weekend ramblings and other stuff

this is a phone booth

I wrote this a while ago. I can’t seem to finish anything these days. I start one thing, then get distracted by a million others. Transcontinental moves. I feel like I’ve been here before. My life is one big flash back novel. You’ll have to use your imagination on this post, it’s confused like I am.

It was a hot one today. Over 90, 83 in the house at 9:30pm. And humid: 40% – unusual in this desert climate.

Listening to Jeremy Camp “Reckless” on internet radio… “I wanna be reeee-ckless”

Haha. Ha. ha.

Been there. Done that. Could sell the T-shirts. I don’t really want to be reckless anymore. I am cured.

HalleLUya!

The neighborhood chilluns came over again today. They love to yell “Ho-LA!” out their window when they see us in the pool. I even went for a dip today. I hate swimming. There is something extremely not right about that shock of going from 100 degree skin temps to FREEZING. Feeling like a total useless slug from the heat was too much, though, and I was forced to get in just to deal. Then the son of the guy who is working on the new house across the street’s wandered over. We found him standing at the front gate like he needed something. So social etiquette dictates I say, “Hola! What are you doing? Do you wanna come in? Do you wanna swim? Come on in!”. To which, of course, he obliges. What a sweet kid, adorable, funny. Just one of those good kids. He had my DD10 laughing a lot. They were yapping away, joking around in Spanish about stuff that seems funny only to ten-year-olds. Her accent is so good; lacking a little fluency, but, man, does she sound Argentinian. M, the 6yo neighbor girl who invites herself over has mellowed a lot in the last year. Now I hear, “Will you give me some grapes? Can you hold this for me? What’s that? Who is at the gate? What are you doing??” only every once in a while – she actually swims and plays and has a good time most of the time now instead of demanding the world non-stop the entire somewhat exhausting time she is here. Last summer she drove me crazy. She hasn’t been over since then, though – we think Mom may have banned her from coming since she used to lie to us outright. Once she quickly and mysteriously excused herself and left with something hidden behind her back. She didn’t come over again after that. But, man, she is SO cute, we love her anyway.

Still no cell phone service here at the house. Kind of a huge annoyance since we don’t have a landline. Who knows when they will erect that fallen cell phone tower so I can actually make a call. That would be nice in light of all the black widows and bees around these days – you know, life threatening stuff and all.  [UPDATE: My phone rang today! First time in a month, I couldn’t believe it! I was like, What’s that sound?? Ohmygosh, it’s the phone! Quick, where is it?!?]

We also got MagicJack! That means we have a phone hooked up to our computer and can call and receive calls over the internet just like if we were back in the States! So cool. Too bad we didn’t figure out how easy it actually was until a few weeks ago. The poor Magic Jack pluggy-in thing sat in our junk drawer for, well, I won’t say how long, because we just didn’t get it. I read the directions, I did… I was probably just thinking about how to survive life or something…

But, don’t ask for the number, I don’t like to actually talk on the phone. Tony has already called a lot of our friends. He even called my mom before me. He LIKES to talk on the phone. When most men wake up Saturday morning and are thinking about washing the car, this is Tony: “Hey, let’s call your mom! Hey, let’s call my old boss! Hey, let’s call that guy I used to work with like ten years ago! Who can we invite over tonight?! Let’s call them!” He’s like a Golden Retriever puppy, so cute and yet so annoying. I’m usually like, “Can we NOT call all these people? I’m kind of busy.” I still don’t know why I don’t like to talk on the phone, I just don’t. I like to talk to people in person, when normal life crosses our paths. The phone just isn’t… normal.

Tony worked this weekend. They made him get blood tests done, though, to make sure he didn’t have any “communicable diseases” after they found out we had the flu in the US. They didn’t seem to get what the flu is and that even though our kids got it two months ago, Tony is not carrying it, or any communicable viruses. We just kind of laughed at how ridiculous it is. The many-days bureaucratic nightmare of getting an appt., getting your blood drawn, going to pick up the results, making another appt. to have the results evaluated, then finally… weeks later… presenting your clean bill of health to your job is just pretty much a colossal waste of time. For us. It’s like when I went to the neighbor’s today to talk to him about kitty and said something about his vaccination record, he [the neighbor vet] said yes i have that…. I waited to see if he would offer to give it back or tell me when he would get it to me. No, no specific time frame offered… he would just “fix it up and get it to me”. Shrug. Okay.

{Fast forward a few weeks…}

We are finally making a nice dent in packing. Once I got over the initial tug of, “But my STUFF! I want it!” and let go, it’s been very freeing. It’s amazing how quickly we accumulate stuff.

We came with a 40 foot container, a car, our furniture, 250 boxes. We are leaving with no car, no furniture, and maybe 50 boxes. Fifty boxes still seems like a lot, but most of it is clothes, my kitchen stuff, sentimentals, and our small library. The important things.

We are running into problems selling our van. We are praying we can. All imported cars in Argentina have a limitation put on them by Customs that they can not be sold for the first two years. We have been here a year and a half. This is a blow because selling the van would cover our move back 100%. If we can’t sell it, it will have to sit in storage and Tony will have to come back in December to sell it. Sigh. Still praying though. God knows why he does things and why they work out the way they do, we don’t always.

This has forced us to plow ahead with selling all our furniture. We had wanted to give most of it away to needy people, but now kind of have to sell it so we can afford to get ourselves and some of our stuff back to the U.S. Fortunately our stuff here is worth a bit of money, so we are lowering the price to make it accessible, and yet it will still help us a lot to sell it.

Juan, the guy who tractored our overgrown lawn (and survived a black widow bite) came by today. He wants to buy a few of our things. I brought him in and showed him all our stuff. It was hard for his eyes not to widen. This always makes me feel weird.

Tony and I were finally only able to buy a bunch of new furniture after ten years of marriage. We got a nice income tax return one year that wasn’t eaten up by bills or broken cars, so finally bought most of what is now in our house. We are not rich, but down here we look it. It’s a feeling I never get used to.

And there you have it. Weekend ramblings and other stuff. Not in any particular order.