Chores

Saturday and Sunday are Chores days around the Alvarez household.

I thought Saturday and Sunday were the weekend, but apparently, I was wrong.

Now, the more I do chores, the more I realize how terrible chores are. I've heard people say that chores are a way of loving your family. But, let's be honest, I would much rather love AV and Ramon over a box of white chocolate Oreo's. I think they'd feel the love way more, too, because I wouldn't be righteously annoyed.

Chores suck, plain and simple. Here's why.

They are never actually done. You spend all day, sometimes night, and sometimes even the next day if you live in a dryer-less world like I do. Sunday night you finish the laundry and have every sock put away, but inevitably you have to take off the clothes you're wearing. The empty white basket is now one step closer to full again. It just makes you want to scream sometimes.

Sweeping and mopping are also lame-o. Mexico is the dust capital of the world. So, once the floors have been swept and mopped you can already see those stupid butt-holey dust specks starting to settle back down in their place. I can hear their tiny dust voices whispering, "Nice try, Sssuuuccckkkaaa."

Now, let's talk about the kitchen. The kitchen is usually clean for about 10 hours a day. Pretty impressive, I'd say. Except for the part where 8 of those hours are when the entire house is sleeping and no one can enjoy it. The second you wake up, someone needs to make breakfast. That someone is 99.9% of the time, me. I don't have one of those magical dish hiding places that other people have been known to call dishwashers. The dish washer, again, is 98.4% (we'll give Ramon a little more credit on this one) of the time me. After washing all the dishes, without fail, you turn around to find one lone cup or spoon who defied the instruction to be washed and stored. Whatever, that jerk gets to sit all night alone in the sink and think about what he's done.

Don't get me started on the bathroom. I've decided it's going to be Ramon's chore. I hate cleaning the bathroom. The second you finish, you always ALWAYS have to go the bathroom. And if you live in a house like mine, you don't have any other viable or appropriate option other than to dirty up your nice clean bathroom. It's not so much the going that bugs me as much as it is the washing hands part because the nice clean shiny sink now has drip marks. Since I'm unwilling to give up the handwashing part of the bathroom experience, I just have to resign myself to the fact that the bathroom will never be perfectly clean.

Some parts of cleaning are, however, extremely satisfying. I love the feeling when you think, 'Oh yeah, that's what that coach looked like.' or 'That spot wasn't permanent? Sweet.' But, come on, that doesn't happen often enough to outweigh all of the negatives.

They say a woman's work is never done. I think that phrase should more appropriately be changed to read, "Chores suck, but you still have to do 'em."

If Strollers Could Talk

To start, my stroller would have an awesome accent. Something to drive all the babes wild.

Then, my stroller would get a little more serious and probably tell me the following things.

Dear Owner,

I was not made for what you are putting me through. I was happily shipped to Babies R Us USA where there are sidewalks and paved roads and ramps and crosswalks and all sorts of other amenities of this sort. If I had been informed upon my purchase that I would soon be exported, I most likely would have objected very loudly. I would most definitely have objected had I known that you were going to be my owner. Every night, I sit alone and cry, "Why me?!" I think you deserve to know why.

1. Your child, while extremely cute, (I might say that she is the cutest baby I have ever seen in my entire life, and strollers have been around for a while, that's saying something. But, I digress.) is not even seven months old yet and has already puked on me and peed on me more times than I can count. That, dear woman, is gross. I do not like to have any bodily fluids other than my own, which I have none, on me.

2. Focus, woman. Your child was barely 6 weeks old when you burned the living crapola out of one of my wheels. I understand that lights in the floor is supposed to be something modern and interesting. However, my wheels are plastic. Plastic melts. Even if the streets were paved in gold, my ride would now be just slightly wobbly because of your lack of general awareness of your surroundings. Next time when you smell something burning, check my wheels, it's probably me.

3. I am not as small as you think I am. I am a travel system. We are the SUV's of strollers. We take up entire trunk spaces just because we can. We have no qualms with taking the space of things like groceries. We are that important. Please, understand, come to terms, and begin respecting this fact. Stop trying to force me through spaces between buildings and telephone poles. Stop taking me to crowded market places. You can pretend you don't see the dirty looks when you push me into the ankles of those in front. But, the baby and I? We feel those scornful looks, and frankly, it hurts.

