Picky Eater

Ben: Hey, I love burgers!

Me: No you don't...you never eat your burger.

Ben: Well, I like gummi burgers...

You get all kinds...

This weekend Luke and Patrick went camping/snorkeling with the boy scouts and Ben was feeling bad to be left out of that, so I brought him down to Gigi and Grandpa's for a few days of fun...which happened to be the same few days that my parents were having their much-talked-about garage sale. I'm not sure why this garage sale came to be, all I know is that I've been hearing about it for years and this weekend it finally happened.

I am not a fan of garage sales per se (Here's all our junk! Want to buy it?), but the cash from this one is going to the school down the road that's been underwater for a week, so I suppose that's reason enough to do it. But now I realize that not only do I have disdain for garage sales themselves, but also for the people that hit them up. Here's a sampling of what we got this morning:

35-year-old Loser: Do you have any video games for sale?

Us: No.

35-year-old Loser: My mom needs an outdoor patio table. Do you have one of those?

Us: (looking around, not expecting one to materialize) Nope.

35-year-old Loser: Can I buy this packing material?

Us: No, those are to keep the plates from breaking.

35-year-old Loser: What kind of flowers are those in your garden?

Us: Those aren't for sale.


Or there were the very nicely dressed middle-aged men who came looking for God knows what:

Them: You don't have a whole lot of stuff, do you?

Us: Buddy, you're at a garage sale. This isn't Wal-mart.


Or the people who thought they were actually at Rooms-to-Go:

Them: I like this couch. Do you have another one too?

Us: ???????


But in the end, the sale was a success because they got rid of all the big stuff and made a few hundred for the school. And I'm really glad I was here for it because I am now 100% certain that I will never ever hold a yard sale of my own.

Acapulco by Photo (#s 3 and 4)

After the harrowing adventure that was the Acapulco market, Mandy took me to get tacos al pastor (shepherd's tacos? I want to say yes) at an afuera restaurant on the Costera. Very nice, very relaxing, very yum. I love the way the Mexicans serve you meals. They bring you all the ingredients and you can throw it together however you want. For tacos al pastor, you get homemade corn tortillas (they alone are worth the airfare), heavily seasoned spicy shredded meat (I think it was pork, I can't be sure...in any case, I didn't eat any gristle-y pieces, so it could have been hyena meat and I wouldn't have cared), tomatillo sauce, rice and black beans. Speaking of beans, I did not see a refried bean the entire time I was in Mexico. I'm not sure what to think about that, except to be glad for my own sake because I prefer black beans. The tacos had a major kick, so Mandy ordered jamaica (huh-MY-ka), which was a very sweet cold syrupy juice that tasted very familiar but I haven't been able to place the similarity yet. Maybe pomegranate.

As you can see, I'm still not handling the heat well. I never really did. We kept trying to set up the camera on the napkin dispenser and take a timed photo, but in nearly every shot my disastrous look nearly shattered the lens. In one picture I actually resembled a filthy pirate...quite closely. Yeah, the close-up shots were not working for me (Mandy was just fine, as you can see), so a kindly mesero (waiter) offered to take our picture for us. It went something like this:

Mesero: I take picture?

Us: Oh, okay...gracias!

Mesero: You're beautiful.

Us: Oh...gracias? Just press this button right here.

Mesero: Okay?

Us: (smiling) Si!

Mesero: click

Us: Gracias!

Mesero: You're beautiful.


Yes, he was quite taken with the little white girls, and the picture is not so great, but it was too awkward to ask him to take one more. We didn't talk to him again until we paid and left, and then it went something like this:

Mesero: Adios!

Us: Adios. Gracias!

Mesaro: You're beautiful.

Acapulco by Photo (#2)

This is the market in Acapulco. I think the word market has such great connotations; in the movies they're always set in idyllic surroundings and very well-dressed people walk around with wicker baskets and buy wonderful things. Or there's the farmers market, outside with tables and stands of perfect, delicious produce just picked that morning by a farmer who's wife also just happened to make you a blackberry pie...just because. This is not often the reality, and the same goes for the Acapulco market. It had good points and bad points, but mainly it was quite the cultural experience...and well, that's always a good point.

