Just Surviving!

Volcanoes, machetes, and..whistling? Oh my!

2004-11-29T16:43:00.000-08:00

Just returned from a week-long trip to Nicaragua, my land of my husband's family. OH.MY.GOD. So much to write about...so little time...so I'll just summarize everything under the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The Good:

*food -- excellent food. Good Lord, I must have gained at least five pounds. Mountains of plantains with cheese at most meals will do that to you.

*the scenery -- all green and lush! Tropical country. And so many impressive-looking volcanos! There is this one big one called "Momotombo".

*"amor"-- these folks are all about the love down there. They pepper "amor" throughout their conversations. When I evesdrop on my husband's conversations with my mother-in-law I hear him say, "si, mi amor....si, mi amor..." over and over. He doesn't say it to me because we don't speak to each other in spanish. However, people down there just assumed I spoke Spanish and I was "amored" all over the place. Just walking through the market and people call out from their stalls, "What are you looking for, amor?" "Have a question, amor?" And then I'd say something like, "I'm looking for [whatever]" and they'd follow up with even more dramatic language such as "No problem, mi reina [my queen]".

*maid-service -- my husband's aunt has a maid and it was nice being on vacation from housework for awhile. Eat a meal at home and not wash dishes? What a concept! Not make up your bed? Unreal. It amazes me that people actually have such service 365 days a year.

The Bad:

*the weather -- it was so humid! I don't do humidity well. No sir. It was like 90 degrees and super humid. We stayed in a gorgeous hotel for the first two nights and then with my husband's family for the rest of the time. The wall-unit airconditioner in our room was super old and, thus, too loud to keep on all night so we'd turn it off but then we'd be miserable.

*maid service-- I was very sad to learn that the maid earns the equivalent to $7o a month. She has five kids and they live a two-hour bus ride away. She sees them during one four-day weekend of each month. She works every single day outside of that 4-day weekend. Oh, and we aren't talking about 8 hour days, either. Try 16+ hour days, depending on what's going on in the family. Example: her boss had a guest who rises at the ass-crack of dawn and wants to drink coffee immediately (my father-in-law) and who also has no problem asking her to make him fresh-squeezed lemonade at 10:00 pm at night (also my father-in-law) while we were relaxing in the patio. My husband and I could not once bring ourselves to ask this poor lady for a single thing -- my FIL was enough for all of us. Ugh. Oh, and I cannot forget this tidbit -- the lady didn't even have a measly fan in her bedroom. Meanwhile, there were fans in the patio area. And the bedroom? Not even part of the house. The door lead to the outside of the house. We gave her the fan we had packed in our suitcase (along with a $40 tip).

*machetes and whistling-- because there is no such thing as 911 nor is there a decent tax base for even the basic levels of police coverage, people have lots of strange ways of protecting themselves. So, at this one parking-lot the security guard guided us to a space and I noticed that he had a 20 inch shiny machete under his arm. You don't see that every day. And most middle class people hire sercurity guards to guard their neighborhood blocks. These guys are armed and they sit there all evening and night with a whistle in their mouths and they give 2-3 toots on the whistle every 10 minutes or so. At first I couldn't figure out why there were all these kids whistling all night long. Come to find out that it was the security guards! They do this to 1) warn potential thieves that they are there ready to blast them and 2) assure the homeowners that they are on the job. I kid you not -- you can be lying in bed trying to fall asleep and you will hear a few toots of a whistle from the street every 10-15 minutes. Strange!

The Ugly:

*the poverty. Nicaragua is the second or third poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and man, did I see it. Holy smokes. People living in tin-shacks, dirt roads in impoverished neighborhoods. During one drive in the country-side, some kids were filling potholes in the road and while some asked for money as we slowed down one pair (they must have been 6 & 8 years old) simply asked for water. Heartbreaking. The working people make so little money. One day we hired a driver for the day. He arrived at the house at 10:00 am and was finished at 9:00 pm. Earned a whole $5. To put this in perspective, he didn't even earn enough to purchase a plate of food at the place we ate at (the meals were around $10). And this wasn't a super fancy place , either. So we bought him his lunch. My FIL wanted to pay him one extra dollar but my husband's aunt said, no, it's a bad custom. (Meaning, she'd have to pay him $6 the next time she wanted to hire him.) Well, screw local customs. The man got my family home safely -- he earned more than $5 in my book. So I shook his hand to say goodbye and pressed a $5 bill in his hand and quickly walked away, essentially doubling his salary for the day. Oh, I forgot, this was a Sunday. He worked all week for a friend of the family (as a driver) and then on Sunday for us. And yet according to my husband's aunt the poor people in Nicaragua are simply "lazy". Makes me wanna holler.

Feeling the "ah"

2004-09-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

I had the best weekend! Why? Because I didn't spend any time cleaning my house! No dusting, no wiping down counters, no chasing dust bunnies with the swiffer. No seething over the fact that TBO hadn't done his chores yet. Instead, while my husband worked two days out of three, I spent quality time with my daughter ("LT"). We went to a children's museum, bought her ballet and tap shoes for her new dance classes, and had a nice sushi lunch (she eats the tamagos like there is no tomorrow). We read alot and made two trips to Starbucks where she's always happy to split the calories of those evil scones that just call my name.

