanks are given.

So far, they have gone through almost two normal containers of the red salsa, eaten almost entirely by him, her man, not the waiter. They continue eating the chips with the delicious red salsa.

After less than a minute, a small container of delicious-looking green creamy salsa arrives. It is smaller than the size of a shot of alcohol, much smaller than the regular red salsa dishes on the table. She looks down at the green salsa. He, her man, not the waiter, looks down at the green salsa. The two look at each other briefly before she, with a lightning-fast move, grabs the green salsa and moves it to her far corner of the table, out of his reach.

He does not share food well. He admits it fully. He devours food. Sharing happens only by speed and force, before he can finish eating, or else it usually doesn’t happen at all. They both know that this is why she has taken the salsa. Two normal dishes of red salsa have been eaten entirely by him at this point. She has full rights for her move. But he doesn’t trust her, because he wouldn’t trust himself if he’d been the one to grab the green salsa first (which he’d tried to do).

He retaliates by grabbing the chip basket and moving it to his far corner of the table.

It is a Mexican (food) stand-off. She says as much, chuckling.

They begin negotiations. ‘Let me get a scoop, and I’ll give you three chips.’ ‘Let me get that scoop for you, so you don’t take all the salsa in one scoop.’ ‘No, let me get the scoop, or I won’t give you any chips.’ ‘Then you won’t get any salsa.’ ‘Okay, put the green salsa over here for one scoop, and I’ll give you three chips.’ ‘How about I hold the salsa over here, and you can get a FAIR and small scoop yourself, then give me three chips?’

They reach an accord.

She holds it tentatively to make sure he doesn’t scoop half of it out in one go. He surprised her by confirming that his amount is okay, and even wipes a bit back on the container before asking. She approves. He eats. She asks for her chips. He gives her one.

The container is small, so she breaks the chip in half. She dips and eats one half and dips and gives the other to him. He gives her another chip, and the process repeats, repeatedly.

‘See?’ she asks. ‘I told you I would be fair with the chips and the salsa.’ He just smiles and eats another bite of chip and salsa.

After a while, she has had her fill and hands the container off to him. He devours what is left in mere moments, it seems. They both know she was right to take the salsa, though he doesn’t want to admit it, and that’s okay for both. They got the chips and salsa they had wanted, and they got them together, which was what had mattered most.

………..

I just hope you can see us being idiots at the restaurant tonight. 😛

Post-a-day 2023

Improvemeh…

Well, the coughing proved to be a big problem last night. After hours of being in bed, I had barely slept a wink – I just couldn’t stop coughing, even when on the brink of exhaustion. My man came through for me and delivered some specific single-ingredient medicine – typically the only kind I want going into my system – to help stop the coughing. Well, not to stop the coughing, but to lessen it significantly. And it did just that. It took a bit to kick in, but I finally fell asleep around 3:30 or 4:00 this morning. And I actually slept. Thank you, God, for some real sleep, at last.

I had hoped only to take that medicine at night, but my coughing grew so terrible by late afternoon, I couldn’t even function. I’m still taking it easy as a whole, but I don’t like having to be on medicines like this. My body can’t truly tell where it is in recovery and what it may most need. Tomorrow is the last day of the antibiotics, and I hope I will be able to back off the rest by tomorrow night or the morning after, too.

Oh, and I hope I have a voice to use again soon, too. That would be helpful… though, I have very much appreciated this opportunity not to speak. It has been frustrating at times, but very good as a whole… a great lesson in patience for me and for my family. Makes me really want to get us into some ASL classes asap, though. You never know when you might need or want to use another language.

Prayers for healing, if you are willing and able, please, for me and for all the world.

Dear God, heal us all, please. In your name, we pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

So many hats

What does one do with 20-30 baseball hats? And he wears them, he does. Some he wears quite often, others just often, and some rarely, but he wears them all. The question is: Where do we store all these hats, and how?

He tried a little hanging bar with clips. For one thing, I don’t like clipping the hats. It seems uncomfortable for them, somehow. Yes, I am fully aware that they are hats and not living beings. However, could you imagine any material, living or dead, surviving unscathed from metal claw clips holding them, hanging all its weight in those claws, for most of its life? I think not. So, let’s not hurt the hats. For another point, though, that bar only really fits five or six hats comfortably, anyway. We aren’t putting those bars all over the house or all up and down any single wall, either.