You are very lucky that your baby is so cute, because if she were one of those weird-looking alien babies that are out there, I would have rebelled against you a long time ago. I just ask you to open your eyes, ears, nose and work on your spacial awareness. If not for my sake, for the sake of the precious cargo I transport, I don't know how much more we can take.

Sincerely,

Your Stroller.

Wait, what?

Wait, what? This is an all too common phrase that is most often accompanied by a raised eyebrow and confused face and it can most likely be seen on me when trying to decipher my students' work. Once I figure out what the child is trying to say, the confused usually turns into a smiley laughing face.



Want some examples? I though you would.



We are dead for food.

Translation: We were dying of hunger.



It was a week very heaviest.

Translation: It was a very tiring week.



The convencion durate to one week.

Translation: The convention lasted one week.



The sending is the aple richen large that whit spon and spar centing cente.

1st Response: WTF? What is this?

2nd Response: (Just hit me in this moment 3 weeks after reading the work) AAhh, she has tried (big emphasis on the tried) to copy from the book to answer the question: What is the setting?

Translation: The setting is the castle kitchen, large pots with spoons are placed center stage.



Define Shellfish (not my student but definitely share-worthy)

Answer: Shellfish is when you only care about yourself.



Use Majesty in a sentence.

I say to the teacher Majesty because I want more recess.

Response: Nice try.



Use porridge in a sentence.

The people want porridge.

Response: Give the people what they want, I say. Their demands aren't outrageous.



Use peasant in a sentence.

This school have a peasant to do the school nice.

Response: Oh, is that what we're calling janitors and gardeners now?


By far, best sentence I have read in all of my five years of teaching.
Drum Roll, PLEASE!

Use dungeon in a sentence.

This person are bad they kill chickens and are in the dungeon.

Response: After I stopped laughing, read it again, laughed again and stopped again, I thought "Chicken Killer? Really? That's what you have to do to get sent to the dungeon?"

PS Yes, we read a story about a king, so, no, these vocabulary words aren't weird.

Cookies or Crackers?

I have an amazing oven.

It's amazing for many reasons none of which include its ability to cook food. I don't know how old it is, but let's just say that if we ball park it in the time frame of older than me, younger than dirt.

I will give it this, though. It is the first oven that I've had in Mexico with numbers. I'm talking real temperatures, people. My first oven went from temperature minus sign (-) to temperature plus sign (+). Your guess is as good as mine, or maybe better because I always guessed wrong with that baby. My second oven was way more high tech; it had a scale from 1-5. Again, your guess, probably better. This one has temps, in celsius, which, even after 5 years, still means very little to me.

The door doesn't close properly. Handy Fix-it Man Wally Hickey rigged up a nice latch system for me when he was here in April which took the oven's usability from zero to functioning. To use said latch, you must push all your weight against the oven door and then latch. Though, when the oven is on, this means that you will burn your leg and fingers because the door and latch are just about as hot as the inside of the oven.

Everything around the oven gets hot when its on. Note to self, plastic should not be close by. Learned that lesson the hard way.

Oh yeah, that part about how the oven has temperatures? Big, fat lie. The temperatures mean nothing. I set my oven to less than 350. It heated up to over 500.

The point is this: I now have 60+ chocolate chip crackers.

Anybody hungry?

Never seen that before.

Sometimes living in Mexico gets old.

Like on the days when you have to push a stroller on what can only be loosely defined as sidewalk, and more accurately can be described as blocks of concrete of varying heights, super steep driveways, with telephone poles in the middle that require you to take aforementioned stroller into traffic to go around aforementioned pole.

Mexico can get old when you realize that you've been cut off by the same bus three times in three blocks because it speeds up to get in front of you then pulls over and stops to let people off.

Somethings don't get old.

Like seeing a man walking down the street carrying three GIANT bags of cheese puffs. I'm talking bags that are almost the size of the man.

Now that, my friends, is funny.