Housecleaners on Friday were largely responsible for this bliss. They stayed for three hours (small house) and did an impressive job. One reason why I chose this particular company is that they also use all natural cleaners (water, vinegar, baking soda, etc.). Another reason is that it is a worker-owned co-op of sorts. They are nine women total (all Latina immigrants) with one bilingual employee who is in charge of making the appts and communicating with the clients. Kinda gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Nothing I hate more than handing over a ton of money to "Mr. John Smith"(contractor, owner, whoever) and having a crew full of non-unionized non-English speaking immigrants show up to do the work. Take our new roof. Cost over $10,000. Sure, the materials cost a lot of money but how much money did the guys doing the work make during this three-day gig? Not a whole lot, I'll bet. Sometimes I have issues with capitalism.

I will be at work during future visits but this time I stayed put. It felt weird being there, listening to the ladies move about their business but I didn't want to leave and since the house is so small I just sat on the porch reading a book and at another point I surfed the net. Trusting person that I can be, I did not check on their progress or make sure they weren't rifling through my jewlery box --pretty amazing considering the countless stories my mother-in-law has told me about her adventures in hiring help.

My MIL used to terrorize her live-in maids when my husband's family lived in Central America. Silent as a cat she'd watch them vacuum the living room and if they dared bumped the wall she'd race up to them, grab the vacuum out of their hands and yell, "If you can't do it right, don't do it at all!" She'd fire them all the time. She's lucky they didn't poison her food. (Oh, wait, they didn't get paid enough money to even buy the poison.) One day her engagement ring went missing. She lined them up and yelled, "which one of you stole it?" They just hung their heads and answered, "not me." The next day, sure enough, here comes one of them crying her eyes out. She pulls her hand out from behind her back and shows her finger to my MIL. The woman had shoved the engagement ring on her finger and could not get it off. My husband remembers clear as day how her finger was purple and painfully swollen. Ever a compassionate woman, my MIL screamed, "I'm getting this ring back even if we have to chop off your finger to do it!!" I forget how they got the ring off but the woman was fired and my MIL went on to terrorize many more maids until the family moved back to California where market dynamics in major metropolitan areas have housecleaners (and nannies) demanding (and getting) wages far beyond what my MIL can afford. Stories of uneducated non-English speaking immigrants making more money per hour than she does as an adminstrative paper-pusher peeves her to no end. To which I reply, "Ever heard of capitalism?"

Men have feelings, too!

2004-09-03T09:36:00.000-07:00

I can't say it was love at first sight when I first met my husband (I'll call him "TBO") but I can say that I thought he was very cute. Totally my type -- a dark-haired, dark-eyed, olive-skinned clean-cut guy. (I admit that I spied the thin gold chain he was wearing and thought, "Oh, I can convince him to dump that." Sorry, but a girl has her limits.)

Eleven years later -- I still think he's cute. We can be out someplace and someone will ask me, "which one is your husband?" and I'm proud to point him out. And his manners! Beautiful manners. I'm not embarrassed to take him anywhere.

TBO is not the jealous type at all. He doesn't mind that I keep an Indian blanket on our bed given to me by my ex-boyfriend. (Ask me if I'd let him keep such a blanket if the situation was reversed...um, that answer would be hell.no.) And when I was recently invited out to a business lunch to discuss possible research collaboration with someone with whom I had the best date *ever* in my life (this was back when TBO and I first started dating), he said, "have a great meeting, Sweetheart."

And, then, out of nowhere, a little insecurity shines through. It is so sweet. Example -- the other night I was listening to Tex-Mex music while cleaning the kitchen. He teased, "I've noticed you've been listening to this music alot since having lunch with D. Reminiscing, hmmm?" (He knows that we went to see a Tex-Mex-type of band on that one and only date. He also knows that D., being a Tejano, is a good dancer and that he, TBO, is not a good dancer.) Anyway, it is so not true that I've been listening to this music a little more than usual.

The next night I was watching the Latin Grammys while cleaning the kitchen (yes, I have an under-the-counter fancy-smancy TV/CD player in my kitchen -- a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do to push through her evening chores). Esai Morales was presenting an award and I paused to listen. TBO says, "You think he's cute, don't you? He's your type, isn't he?" Not accusingly, just in a commenting sort of way.

And so I answer, "Esai Morales? Um, no. You want to know my type? Look in the mirror, baby. You're my type." And I meant it, yes I did!

He gave a shy smile and walked away. Oh, that smile!

"Just Surviving", you say?

2004-07-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

I'd talk to my dad once a week when I was away at college. I'd talk to my mom every other day but my dad? Once a week. Not exactly a conversationalist, my dad. I'd call him at 6:50 pm on Sunday because I knew he was settling in to watch "60 Minutes" as he had done ever since I could remember. Anyway, I'd ask him, "How are you?" and sometimes he'd respond, "Just surviving!" Sometimes he'd say that during my triumphant returns home from college. He'd bend down and I'd give him a kiss on the cheek and say, "Hi Dad! How are you?" "Just surviving," he'd respond, with a little smile.

It was not until I became a working parent and homeowner did I truly understand what he meant by that. Now, Lord knows I'm not trying to compare my troubles to my truck-driver father who works 10x harder and deals with 10x more obxnoxious crap than I will ever have to in my entire life. However, there are days when I feel like I am "Just surviving". And on those days I go buy a lottery ticket or two because someone has to hit the darn thing and it just might be me.