So, the bar idea doesn’t really work.

We could put a shelf and line the whole top of the bedroom with them, like wallpaper decoration. But I doubt I would find comfort and relaxation in thirty baseball hats staring at me every night, so that’s unlikely to work.

I have all my hats in a single box, just a bit sorbet than a shoebox. They’re all lined up, one in front of the other, overlapping comfortably, all sitting in the open-topped box on a shelf in my closet. But I only have about six or seven, ten at most. He has at least triple that… perhaps something like that could work, but we don’t want to pack them away to where he can never see them easily. He’d never end up wearing any of them that way. Perhaps I can find a way to set them up like that, but on shelves somewhere easily accessed, yet still out of the way… hmm…

What do you think, eh? Because I definitely don’t want them scattered throughout the house forevermore. What to do with thirty-ish baseball hats???

Post-a-day 2023

Okay, then

Tonight, I saw this happening, asked about it, was told that she, the one I was asking, preferred Coca-Cola, clarified what I saw, laughed as everyone realized I wasn’t just talking nonsense, and then actually took a bite of the taco to discover whether it was any good.

And yes, it actually was good.

How bizarre, right?

Post-a-day 2023

Family

We met with my step-father’s sister and her husband the other morning for brunch, because my mom told me just the other day that they lived near where we would be staying in San Miguel. While at brunch, she mentioned that they lived very near the airport I’d be using for an early flight Friday morning, and invited us to go stay with them Thursday night, so my man didn’t have to make a two-hour drive to the airport before sunrise.

Thus we find ourselves here in the upstairs apartment that is connected to their cute house in their little suburb town. We had a wonderful time this evening and over dinner with them, staying up too late for all of us. After she went to bed and I went to get ready for bed, the boys stayed another hour, just chatting and having a grand old time. It was adorable.

Thank you, God, for this amazing day and evening. Please, grant us safe travels tomorrow, as well as great health for all of us. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Errands

I was struggling to get out of the house and get my errands done earlier today. Just as I was getting near the point of I must leave Now, my cousin reached out to me and my mom. She let us know that she was in town for the week and would like to see us, if possible. After a few further messages and a quick phone call, I hopped in the car and went and picked up my cousin.

She only had until about five o’clock, and it was already almost 3pm. But I picked her up – and she left her baby with her husband and in-laws! – and she went and ran my errands with me.

It sounds silly, perhaps, but I think we both had a really great time just being together again, and with no other real distractions, no one else for us to have to think about or check in upon. One of my errands happened to be to my mom’s office to pick up some pie, so my cousin got to see my mom for a little bit, even.

I dropped her off at their dinner reservation near 5:30pm, after a lovely time together, and with an intention of going to pick her up in the morning to come hang out with me at the house while I get things done here, both for the slumber party and for my trip. If the timing works well, she and I also will go to this wonderful shop that makes fabulous natural body products – oils, scrubs, lotions, soaps, etc. Then we can have some lovely tea/tisanes at the house together and just be all hyggelig together.

Thank you for this lovely day, God. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

Guess wha-at…!

We

Have

Gas Again!!!!!

So, now we can have hot water and cook and bake and have heat in the house and run the dishwasher and wash and dry clothes and just hand wash greasy dishes period(!). Oh, goodness… the difference it makes. We are incredibly grateful this is finally handled.

Turns out that we likely didn’t need to dig the ditch ourselves at all, but I think it was still good in that it gave my man a somewhat cathartic thing to do, as well as a thing to do while we waited for all the rest of the pieces of big company nonsense to sort themselves out.

See? The contracted company brought their own machinery to handle the rest of it all. AND they put all of the dirt neatly back on top of the ditch after they replaced all the piping. No extra work for my man or us. Woohoo!

The big energy company, when we did what we were supposed to do, then told us that we would have to wait until Tuesday for them to come and do the simple re-installation of the gas meter and to turn on the gas… a very different message from what they had told us two days beforehand, when they’d said same-day installation would be no problem whatsoever. They now wanted us to spend over five days in our home in freezing temperatures, and then they would come do a twenty-minute stop-in.

No way, Jose.

Fortunately, after much intending on my part and multiple phone calls on the part of my man, Centerpoint showed up, and a very nice man named Lee hooked up everything easily and quickly, and turned on the gas and cleared up our gas lines in the house (because air is in the line at first, after installation). And now we have heat!

