The slave driver of the Roman ship stared down at his slaves and yelled, “I've got good news and bad news.”It's a working Sunday, with phone calls and emails from clients, ads to proof... Deadline is Tuesday. Since my office/workstation is in my bedroom, shared with a king-size bed, the walls begin to close in after a while. Whenever I talk to a grouch, or the screen begins to blur, or I find that nobody is answering the phone, I take a break. It's too hot to go outside, and I can't go too far from the phone, so I've been doing some indoor weeding.
“The good news is that you'll be getting double rations tonight.”
The mumbling of the happy slaves was interrupted by the bellowing of the slave driver.
“The bad news is that the commander's son wants to water ski.”
I've gotten pretty ruthless about making things disappear, which is a good thing when you're a thriftstore junkie (Confession #1). Hit the closet, pull out things I'm resigned to never wearing and packing them up in a bag which I will probably donate. Although my friend Ale told me that you can take a bag of clothes to tianguis and somebody will buy them. That's why some tianguis booths have a table-full of stuff, she said. The booth vendor will hang up her own items, and charge 30 or 40 pesos for them, but the stuff on the tables will be five or ten pesos. And sometimes the table stuff is really choice!
Imelda Marcos I'm not, but I'll confess that I have too many shoes (Confession #2). I decided to give away any footwear that is uncomfortable. After almost four years of wearing sandals most of the time here in Mexico, my feet have reverted to the shape God gave them, and they do not conform to shoes with narrow toes anymore. If my feet aren't happy, I'm not happy. Once I wrote an article about Chinese footbinding, and now I think about those generations of women whenever I put on shoes that pinch my toes. They're over it in China now, but guess what's hot in Japan? Toe shoes! I ask you: is there a man on the planet who's worth that?
I took an armload of shirts next door to my neighbor J, who's looking for comfortable work clothes for the maid who cleans the houses J rents. Culled out the books I've read or won't read, to drop off at the library. Dug boxes out from under the bed and from the bodega and pawed through them with a cold and calculating eye. And bingo! I found a couple of missing skirts and my birthday dress from last year! They fit a lot better since I became virtually vegan.
Why is this woman (Mary Louise Parker) smugly smirking? Could it be because she's starring in one of the most addicting series on TV?Confession #3: I'm addicted to "Weeds" and the only (painless) remedy is to watch it all the way to the season finale, and then forget it at least until Season 6 starts and Nancy Botwin digs herself into even deeper trouble. So I reward myself after several hours of production work and phone calls with another episode or two. One night I watched all of Season 4! It was like reading a novel all the way through in one sitting, except I haven't usually felt so depraved for doing that.
I began by downloading Seasons 1-2 from a Torrent website that took several days and nights to do it and made my Vonage phone sound awful. Then I bought Season 3 from i-Tunes...faster, but it cost money and since I picked the HD version by mistake it was even costlier. And then for Seasons 4 and 5, I found cucirca.com and that was the best deal yet. Free, with pretty good resolution on my big screen when I don't sit too close, excellent sound. What I'm enjoying about the current episodes is all the Mexican influence. Cucirca does have annoying advertising tricks you have to work around, and after 72 minutes you either get cut off for an hour or have to sign up for the paid service.
Instead, I just go back to work.
5 comments:
You are describing one reason I do not want to own another house or to settle in one place for more than 6 months at a time. If I cannot get everything into my truck in an hour, I am going to feel too tied to a place. Good luck in weeding. (Nice term, by the way.)
This is a chore I have put off too long. I agree with Steve, there was a time when 3 years in one place was a long time. A time when the hubby could announce the transfer at dinner on Thursday and I'd have the house and two kids packed and ready to strike out Friday when he got home. We've been here 15 years now and the stuff is beginning to take over.
I loooove Mary Louise Parker, even though that photo does not look much like her. I´ll take your word that it is.
Tell ole Cotton above that he´s a confusing man. First he was about to buy a Mexican house before he even moved down. Now, he´s turned into a permanent vagabond, or so he says. I don't think he knows what he really wants, do you?
Steve - I think since this is your first year in Mexico and you have a whole new country to explore, not to speak of your own retired self which is going to be different than your employed self--you are right to travel light. No need to make permanent decisions about your future until you sign on the dotted line in the real estate office. See response to Felipe, below.
Jomamma - I don't mind having stuff around, as long as it's stuff I use. My decorative stuff would fit in one box. But I agree, 15 years could add up to quite a lot of accumulation, especially if you're a thriftstore junkie like me.
Felipe - It's the smug smirk that makes her look like somebody else. Ole Cotton is in his first six months in Mexico, still owns a house back in the States and is making a major life transition. Of course he's confusing. But I did not see the word "permanent" in his comment. I think everybody should get a shot at being a vagabond for a while, don't you?
Wow, sometimes it feels like I'm sitting at a big round table over cafecitos with you guys every morning, deep in conversation. I love it!
Have you seen the season finale from Monday night? Some of the Nancy Botwin lines are the best, and we weren't disappointed in the episode except that it was the last for awhile.
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