Back to school shoes blues
I. cried inconsolably for about five minutes yesterday after we promised to take her shopping for new shoes for school, only to find that nothing was open on a Sunday evening. She was doubly devastated because it had been the dangling carrot all day as we scrubbed the house from top to bottom. Ok, once again my hyperbolic fingers fly ahead, I never ever scrub the house from top to bottom - waaaaah - I wish I lived in a country where it were socially acceptable to hire domestic service without feeling that I am exploiting other's disadvantage shamelessly... But I did leave the kitchen sparkling. Oh wait, I live in California...
August 14. That makes exactly one year that we moved in here, one year that we started building furniture and unpacking boxes, one year that we call California officially home. As if by magic, I felt the urge to shop for home goods, actually a bundt pan (to make mohn streusel cake for K.s birthday - happy birthday baby:) and glasses because we had broken practically the whole set and we had only two wine glasses left (not at all acceptable for entertaining) and we ended up buying a memory foam bed cover ($100) and pillows for I.'s bed (another carrot dangled for her to sleep in her own bed... still only partially effective). We also bought about 8 bottles of wine to accompany our purchase but of course I realized later that I left our corkscrew with Ana and Marcos at the beach after the barbecue, and they had left for San Diego, so I was out of luck. Incidentally I was not totally out of luck because the following day I met them again at the beach and left my bike, promptly forgetting about it for several days, and yet it was still there Sunday evening when M. dropped me in front of the bike rack.
So, today after being poked and prodded (got Hepatitis A vaccine, just another benefit of living in CA) by doctors and their assistants once again, we picked up the girl from school, and headed right to buy four new pairs of shoes. Of course after such strenuous activity we were forced to go eat Indian food (god forbid we should prepare our own delicacies after the mental drain). You know it is a small town when you run into neighbors over dinner, and your waiter tells you he saw you on TV last month (not me). Ravi Shankar filled the room with sound, or at least a recording of his ragas, and we were discussing the microtonal and aharmonic sound of eastern music and how wildly different it is from western music (I mentioned the hebrew musical annotation and its similarities in terms of the voice modulation). We decided that humanity's capacity for simultaneous and coincidental technological developments was unfathomable. Conversation went something like this (not in English).
M: "Yeah, despite the fact that every culture has such disparate experiences, there are some inherently common traits that are fascinating."
Me: "Like similar forms of eroticism."
M: "I was thinking about pyramids and architectural structures."
Me: (sheepishly) "Umm, yeah."
M: "Guess we just speak what's on our minds."
Now why doesn't this exchange surprise me???
I. was happy with her massala, and had nothing to opine, which is a rarity.
August 14. That makes exactly one year that we moved in here, one year that we started building furniture and unpacking boxes, one year that we call California officially home. As if by magic, I felt the urge to shop for home goods, actually a bundt pan (to make mohn streusel cake for K.s birthday - happy birthday baby:) and glasses because we had broken practically the whole set and we had only two wine glasses left (not at all acceptable for entertaining) and we ended up buying a memory foam bed cover ($100) and pillows for I.'s bed (another carrot dangled for her to sleep in her own bed... still only partially effective). We also bought about 8 bottles of wine to accompany our purchase but of course I realized later that I left our corkscrew with Ana and Marcos at the beach after the barbecue, and they had left for San Diego, so I was out of luck. Incidentally I was not totally out of luck because the following day I met them again at the beach and left my bike, promptly forgetting about it for several days, and yet it was still there Sunday evening when M. dropped me in front of the bike rack.
So, today after being poked and prodded (got Hepatitis A vaccine, just another benefit of living in CA) by doctors and their assistants once again, we picked up the girl from school, and headed right to buy four new pairs of shoes. Of course after such strenuous activity we were forced to go eat Indian food (god forbid we should prepare our own delicacies after the mental drain). You know it is a small town when you run into neighbors over dinner, and your waiter tells you he saw you on TV last month (not me). Ravi Shankar filled the room with sound, or at least a recording of his ragas, and we were discussing the microtonal and aharmonic sound of eastern music and how wildly different it is from western music (I mentioned the hebrew musical annotation and its similarities in terms of the voice modulation). We decided that humanity's capacity for simultaneous and coincidental technological developments was unfathomable. Conversation went something like this (not in English).
M: "Yeah, despite the fact that every culture has such disparate experiences, there are some inherently common traits that are fascinating."
Me: "Like similar forms of eroticism."
M: "I was thinking about pyramids and architectural structures."
Me: (sheepishly) "Umm, yeah."
M: "Guess we just speak what's on our minds."
Now why doesn't this exchange surprise me???
I. was happy with her massala, and had nothing to opine, which is a rarity.
posted by ilana at 8:54 p.m.
6 Comments:
Esto confirma que CR tiene todo lo que caracteriza a un pueblo pequeño!
California siempre me dio la impresión de ser muy amigable y seguro comparado con otras partes de USA... a veces hasta me dan ganas de volver de visita.
Sole,
Pues lo más raro es que el D.F. también (algún día les contaré de mis milagrosos encuentros en las calles de México). Ya sabés... cuando quieras. Yo algún día llegaré a las puertas de tu bello país también... cuando tenga yo el tiempo y la plata requisitos de una "lady of leisure" :)
Tugo, not all of it was Californian, there was a nice central coast Reisling and a Syrah, and a few bottles of Shiraz from Santa Barbara, but there was also a Chilean white and our favorite Hungarian Egri Bikver (super cheap, but Hungary's favorite table wine - it touts... )we had a Hungarian friend who made the happy introduction.
i hope some of those bottles are for saturday's fete, querida maestra de la sangria. thank you for your birthday wishes. i just got some back-to-career shoes myself. little i. and i can have a fashion show; i might even let her put lipstick on me.
mais oui, ma chère... 2 very large, and surprisingly decent for the price, bottles of Cab, to be mished shamelessly (not as shamelessly, of course, as us dancing about the cabin in our fashion show attire, post consumption) with the orange liqueur-drenched fruit I told you about. I am having memories of a May Day not so distant, 1997, and the felicitous stupor in which we found ourselves draped.
Qué casualidad, ayer también trituré mis hambres en un restaurante hindú. No sé a quién se le ocurrió la idea de ofrecer buffetes a la hora de almuerzo, pero si alguna vez lo averiguo le doy un medallita y un abrazo.
Espero que no hayan sangrado demasiado tus pobres hambritas. Imagínate que entraras pensando que te daban una comida exquisita y salieran con que eran una bola de abogados del subcontinente esperando para devorarte a ti... (para seguir el tema del día:)
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