We actually both reveled in taking hot showers before going to the Christmas gathering we had this evening at my brothers’ dad’s house. That shower, though not the actual best I’ve had, was, within the context, the best shower ever. Uh…

I just thank you, God. Thank you. Keep us safe, please, that we pursue and fulfill your will, being our best selves. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

Sleep, ASAP

Despite the immense frustrations my man was feeling this afternoon, and my resulting increased stress for him, everything went really well tonight for our family dinner. Sure, we still have no gas, so no hot water or easy heat or effective dish washer, etc. My mom had to do some in-the-moment utensil-washing when we ran it of forks and spoons at one point, and she helped wash most of the plates after dinner. I was just grateful that I didn’t have to do it for once.

I was a touch annoyed at how my brother clearly hasn’t gotten a handle on his dog’s full training, evidenced by the craziness of the dog’s first seeing all of us and our little-in-comparison to his 150 pounds dog. Also, I just had to trust that my man will mop the floors tomorrow, and wipe down the sofa and the rug and the coffee table to clean up all the slobber that the big dog got everywhere. I love dogs, yet it was a lot. Kind of gross, actually, which was a bummer, as I’d really been looking forward to rubbing all over the puppy (yes, he’s technically still a puppy). Once he chilled out and started getting sleepy, though, it was much easier to pet him without getting totally slobbered all over. I also thought our dog might have an actual heart attack based on her initial reactions to the dog that weighs six times her weight, and is yet a puppy – annoying for her old, 14-year-old self – shoving into her personal space with such excitement. However, as he chilled out, our dog calmed down. And a bunch of treats helped them both be easier company. Our dog even got brave enough to walk through the living room past the other dog multiple times before the end there. It was cute, and I’m glad she eased down from her clearly stressful place.

Anyway, I have to sleep immediately. I have to leave for work in five hours and ten minutes. 😦

Thank you, God, for everything. It was a really good night. Please, help my man realize that it really was great for us all. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

Getting ready

Family is coming over tomorrow for dinner. We spent today doing things on each of our to-do lists (which I had made the day before yesterday). Still no gas, so we have new oil space heaters from The Home Depot that he picked up during his several errands today. We have cute, seasonal-ish tissue boxes around the living space, now. I reasonably handled everything that I’d brought from the apartment, and so the dining room is cleared out and cleaned up. I handled whatever else I’d had sitting around the living spaces. I got my man to help remove the broken tiny lightbulb in the little chandelier in the dining room, and then replaced it with the brighter bulb and put the thing back together – looks and works great now. I set up the red and white towels and napkins and dish towels and rugs my mom dropped off yesterday for us to use as Christmas decor… and then I took most of them back down and out them in the washer, as they had obviously been in the storage unit for a few years (or more), based on their feel and sniff-scent (which is when you only can smell it up close, not a radiating scent). I poured the kettle of boiling water into the freezing cold wash, just to help however I could. Then I hung them all out to dry overnight. The big towels are resting atop parts of the oil heaters now, as they are big fluffy towels that likely wouldn’t be dry by tomorrow afternoon otherwise. (And yes, I know what I’m doing here, as I spent years drying my clothes on such heaters. Never cover the front part.) I set up the decorations I liked from the tubs my man pulled down from storage in the garage, including a little village and two tree skirts – yes, I did the one, then found a nicer one, and so put it just in top of the other, saving the effort of picking it back up – and a funky punching-bag-looking, triangular sandbag Santa and a few other little things to put around the house.

I also made a wreath from the scraps I’d picked up the other day at the Christmas tree lot. Hopefully, we can find the old door hook and hang it on the front door tomorrow.

And I wrapped all the little gifts I’d had stashed for my man, and I put them under the tree, atop the pretty little skirt.

I set up the two power strips for the village and for the lamps and internet extension and tree lights. And I put lights on the tree, as well as a single ornament I’d found of a red fire truck, old style, and a few candy canes. I left the rest of the canes for my man to dress the tree, though. I’d wanted to decode it together, but realized that neither of us has any ornaments, anyway. So, candy canes, down separately will do. He was in the room when I did the lights and candy canes, anyway. Sure, he was vacuuming, but it counted well enough for this hurried night of to-dos.