Thankfully it was covered, because that was my first day in Acapulco and I was not yet used to the 900 degree heat (as evidenced by my face). Not all the vendors were open, but from what I could tell, each of the 60+ stands were selling the exact same things, for the exact same price. Except for one guy, who had a sign hanging over his door saying "We don't screw you too much." Unfortunately, he wasn't there, so I didn't have the chance to find out. We did stop by a stand owned by a lady that belongs to Mandy's church group, and she had some nice things, including ceramic crosses that I bought a few of for a special price just for us. That was nice of her, I have to wonder if all her other patrons get screwed, though...

I actually should have bought a big stick from her, I could have used it the rest of the time we were at the market to beat off the other vendors. It was like feeding pigeons in Trafalgar Square, except that they weren't pigeons and I wasn't giving them anything except dirty looks. They've got the pushy salesman thing down pat, and it doesn't help when you have no clue what they're saying. We emerged back out into the blazing heat unscathed, though, and I finished my shopping a few days later at the Wal-mart. Which deserves a whole post of its own.

Acapulco by Photo (#1)

So Mandy says I should blog about said summer vacation. And I don't say no to Mandy. So here goes.

This is Mandy's apartment in Acapulco. It's very hip and relatively cool. By cool I mean that with all the lights off and shades drawn and fans running and bare feet on the tile floor, it's only 97 degrees with one million percent humidity. All you southerners who are reading this (and I know most of you are), you are not allowed to say "it's not the heat, it's the humidity" anymore, okay? That's a new rule, make a note of it.

Off to the right is Mandy's kitchen and behind that is a fun little room with no windows, which lowers the temperature to 96.5 degrees, except at night, when she is permitted by her neighbor to turn on the a/c. They have an agreement...at 9:00, when the hottest part of the day has already come and gone 5 hours ago, she can finally cool off because that's when he doesn't care if the condensation drips into his alleyway. So you may be wondering how this seems fair, and the answer is: it isn't. A drip-free alley is apparently more important than the very real possibility of heat stroke in Acapulco. But if I were Mandy and living in a large-ish city 9,000 miles from home where I didn't really speak the language and a strange man who is probably smaller than me but somewhat threatening nonetheless approached me and told me to turn off my a/c, I would do it. No questions asked. So we can't fault Mandy for going with it. Plus she's just nice and considerate like that.

But until 9:00, you have to figure out how to keep cool in that room, and I took care of that by laying spread-eagle (so as to increase the surface area of skin to tile) on the floor and watching season 1 Chuck episodes, and it was all good. No complaints here.

The last thing you'll note in the picture is the gigantic, delicious, back-stabbing avocado in the table. While in Mexico, I essentially became addicted to avocados because they were SO DARN GOOD. No matter that they're not quite as good here, they're still good enough and I am eating them like a fiend, even though they carry a whopping 29 grams of "supposedly-good-for-you-as-if-there-is-such-a-thing" fat. Avocados...friend or foe? That's for you to decide. I have to go eat one now.

Trying

So...I suppose I haven't kept this blog for four years to give up on it now. But truthfully, in the A.D.D. world we live in, facebook is a heck of a lot easier to keep up with. But here's to trying to stick with something you started. A few thoughts:

I am doomed to catch lizards in the spare room for eternity. I don't know why they're so drawn to that room, all I know is I'm getting really good at catching them.

Who would've thought the "terrible threes" would actually turn out to be...well, terrific?

For the first time since I quit teaching to work part time, summer was actually a break for me. I'm not sure how to analyze that yet.

If my dad would join facebook I wouldn't have to do this blog anymore.

Kidding...I really wouldn't want to abandon it at this point anyway. And since every post should have a picture, here's a good one.