Oh, and I also put away and tidied some clothes in the spare room, put some things away, put some things in the give-away pile, made a Santa hat for our St. Francis statue in the kitchen, put various beverages tidily in our outside fridge, cleaned up the drink area of the garage, and fed us a bit.

My man ran a bunch of errands, handling a lot of important stuff for us both, and giving the dog a fun adventure. He put the stove back in its nook against the wall (even though it doesn’t have any gas yet). He built what I estimate to be about 35 feet of fence on the side of the house – and it looks good. He pulled out all the Christmas lights for the house, starting to sort them and ready them. He tidied his stuff a bit on our back patio, and a bit in the house, too. He helped me light our Advent candles on our newly-placed-out advent wreath from my mom, while I sang the lovely German song for lighting the Advent candles (and he joined for the last chorus!). And now he’s at the gym, working out and then taking a hot shower.

Tomorrow, I have to tidy the office, especially my desk; put away the hang-upside-down board (obviously, the right words are not coming to me so late at night right now…Inversion table! Got it!); wash dishes with my ridiculous boil-pour-dip method of using the water kettle to handle our lack of hot water; set up the German cookies and chocolates I got; clean all surfaces; work – yep, still have to get those few hours of coding stuff in!; take a nap; fold the napkins and put all the towels back, once all are dried… and that might be it…. Oh, and hang up the wreath on the front door! I also would like to tidy more in the spare bedroom, and handle finishing touches on everything.

My man has to work his whole work day – he’d have taken the day off, but his boss is already off tomorrow, so he’s just rolling with it – and he also has to put up the Christmas lights on the house, finish tidying in the back, and finish tidying his things inside the house. Hopefully, he’ll also get a nap!

We can do it. I know we can. God, please, help us do it with grace and ease, if you will. Thank you for everything. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

So much to do, but too cold to do it

We both have lots to do before Monday afternoon, when everyone is coming over for family dinner. But it is just so cold now. He is outside, building the fence – brave soul. Fortunately, he actually likes the really cold weather. As a matter of fact, I really like the cold weather. Just not when it follows me indoors. And so, it is also really cold indoors here, since we still have no gas. We received the other two space heaters today, which I’d ordered on Amazon the day before yesterday. They help, but have to be on different breakers, since they pull such high ampules. So, it takes time to warm the big open space of the living room and entry and dining room and kitchen that we have. Great for openness, terrible for heating and cooling quickly.

I also just showered, and that was miserable, because the water is terribly cold now. I still have the few kettles of hot water to pour on myself throughout and to finish, but the cold in between is really cold, and that just tired me out.

Not to mention that I’m already exhausted from only five-ish hours of sleep last night and six-ish hours of sleep the night before. flying this morning was great, and was only terrifying a few times for a short time. I’m filled with pride for my man and what he has accomplished so far with flying. Next stop: a boatload of ratings (and, thereby, hours upon hours of practicing by flying) so that he might be able to fly commercially, professionally(!). Woohoo!

Anyway, I’ve been sitting on the floor in front of the heater a while now, and really need either to get to work or to get to bed. Just have to go get my socks and sweatshirt from the other room, put them on, and hop to it all.

Goodnight!

P.S. Want to see our to-do lists????

Before Monday afternoon: – [ ] tidy desk – [ ] tidy clothes in spare room – [ ] sort out dish towels – [ ] put away RenFest costumes etc. – [ ] clear out apartment stuff in dining room – [ ] finish washing and putting away dishes – [ ] handle drinks in garage and in garage fridge – [ ] tidy inside fridge – [ ] clean down countertops and kitchen surfaces – [ ] change bulb in dining chandelier – [ ] tidy shoe rack – put away some in bedroom – [ ] tidy pillows – [ ] see what consolidation I can do in the garage Setup stuff: – [ ] put out coasters – [ ] red/green Christmas bathroom linens – [ ] Christmas decorations set up – [ ] display german cookies etc.

Before Monday afternoon: – [ ] Put stove away – [ ] pick up all dirty clothes in house and garage – put in laundry – [ ] gather spare parts and tools left around house and garage – put away – [ ] Gather packages/boxes/bags and empty and put away – [ ] return emptied Christmas bins to upper shelf in garage – [ ] tidy back porch table – [ ] tidy back porch and prep for use by many – [ ] ***Can we use the fire pit Monday night?*** If so, what’s needed for that? – [ ] finish fence – [ ] Christmas lights up on house

Post-a-day 2022